10 Red Flags to Watch For in Online Dating

Not every red flag online means someone is a scammer — sometimes it just means they're not right for you. But a handful of behaviours show up again and again in bad matches, from mildly incompatible to genuinely dangerous, and it's worth knowing them by name before you're three weeks deep in a conversation.

Red Flags Around Pace and Intensity

• Love-bombing. Constant compliments, "you're different from everyone else," talk of soulmates and destiny within the first few days. It feels flattering, but it's often designed to lower your guard before you've had time to actually evaluate the person. Genuine affection usually builds gradually; manufactured affection tends to arrive all at once, on schedule.
• Rushing toward exclusivity or the future. Pushing for "official" status, meeting family, or even marriage talk before you've met in person, or before you've had more than a handful of real conversations, is a pace mismatch worth naming out loud rather than quietly going along with.

Red Flags Around Honesty and Consistency

• Inconsistent stories. Their job, their location, their family situation shifts slightly depending on the day or who's asking. One slip is human; a repeated pattern of small contradictions is a warning worth taking seriously.
• Avoiding verification. If a platform offers identity verification and someone goes out of their way to avoid it, delay it, or get defensive when you bring it up, ask yourself why a person with nothing to hide would resist proving they are who they say. Read more on how NIN verification protects you.
• Reluctance to voice or video call. A person who is who they say they are usually has no problem sending a voice note or hopping on a quick call. Repeated deflection is one of the clearest signs discussed in what catfishing is and how to avoid it.

Red Flags Around Secrecy and Access

• Keeping you a secret. Refusing to be seen with you publicly, avoiding your friends, or asking you to keep the relationship quiet with no reasonable explanation offered.
• Refusing to make plans in the real world. Weeks or months of great conversation with no forward motion toward an actual meeting, always with a new excuse, is its own quiet red flag even without an obvious scam angle attached.

Red Flags Around Control and Boundaries

• Anger or guilt-tripping when you set a boundary. If asking for space, saying no to something, or simply not replying instantly triggers guilt-tripping or anger, that's a preview of how conflict will go later, when the stakes are much higher than a delayed reply.
• Isolating you from friends and family. Subtle digs at the people close to you, or pressure to spend less time with them, is a control tactic that tends to escalate rather than fade once you've settled into the relationship.

Red Flags Around Money

• Any mention of money, loans, or "urgent" financial need. This is the single clearest red flag in online dating, full stop. It doesn't matter how sympathetic the story is — a stuck shipment, a sick relative, a business opportunity too good to pass up. A stranger you haven't met asking for money is reason enough to end things. Our guide on how to avoid dating scams in Nigeria walks through exactly how this ask usually shows up.

A Quick Gut-Check

If you're ever unsure whether something counts as a red flag or you're just overthinking it, ask yourself one question: would this behaviour still feel acceptable from someone you'd already met several times in person, with mutual friends and a known workplace? If the answer is no, distance from the screen is giving them a pass they wouldn't get otherwise.

What to Do When You Spot One

One red flag doesn't always mean you should block immediately — context matters, and people are allowed to be a little awkward when they're nervous. But two or three together, especially anything involving money or reluctance to verify who they are, is a pattern worth acting on rather than explaining away.

It also helps to write the flag down, literally, the moment you notice it. In the middle of a warm, engaging conversation it's easy to talk yourself out of what you clearly saw an hour earlier. A quick note — "avoided the video call again," "asked about my salary unprompted" — keeps you honest with yourself later, when the same person is being extra charming and the flag suddenly feels less important than it did.

This is part of why verified platforms help. On Baejá, NIN verification and a live selfie check are required before someone can freely use the app, which quietly filters out a large share of the accounts built purely to run these patterns — see how verification works for the details.

Knowing these ten flags won't guarantee a perfect match, but it will save you time, money, and heartbreak on the ones that were never going anywhere good. Create your profile on Baejá and date somewhere these patterns have less room to hide.