Dating safety in Finland

If you need help right now

Short version first, detail below.

If you are being threatened with violence, or the danger is immediate, call 112.

If someone is threatening to publish images of you: do not pay and do not reply. Take screenshots of the messages and of the profile, block the sender, and lock your social media accounts to non-contacts. Paying does not end it — it identifies you as someone who pays.

If you have already sent money to someone you have not met in person: your bank first, then a police report. That order matters. The bank can sometimes stop or recall a transfer, and it is faster to reach than any other party involved.

Victim Support Finland answers free of charge on 116 006. You can call when nothing formally criminal has happened and the situation is simply weighing on you, and they advise family and friends as well as victims.

Reporting in English: what the police actually do

This is the part most English-language safety guides cannot tell you, because they are written for other countries.

A crime report in Finland may be filed in a language you understand and can speak well enough. You are not required to have Finnish, and you are not required to bring your own translator. The police arrange the interpreter.

For widely spoken languages this is usually straightforward. For rarer ones it can take longer, in which case the police set an appointment at a time that suits both you and the interpreter. You may also bring someone who speaks your language with you.

Reports can be filed online at poliisi.fi. Filing early helps in two ways that are easy to underestimate: the investigation has more to work with, and a report is often what a bank or an insurer will ask for before considering any claim.

For consumer disputes rather than crimes — a charge you did not authorise, a subscription that will not cancel — the counterparty is the Competition and Consumer Authority, KKV, and its consumer advice service. Those are handled in Finnish or Swedish, which is a real asymmetry: the criminal route accommodates your language, the consumer route largely does not.

What the Finnish figures show

Numbers matter here because the subject attracts both exaggeration and dismissal, often in the same conversation.

Finnish police recorded 32 449 reports of cyber-assisted fraud in 2024, with total damages of at least 84.2 million euros — an increase of 70 per cent compared with the previous year.

Of those, 460 reports concerned romance and document fraud, and the damages from them were at least 7.2 million euros. The acquaintance most commonly began on a social media platform rather than on a dating service. Most victims are women, and the largest age group is 60 to 79.

Eastern Finland has separate figures for 2025: 1 033 frauds of this type were recorded, causing around 7.8 million euros in damages. Fifteen per cent of them were romance fraud, accounting for roughly 1.8 million euros.

One qualification carries more weight than any of the totals. These are reports, not cases. A substantial share of victims never contact the police at all — out of shame rather than doubt. That is why it is worth saying plainly that asking for help is not an admission of having been foolish.

Romance fraud: the pattern the police describe

The Finnish police describe romance fraud as a three-stage sequence, and the value of knowing it is that the stages are recognisable from inside.

First, contact and rapid intensity. The exchange moves quickly to constant daily contact and to a level of intimacy that would normally take much longer. It is also moved off the platform early — to a messaging app — which removes the history and the reporting mechanism that existed inside the service.

Second, a reason there can be no meeting. Work abroad, a posting, a military deployment, a customs problem. Distance is not itself suspicious; distance combined with an inability to appear on video is a different matter.

Third, money. There is always a reason, and the reason is usually good: a medical emergency, a blocked account, a customs fee, a ticket. The request may start small and grow, or may arrive once and large.

The signal to watch is not the amount and not how convincing the explanation is. It is the fact of a money conversation in a relationship that has had no in-person meeting. That single rule catches more than any list of red flags, because a good story defeats a list.

Image blackmail: the first hour

Sextortion follows a much shorter script than romance fraud, and the first hour largely decides how it goes.

Do not pay. Do not reply at all. Any response — including anger, including negotiation — confirms that the account is live and that you can be reached.

Take screenshots before blocking: the messages, the profile, the account name, any payment details demanded. Once you block, that material may become unreachable, and it is what a report is built from.

Lock down what is visible. Set social media accounts so that friend lists and photographs are not visible to people outside your contacts. Most threats depend on the sender being able to show that they know who your family and colleagues are.

Then report it. The Finnish National Cyber Security Centre states plainly that the claims of blackmailers should not be believed: in most cases the sender does not actually have what they say they have. That is not a guarantee, but it is the base rate, and it is worth knowing before you decide anything under pressure.

If it is happening to someone close to you

The person outside the situation usually sees the pattern before the person inside it does. And then makes the same mistake almost every time.

The mistake is to start with evidence. “Look, his photo appears in another profile.” “That is obviously a scammer.” By the time it is visible from outside, the relationship has already been built, and a direct refutation lands as an attack on someone your friend trusts. After a conversation like that the messages usually get hidden from you, and you have lost the only channel you had.

Questions work better than statements. Not “he is a scammer” but “have you spoken on video?” Not “do not send money” but “why can he not borrow from people close to him?” Someone who answers for themselves hears themselves; a conclusion handed to them is something to defend against.

Money is the exception. If transfers have already happened, there is less time for delicacy. The bank comes first, because a bank can be reached faster than a person can be talked round.

Victim Support Finland on 116 006 advises family and friends too, not only victims. And support is needed at other times than the moment of discovery — often more so afterwards. Shame in this situation works for the fraudster: the longer someone stays silent, the more freely the other party operates.

Why this page carries no advertising

Other parts of this site earn from affiliate links, and that is disclosed at the top of every page where it applies. This section has none, and the reason is not generosity.

Someone reading about blackmail or fraud is not in a position where selling them anything is appropriate. A sign-up button placed next to the instruction “do not pay a blackmailer” cancels the instruction.

There is also a practical reason, and it is worth stating openly. An authority or a specialist organisation will not link to a page that leads to an offer. A non-commercial section can receive links from places a commercial one never will.

The technical guarantee is in the code rather than in a promise: pages in this section are marked non-commercial, and the page template renders no buttons and no affiliate disclosure on them at all.

Who to contact in Finland

A police report may be filed in a language you speak well enough; the police arrange the interpreter.

Frequently asked

Sources

• Poliisi: filing a criminal report
• Poliisi: fraud statistics, 2024 and Eastern Finland 2025 — 32 449 reports nationally; 1 033 in Eastern Finland
• Victim Support Finland (RIKU) — 116 006, free of charge
• RIKU: reporting in a language you speak well enough
• Traficom: protecting yourself from online fraud