If you've spent even one week on an international dating site, you know the feeling.

A woman whose pictures look like they came out of a magazine messages you almost right away. She calls you "handsome" before she knows your name. Three messages in, she wants to move to WhatsApp.

Part of you wants to believe it. The other part has a pit in your stomach.

I lead the Success Team at Christian Filipina. Our team spends its days on the phone with men from the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. Most of them are good, hard-working guys in their 40s, 50s and 60s who want a sincere partner and want to settle down.

When things go sideways, they tell us. Some are angry. Some are embarrassed. A lot of them say, "Marilyn, 90% of the profiles on here have to be fake."

I understand why they feel that way. Get burned once or twice and your guard goes all the way up.

But 90% are not fake. Scammers do exist, though, and they count on you ignoring your gut. Here's what to look for before you put weeks into someone.

One of the most common complaints we hear: "She only has one photo and she wrote three words. She has to be fake."

Not necessarily.

Plenty of real women sign up on a phone, add one photo, and mean to come back and finish later. Some of them just aren't comfortable writing a paragraph about themselves for strangers.

Does that mean you should spend two weeks messaging an empty profile? No.

My advice: skip it for now, or wait until she fills it out. Just don't message her to accuse her of being fake. Move on to someone who has put some effort into introducing herself.

When our admin team screens accounts, it looks for a handful of patterns. You can spot most of them yourself if you pay attention.

Glamour shots and model poses. If every picture looks like a studio photoshoot, with perfect lighting and heavy makeup, be careful. Most real women post everyday pictures: a selfie in daylight, a photo with her cousins, something from a family party. If a profile looks too polished, do a reverse image search on Google. Stolen photos often turn up on other sites under someone else's name.

A copied "About me." Scammers are lazy. They often copy someone else's description word for word. If hers sounds stiff or oddly formal, copy a sentence, put it in quotation marks, and search for it. You may find the same paragraph somewhere else.

A location that doesn't add up. Our own screening checklist has an example of someone writing, "I was raised in California but I am in Ghana now." That's an extreme case. But if her profile says one place and the way she talks about her day says another, take note.

The quick, generic opener. If a woman messages you minutes after you join with "Hi handsome" or "Hello dear" and nothing else, pause. Scammers send the same greeting to many men at once, sometimes seconds apart. A sincere woman usually mentions something from your profile, or at least says hello like a normal person.

Contact details hidden in odd places. Dating sites don't allow phone numbers or email addresses in profiles. Scammers try to sneak them in anyway: a number split up with strange punctuation, or tucked into a field where it doesn't belong. If you see that, she is trying to get around the site's rules. Report the profile.

Same photos, new name. One member saw a woman's profile get removed. The next day she was back on the site, with the same photos and a shortened version of the same name. If a "new" woman looks exactly like one who disappeared, report her.

Details that don't match. Members catch a lot this way. One noticed that the age and marital status a woman told him didn't match her profile. Another noticed that a woman's photos didn't fit where she said she lived, and that she said she owned a farm but soon asked him for money. Small mismatches are worth a polite question. Big ones are worth a report.

This one confuses a lot of men.

You join a site to meet a Filipina and you match with a woman who lives in Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore or Saudi Arabia. The first thought is that she's lying.

She probably isn't. Millions of Filipinos work abroad as overseas workers, usually called OFWs. They work as nurses, nannies, caregivers and hotel staff, and send money home to their families.

So ask her about her contract, how long she's been there, and when she last went home. A real OFW will talk about her job and her family without any trouble.

This is the pattern men bring up most on our calls. Two or three messages in, she says, "I don't check this site much. Add me on WhatsApp." Or Facebook. Or FaceTime.

Why the hurry?

Because on the dating site, someone is watching. Accounts get checked, photos get verified, and scammer profiles get removed every day. Once you're on WhatsApp, none of that applies. Even if her profile is banned an hour later, you're still texting her on your phone.

One member agreed to move to WhatsApp after a woman sent him chat request after chat request. While they were still talking, he checked her profile on his computer. The site had already removed it.

The rule our team gives every member: keep your conversations inside the dating site for at least two weeks.

A sincere woman looking for something serious won't mind waiting two weeks to trade numbers. If someone gets angry or pushy, or disappears, because you want to stay on the site a little longer, that tells you what you needed to know.

Ask for a video call before you get emotionally invested.

A real woman might be shy the first time. She might want to fix her hair first, or wait until she has a decent signal. That's normal. But if two weeks go by and there's always an excuse, like a broken camera, a dead phone, or a connection that drops every time you ask, stop.

Keep in mind that face filters and AI tools can now change how someone looks on a live video call. A video call is a good step, but it isn't proof by itself. Look for normal human things. Does she answer your questions naturally? Does her background look like a real home? Does her voice fit the person you see?

One member told us that after he exchanged numbers with a woman, he found out she wasn't Filipina at all. Someone had been using another woman's photos the whole time.

Another came to our team after two years of messages with a woman he planned to marry. They had never had a single video call. She said her old phone couldn't do it. Two years is a long time to wait for a five-minute call. We suggested she visit an office in person to confirm who she was.

A third member was talking with two women at once. One asked him for money soon after they moved to WhatsApp. The other kept refusing video calls. Our advice was simple: block the first, and move on from the second.

If internet is the real problem, there's a fix. Women who work in call centers or as teachers usually have better internet. They often write better English too. You can look for them with the advanced search.

You don't have to be paranoid. You need a few rules and the discipline to stick to them.

Keep your options open early. Don't put everything on one woman in the first week. Talk to a few, at a steady pace. It keeps you clear-headed.

Don't give out your number or email right away. Stay on the site for at least two weeks.

Never send money. A woman you've never met in person shouldn't be asking you for cash, gift cards or emergency help. There's a separate article on this site about money requests, but the short answer is always no.

Ask for a short video call early. Ten minutes face to face tells you more than three weeks of late-night texts.

Use the site's own checks. Good sites run photo checks and live face verification. At Christian Filipina, some membership levels also include a Second Opinion Consultation, where our staff call the woman to check she is who she says she is. No site catches everyone, so your own common sense still matters most.

Use the report button. If someone asks for money or sends you strange links, don't just delete the message. Report the profile so the admin team can look into it and protect the next man.

Take your time. A good woman isn't going anywhere, and she won't rush you into something that feels wrong.