After a relationship ended, I made a conscious decision to take the fall and winter off from dating. I needed time to reflect. Plus, cocooning with a good book on a Friday night is always preferable to making awkward small talk with a stranger at an overpriced wine bar.

When I felt ready to get back out there, I downloaded the popular dating app Bumble, which differentiates itself in the market by only allowing women to make the first move.

I was immediately impressed by the calibre of men on Bumble. It was a seemingly never-ending parade of interesting, successful and handsome men. Lawyers and creative directors and CEOs, oh my! Some seemed almost too good to be true — and I started to suspect they were.

Online dating has a rich and sleazy history of fake profiles. When it was revealed 70,000 female Ashley Madison users were actually fembots and actual women were a rarity on the adultery-friendly dating site, it was no real surprise to anyone (except to male Ashley Madison subscribers). With the surge in popularity of mobile dating apps, there came a surge of fake profiles migrating from websites to apps; suddenly, pornbots and scammers were just a smartphone swipe away, hoping to part you with your money, personal information, confidence, swiftly fleeting youth/beauty/fertility or all of the above.

They sure come in pretty packages, though.

Less than a week into my dating app adventure, I Bumbled across a dreamy man. We’ll call him “Jake”. This tousled Brad Pitt lookalike stated in his profile that he was the corporate director of large Canadian firm I won’t name — an impressive title for a 33-year-old who looks like he’s spent far more time on a beach than in a boardroom.

Suspicious, I got in touch with their head office. They had a few different corporate directors, they told me, but nobody by his name was found in the company’s global directory.

Jake — or at least the version of Jake profiled on Bumble — did not exist.

I enlisted a handful of straight male friends to tell me about their experience on the app. According to them, a disproportionate number of women in Toronto are leggy blondes who work as professional models. Some of them even want to help you to earn $500 a day or lose belly fat instantly!

Bogus profiles are not a Bumble-specific problem. Among flesh-and-blood humans looking for love and lust on dating apps and websites, there are enough fake profiles and chatbots sprinkled in to ruin the whole experience. They’ll post or message links to spam or pornography sites, try to steal your information or just plain ignore you.

Most dating apps have a way to flag or report fake profiles, but it can be difficult to tell what’s real and what’s fake at first blush.

Even if you walk away with your credit card number and dignity intact, fake profiles on these apps can still negatively impact your dating life.

“When there are a lot of really attractive fake profiles, it might make someone a lot less likely to seek out an average — and actually real — person on these apps,” says Toronto-based relationship expert Kimberly Moffit. “It could limit someone from finding someone they might really love based on an in-person connection.”

Bumble is aware of the fake-profile problem and is doing something about it.

“Our whole focus is to make everybody feel they have a safe and empowered space to meet online,” says Alex Williamson, head of brand at Bumble. “Part of that is to know that you’re talking to who you think you’re talking to.”

Bumble has recently implemented photo verification on the platform. As of May 2, Canadians suspicious that a profile is fake can flag it. The next time the flagged user logs in, they’ll be prompted to snap a selfie on the spot. If the faces match, great. If not, the profile is removed.

In the meantime, be wary of profiles of people who look like they’re straight out of Central Casting for the new Baywatch movie. Also keep your eyes peeled for profiles that include only one posted photo, little to no biographical information, outbound links and — in the case of my old pal Jake — impressive jobs paired with movie-star good looks.

If we allow beauty-stacked dating apps to form our impressions of what’s out there, what’s actually out there is bound to disappoint.

Take a look around you. Look at the people at work, at school, at the grocery store and on public transit. Most people in this city — any city — are wonderfully average.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The bevy of beautiful bots in the black mirror won’t date you because they’re not real. (Even if they were — let’s face it — they’d be dating each other.) These online fantasies are actually ruining it for average schlubs who would make wonderful partners.

If you want to get a realistic sense of your dating pool, open your eyes — not an app.