In the course of my interactions while researching the romance scams, a 45 year old grandmother, told me of her dating troubles and how she was scammed of well over $3000. Her husband passed on a few years ago, and she had been living in a big house all alone.

According to her, she was very lonely and needed someone to talk to heart to heart. She said that even in the midst of friends, family and other relatives, she felt a deep void in her life, and she needed her own man to share her life with.

Given her status as a widow, she felt that the online dating scene would give her some measure of anonymity, while at the same time serving the purpose of bringing her in touch with the right man that she wanted.

That was why she signed up with an online dating service. Three months later, she had lost some thousands of dollars to a scammer.

But even with the fact that she was scammed, she has still been actively looking for a mate. According to her, she is lonely, and she would do anything to solve that problem.

As such, she has continued with her search for a partner online.

Now, hers was not the only case I came across .I know of quite some women, who got into the online dating scene because of loneliness. For most of them, they preferred to date any available person, provided he could giver them the attention they so craved, than live alone by themselves.

For example, a lady, who is 44 years old, and with 3 kids, is insisting on dating a guy who is half her age, all in the name of curing her loneliness. She has persistently refused to yield to appeals to reconsider her stance. To her, she is no longer lonely, and that is all that matters.

Many women are in similar shoes, although the situations and persons involved may vary. All the same, it appears that loneliness is a key factor that is driving many thousands of people into the online dating scene.

And this loneliness factor is one of the emotional needs of people looking for dates online, that scammers prey upon to operate successfully. They do all that they can to give maximum attention to their targets, and go the extra mile to attend to them. They send flowers, clothes, chocolates and other gift items on ordinary days, and on special days too.

As a lady put it to me, given that most of her family and friends hardly remembered her even on her birthday to send gifts or call her, getting such overwhelming attention from a man she met online in this manner, even if he was largely unknown to her, meant a lot to her. It made her feel much needed and wanted again, after her recent divorce.

The problem of loneliness has caused many men and women in the United States and other Western Countries to lose millions of dollars monthly to dating scams. And the scams are still going on up till this moment.

The best way to deal with the scams is to educate yourself about it so that you can prevent it from happening to you or your loved ones.

If you are still faced with the problem of loneliness and you wish to get a partner through Internet dating, then you need to know how to solve that problem, and how to meet the right persons online.