Online Dating Safety Tips

Online dating can be a rather slippery slope and it’s always tough to find the honest people versus the posers. The following are some ways that others use to weed some of the fakers online and to protect themselves when actually meeting someone in real life.

See if the site where you met them has some kind of forum or chatroom. Often dating sites offer a way to interact with others on the site. This is a good way to find out about someone who has been around the site a good deal. While it’s not written in stone, most who are players will have been around a bit and somebody will know something about them. Online dating is the easiest place for a player to find someone who has no idea what kind of person they really are but most also tend to a bit arrogant in their wanderings.

Ask for a photo.  Not just any photo but one that can be taken while you are online with this person. Most people have either a digital camera or a webcam both can take pictures. As the person to hold up a piece of paper with the days date or an oddball phrase that only you can come up with. This will verify that the person you are talking with is really the sex they claim they are among other physical features such as full head of hair, weight, etc….

Once you have established that the person is basically what they are claiming and you know their favorite food along with the fact that they have twelve cats you might feel ready to give out your phone number. Be wary of this. Just because someone is taking care of their eighty year old grandmother and volunteers in a soup kitchen does not make them either nice or sane. Public phones or disposable cell phones are a good option for phone calls until you become comfortable with the person on the other end.
Don’t give out your home or work number including fax numbers until you know you have a sane person on the other end.
Once the two of you have established that you would like to take things further then give out basic information such as full name and real telephone numbers. If the person is calling you from a number that blocks caller ID, do not accept the call.