Online dating is in our opinion the best way to meet eligable people who share your interests and ambitions. Every year, nearly one hundred thousand people of all ages get married as a direct result of joining an online dating site. Online dating like any dating has a small element of unsavoury people participating hence this advice.

Essential Online Dating Safety Tips

Trust Your Intuition
Your intuition is a powerful tool for knowing when something doesn’t feel quite right. As you read dating profiles, responses to your email messages, have telephone conversations, and meet in person your intuition will help tell you if something is right or wrong. Online dating gives you numerous opportunities to date and so don’t take any chances if something feels wrong.

Don’t Provide Too Much Personal Detail Too Soon
Your home telephone number and your full name will provide an easy way to discover who you are and your address. Armed with your christian and surname, a person can do online searches to potentially discover, where you work and what you do

Use a Free Email Account
Sign up for a free Yahoo!, Hotmail, or Gmail email account that is just for online dating. Never put your complete name in the ‘From’ field – only your first name or something else entirely. My current partner started out with a false name before we decided to meet. This strategy protects you from a person being able to use your usual email address to find out more information about you.

Use a Mobile Phone to Chat
When you decide to chat in person rather than online chat or email, never give out your home phone number. It’s just an added protection until you get to know the person better and build some trust.

Beware of Married Men
It’s unfortunate, but some married men do use online dating services. It’s pretty obvious that they are interested in sex or embroiling you in something you probably don’t need.

Look for Unpleasant Characteristics
As you talk via email and on the phone you may be able to start to pick out some characteristics of the other person. Do they seem to get angry easily? Do they avoid answering some of your questions? Are they controlling? These can be the unpleasant characteristics that tell you this may not be the person for you.

Request a Recent Photo
There’s nothing impolite in asking someone if their photograph’s are recent. If they don’t have a photo then perhaps this is a married person!.  Also, if they tell you the photograph is recent and you meet and see a much older person, then you’ll know the person lied and you can cut the date short if you wish.

Stick to Paid Online Dating
Free online dating services provide a greater opportunity for potentially unsavoury individuals. They don’t need to provide a credit card or any other varifiable information that identifies them. With paid online dating you get what you pay for  including added safety.

Try to Meet in a Public Place.

When it’s time to arrange your first face to face meeting, agree to meet in a public place and provide your own transport. Your first meeting will tell you a lot about the other person, including whether or not they lied in their profile. Never accept an offer to be picked up at your house. Make sure that a friend or relative knows where you are, who you are with and what time you expect to get home. Why not get them to give you a call? You could use this as your excuse to exit if you wish.

The reason I know about this as a man is that through online dating I have chatted to many women who have been approached by men wanting nothing more than to get their leg over. Nothing wrong with that if you are also fancying a bit of horizontal jogging too you may think. Unfortunately these men are not honest about their intentions and you may end up feeling cheap and used.

No woman I know is likely to hit on their sisters boyfriend or husband  and the same goes for men however some men are still willing to lie about themselves to get a little extra curriculor activity going.

So how do you find out whether you can trust a man you meet online? First of all, do not arrange to meet someone until you have chatted online quite a few times until you get a feel for the person you are talking to. Maybe you should insist on a home nunber as well as a mobile number when you do get that far? More than anything, you might want to heed your mum’s advice to keep your finger on your tuppence for a time until you feel totally relaxed that this man is the real deal.

Not the real military who are our hero’s but the sad men who pretend to be in the army in order to attract a woman’s interest by using online dating sites. Believe it or not, this is a real trend and it would pay to be extra cautious if someone claims to be a military man and asks for a date.

What is the reason for this subterfuge? At its worst you have someone who is predatory and not looking for a relationship beyond a sexual encounter. What a great excuse to disappear after a brief liaison that you are on duty again.

Perhaps it’s a loser with a dull life, nothing to say and a fantasy life based on fake pilot Jon Lindsay who conned Coronation Street’s Dierdre Barlow that he was a long haul pilot when actually he worked in Tie Rack!

The latest is a variation on the theme of all those Nigerian and foreign scams where you have been mysteriously identified as the recipient of a fortune providing you send money to sort out the ‘legal’ aspects of the deal.

The latest disturbing trend involves joining internet dating sites and convincing women that they are Soldiers who have fallen in love and would do anything to communicate with the object of their desires. But, because they are deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, they need you to sign up for an expensive telecommunications service like “Military TELEX” in order to make that happen. They profess unending love as their motivator and, unfortunately, many women have fallen for it.

Last time I looked, most Generals were quite well educated in the English language. The way this scam works is the individual takes some time to get to know the target woman. Once he’s gained her trust and confidence, he tells her that pretty soon he will be deployed to an area without internet or communication services and won’t be able to write to each other. He then sends an e-mail address with something like, “Well to get registered with the telecommunication you will have to email them with gsatcom@programmer.net and you have to tell them you want to use the phoning facility system with Major General Tom Smith presently on deployment in Afghanistan. The service is a way we can talk on phone without no call charges attached, all is 100% free after we get registered and pay the registration fee”

The registration fee of course is £100’s of pounds and worse, your credit card details will be stolen and sold around the world for other criminals to use.

Lucky you if you do land one of our hero’s but be extra cautious with anyone purporting to be a serving army soldier.