Expert: "Catfishing" a common problem

'Catfishing'

According to Urban Dictionary , "[a] catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances."

'Catfish' is also the name of a documentary, and subsequently a reality show on MTV , about people involved in on-line relationships, some that have lasted for years.

----------

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE)  In light of the fake girlfriend hoax with Notre Dame football player Manti Te’o, the online trend of catfishing has become a national topic of conversation.  Catfishing is a term many weren’t familiar with until news of the Te’o hoax broke.  As John Kaufeld, online marketing specialist with IPFW, explains, it's another sign of the age of social media.

“As you get to know that person, you're sharing details,” Kaufeld said.  “What you don't know is that the person you met, the person you're communicating with, is really not the person you think.”

Originally Thursday, NewsChannel 15 set out to learn more about the online hoaxes and why so many people get involved in them.  But with more digging, came the unexpected discovery of a fake Facebook profile with a familiar face.

“As I was doing research for this very story, I came across a concerning page.   It said Adam Widener, it looks like Adam Widener, but this was not my profile,” said reporter Adam Widener.  “I don't speak Spanish.  I don’t speak Dutch, and I’m not from Philadelphia. It turns out someone took my pictures and used my information and created this page back in November.  So for the past couple months, there's been a fake Adam Widener roaming around Facebook.”

Widener said he has reported the fake profile to Facebook.

When asked about social networking, Kaufeld said there’s not much sense on what’s real and what isn’t.  And amid that confusion, Associate Professor of IPFW’s Department of Psychology Michelle Drouin said it's easy for some people to trust what's all a hoax.

“They want to believe they're worthy of those things so they believe I think it’s really normal,” Drouin said.  “Once you've established a connection and you believe that someone that you hold in high regard really thinks you're great, you want to keep that.  You don't want to let that go.”

When asked how people can tell the difference between a real and fake profile, Kaufeld said if the profile in question is of someone the user doesn’t know, he’s not sure there is a real definitive way.