I got catfished on Tinder

My name is David Longo, I am a junior majoring in Business Marketing at UM, but at least half of Miami knows me by the name of Justin. And according to my Tinder account, I’m 27.

I have fallen victim to a catfish. Someone has stolen my beautiful identity from the Internet and has manipulated it to their advantage to make a Tinder account. Sure, 9 out of ten online daters will fib about their height, weight, or age, but falsely representing your photo is a whole other ballpark.

A friend of mine was the first to come across “Justin’s” profile. He informed me over text that he matched with an account falsely advertising my photo, so I did what any other paranoid victim would do and downloaded Tinder. After two hours of ferociously swiping though some of Miami’s finest (lies) men, I finally came across Justin…

I was flooded with emotions. I felt violated. Some man in a dark room was pretending to be so saying who the hell knows what to other Tinder users he (I) matched with. Mostly though, I felt scared, only due to the fact that the photo being used was from my Facebook account, and has now made its way onto a whole other social media platform.

Does THIS face look 27?!

But then I thought hey, at least “Justin” thinks I’m attractive enough to use my photos. The person behind this account may have major confidence issues, or is scared to reveal their identity on an app like this. I almost sympathized for this person to be honest. To clear it up, this catfish was a male (or perhaps a female?) who didn’t feel that their physical presence could be accepted by the other users of Tinder, leading them to feel their last resort was to assume the position of someone else’s identity. What is even scarier is the idea that this person most likely planned to meet up with the Tinder matches they accumulated and try to form some kind of relationship, whether or not the person meeting them was accepting of the catfish or not.

Overall, I will confess to empathizing for the person hiding behind my photo, but that does not justify their actions, I still want this account deactivated.

I previously requested Tinder take down the fake account, but to my inconvenience, I was told to report the issue through Facebook. Facebook? That’s when I got really alarmed… Tinder requires users to link their Facebook account to their Tinder account in order to utilize previously posted photos, which means that I was also being catfished on other social media platforms than just Tinder. Needless to say I took immediate precautions and called the police.

The police “looked into it”, but face it, with the crime rates we face in Miami, I doubt I’m high on their list of priorities. Luckily, one of my acquaintances did match with the profile, and says that it is not visible in his previous messages anymore. So to my knowledge, the account has been taken down, but for anyone who saw it before it was, I hope you at least had a good conversation.