No matter if you’re recently single or if you choose to play the dating game for as long as you find the right one, as soon as you turn to online dating sites for finding your next potential partner, there are some serious safety considerations you need to take into account.
For you to have safe and fun online dating experience, we’ve gathered 21 most important tips that will help you date online safely. The tips are divided into three categories, one for each stage of your online dating experience: creating an online dating profile, online interaction with potential partners and meeting in person with your potential mate.
Creating an Online Dating Profile
- Make sure to pick a right username: don’t choose inappropriate or overly sexy username (like sexybeast69, for example) as it may send the wrong message to your potential mates, or even worse, it may attract the ones from the bottom of the barrel you surely would never like to meet in person.
- Make sure your password is secure: your personal life is your personal matter and you wouldn’t want any prying eyes to have insight into in. In the same way, you surely wouldn’t want someone to use your profile for malicious purposes like extorting money or sending embarrassing photos.
- Be honest on your profile: As much as you’d hate someone to lie to you in their dating profile, make sure to be honest yourself. Little embellishing of the facts can pass, but don’t lie about important matters from your life and experience. Besides, you want to be honest in your likes and dislikes if you want to find the right person for you.
- Don’t reveal any personally identifiable information: This includes your personal email, street address or phone number. Even online dating sites can be target for hackers and phishing companies and you want to keep your personal information away from anyone who might abuse it.
2. Onsite Interaction
- Check the person’s profile before starting the interaction: This advice seems like an obvious one, but still it’s important to do on-site background check before you initiate communication, or if the other person has already messaged you. It may contain history of your contact’s previous interactions which can show you how much trust other people have in him or her.
- Report any inappropriate behavior: There are many types of inappropriate behavior you might encounter on dating sites, from sexual propositions to requests for money or personal information and it’s best to report these users to the site immediately, not only to protect yourself but to protect other users as well.
- Don’t reveal too much about yourself immediately: We know how compelling it can be to tell your whole life story to someone you just met and who seems to listen and understand every word you say, especially if you think this person is your soulmate, but you need to think about safety even in this moments. Remember, you’re talking to a person you haven’t even met and maybe there are some things about you that you should leave to be discovered as your relationship develops.
- Watch out for these warning signs in private messages or chat: If your new contacts starts proclaiming his unconditional love for you after just few messages, that is a sign that something is not right! We’re not saying that’s it impossible for someone to fall in love after short period of time, but chances are far bigger that this person wants something else from you or has become desperate for any kind of attention. As we mentioned earlier, you should report any harassing, obscene or pornographic messages you might receive on a dating website because that is not it’s purpose, and for the safety of all regular users, the ones who send this kind of content should be eliminated.
- Don’t fall for scammers! Like we said in a previous tip, if someone is acting too friendly after just few messages or starts asking for any kind of financial support – beware, you’re dealing with a scammer. It’s hard to always recognize them as they can prolong their conversations for weeks, but ultimately all they want from you is money.
- Keep your privacy! This point can’t be emphasized enough: don’t share any personal information including your email address or phone number through chat, especially during initial few messages with your potential mate.
3. Meeting in Person
- You don’t have to meet someone until you feel ready: No matter how many messages you two exchange, meeting someone in person for a first time can be a scary thing. You’ll be asking yourself mostly the questions revolving around ‘Will he like me for who I am’ and until you’re absolutely sure you want to meet this person, you should wait with your first date.
- Do a social networks background check on a person you’re meeting: In today’s world you can’t ever be sure about someone’s true identity. If you know the full name of the person you’re meeting it wouldn’t hurt to check Facebook, twitter and other social networks to get an impression on what this person is really like.
- Talk to your future date on phone before meeting: No chat messages can replace hearing the voice of the person you’re going to meet and having a real conversation. After a phone call you’ll get a better picture of person you’re about to meet and he or she will also get the better image of you.
- Always arrange a date in a public place: This is an obvious safety measure – never agree to meet in another person’s’ house, motel or even your own home. This way you’ll keep your personal address private and have a safety network of other people being there should the date go wrong for any reason.
- Keep your closest friend and/ or family informed about your whereabouts: When you decide to go on a date with someone you met online, it’s best if your good friend and family know when you’re going on this date, where are you going to be and how can they reach you. No matter how many messages you’ve exchanged, you never really know who you’re meeting with and someone should know your whereabouts.
- Be available on your mobile phone: Don’t switch off your mobile phone – your friend or family member who knows about your date might want to check up on you and there is nothing rude about excusing yourself to answer this call. This way they’ll know you’re OK.
- Organize your own way of transportation back home: Like we mentioned earlier, although you might have exchanged numerous messages and talked with the person you’re meeting for a longer period of time, it’s best that you go home by a cab or your own car so that the other person doesn’t know your address.
- Don’t overdo with alcohol: Alcohol can make you do things you’ll later regret, so be sure to keep your drinking to an absolute minimum. Besides, you don’t want to come across as someone who needs alcohol to get comfortable with someone.
- Have a backup plan if the date goes wrong: Should anything during the date go wrong and you want to leave immediately, make sure you have a good way of exiting the situation. Remember that your safety and your feelings come first and don’t worry about what will your date think if you need to leave.
- Talk to your date on Skype: Before meeting in person, it would not be a bad idea to talk to your date on skype, not only to make sure he or she is not using an old photo of themselves where they looked better, but you will also get a better impression of the person you’re about to meet in real-time eye to eye contact.
- Make it a double-date:
Bring a friend, and a corresponding male friend to your new date. This
way you’ll have the security of being with someone you know well and
your friend will be there to help you out and give you moral support
should anything on the date goes wrong.
