Hey kids, it's me again. The one who's usually calling out the catfish and fakes/bots in this sub.

That one dude that's always catfishing this sub is back, this time as u/penne99.

His latest post was here: https://www.reddit.com/r/r4rasian/comments/yj0o4t/20_f4m_anywhere_read_post_looking_for_older_guys/

In case he deletes it, here is what it said:

I just turned 20, petite (5'3), nice feminine curves, quite young but experienced. Think I look cute but that's up to you to decide! I'm a student, Hispanic, and I love to travel. For now, and I hope this is not too straightforward, I am just looking to talk and sext with older guys who maybe want to 🍆 💦 for me haha.

Please drop me a note me if that is you. Chat is preferred, but do what works for you! Bonus points if you share a picture of yourself!

Here's a face pic from not too long ago: https://imgur.com/a/dwyzyfJ

In attempts to get around the "Photo request without verified photo included." rule (one created because of him specifically), he posted a "verification" pic, but it's clearly a fake because he did his usual thing of stealing someone's pic and editing it.

Here is a mirror of his "verification pic":

https://i.ibb.co/FD31S7N/a6epFIc.jpg

Like usual, his image editing skills are subpar as fuck. How can we tell?

Here are a few things you can look for, using his "verification" as an example.

1. Format. Real verification pics are usually in the format of username, date, and the subreddit name they are verifying in. Any "verification" pic not posted in a subreddit that has verification requirements (like r/gonewild), is not a real verification pic. Any "verification" pic posted on a profile that doesn't have a specific subreddit on the sign that is not also posted in that subreddit is not a real verification pic. If the only proof that it's a real verification pic is "trust me bro" and has not be independently reviewed by a third party (i.e. mods of a subreddit that requires verification), then it is not a real verification pic.

2. Weird username. This dude's whole thing when catfishing, is to look in r/selfie for a real user posting a real verification, steal their picture, figure out what name variations he can make, and then register those names to catfish with. As such, because he's limited to the letters that are on verification sign, with his limited skills, he can only make but so many names based on what he can move around and/or clone, so he tends to make names that end up being kind of nonsense. In this case, you can look at see that the last two "9"s are clones of each other (and if you look at how they're placed and the white space surrounding them, it's clear that the original wasn't a "9" to begin with, as there have been clear edited marks at the tails of the "9").

3. Date. As before, he's stuck with whatever numbers he can fudge around. In this case, it's obvious that the day of "31" is fake, as the color around the "3" and "1" does not match the surrounding area, indicating that they have been moved from elsewhere.

4. Empty space.. As mentioned before, real verifications will include the name of the subreddit the real user is verifying in. Since this dude is trying to blast his fake verification everywhere but the sub he stole it in, he's going to try and "erase" the subreddit name from the verification sheet, which makes the spacing of the name and date weird, because if someone really were to just write those two things, they would have it more vertically centered on the sheet, so it just ends up looking like something was obviously removed. If you look at the sheet of paper overall, you can see that it has text on the other side, that is partially visible on the "verification" side. If you look at where a subreddit name would be, you can see it was poorly erased with the clone stamp, as the text that would be visible from the other side look all crazy and misaligned. Someone mentioned that this dude is probably using a phone app to try and do this with, as someone with even reasonable competency would try and make it not look so obvious.

edit: for comparison, here is the original pic from u/Pennelope913:

https://i.ibb.co/JphvhxK/75dfb6raj5o91.jpg

Then again, this dude has historically been really bad at dealing with background patterns and shit, for example, here are some standout piss-poor attempts of his in the past to try and fake a verification on a non-plain background:

https://i.ibb.co/mD2c0Ft/t2qwJsK.jpg

After I made fun of him about how bad that looked, he actually tried a second time:

https://i.ibb.co/PWvrBHs/wanderlust778r4rtoronto.jpg

Either way, you can see that it's obvious that the background is not consistent.

So what does that mean for you?

LOOK. LOOK WITH YOUR SPECIAL EYES. Look at the profile of people you are interested in messaging. "Too good to be true" applies in this sub too, especially for new accounts.

This dude usually waits about two weeks or so before he starts posting in here because of account age limitations. In the meantime, he is posting in other r4r subs that have fewer restrictions, in this case, he was posting in r/r4rbrisbane, r/r4rsydney, r/dirtyr4r, r/r4rtoronto, r/raceplay, r/bigdicklovers, r/sandiegopersonals, r/r4r, r/indianteenagers, r/makenewfriendshere, r/meetpeople, r/sfr4r, r/sfbaypersonals, r/bayareahookups, r/sgdaddysluts, r/femdompersonals, r/gfdpersonals, r/r4rmelbourne, r/orangecountypersonals, and r/asianmasculinity, all doing the same thing of trying to get guys to send him dick pics and more (i.e. compromising pics), typically specifying for east asian, pakistani/indian, or arab guys, . He'll leave his posts up for a short period of time, collecting messages from guys too horny to do even a little checking, then delete them to move on to a different subreddit, ultimately landing in r/r4rasian

For you ladies that happen to be reading this and wondering "how do I stop weirdos like this from stealing my pics to catfish with?". It's like locking up your bike on a bike rack: you're not trying to make your pics impossible to steal, you're making it too much of a hassle to steal so that he'll move on to someone else with an easier pic to use. How do you do that?

1. Use paper with a background pattern. Gridded paper, paper towel, notebook paper, anything that has a pattern on it, or even crumple it up so where it will be obvious if someone with no talent tries to clone stuff on it and can't match it. Some subreddits even specifically ask for the paper to be crumpled up specifically for this reason. Personally, I prefer seeing verifications done on a piece of paper with a pattern, as the randomness of a crumpled sheet of paper can hide some ugliness of editing.

2. Take multiple verification pics, but make sure that none of them have the verification sign held flat directly at the camera. When you hold the verification sign just straight out flat like how most verification signs are, you are making all the letters about the same height and making it easy for someone wanting to use it to fake a pic to manipulate it (i.e. "exploitable"). Hold the sign at angles so that the left edge is much further or closer away to the camera than the right edge (and vice versa). The goal here is to make it so that the skewed perspective makes the letters differing sizes from left to right, making it more obvious when someone tries to shuffle them around.

Anyways, hope that helps! If u/thickasn or u/boomblocks would like to chime in, feel free. Also: how do I know it's the same person? Asides from just knowing his shitty style of how he operates, he also pre-emptively blocks multiple accounts of mine that I have used in the past to call him out in attempts to stop me from commenting on his posts.

PS:

And as usual per every single time I make one of these types of posts, there are going to be a bunch of you fucking idiots who literally only see the "F4M" part of the title and will read exactly zero of this post or even past that part of the post title, and will send me messages trying to "hook up", because you are stupid as shit and quite frankly, deserved to be catfished to hell. And like usual, if you send me one of these messages, I will post your name and contents of the message/chat request on my page so people can look at it and laugh at you.