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How To Land The Catch Of Your Life Without Becoming Sharkbait
   
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However you like to do it, dating is a dangerous game. Not talking to strangers might be sound advice to give to kids but as a strategy to stop being single, it has at least one obvious drawback. Unless you want to marry your cousin, finding someone to settle down with will involve making eye contact with total strangers, engaging them in conversation and meeting them one-on-one.Mini-sites come in different flavors but all have one
significant element in common. Each site is very tightly focused
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There are two obvious dangers here. The first is that your new friend might appear to be a complete charmer but could actually be a cold-blooded philanderer with a record of heart-breaking. Theyll think nothing of leading you on, playing games and trampling over your emotions. Thats bad enough and youve probable had enough of people like that already.
The second danger is even worse, even if it is a great deal rarer. The attractive stranger that you meet in the bar could actually be an escaped convict from the local sanatorium. Instead of finding someone who makes you feel safe and secure for the rest of your life, you pick someone up whos going to put your safety at risk and require you to take out a series of court orders and new alarm systems.
Although the chances of meeting someone like this online is extremely small, it is worth making the effort to be cautious. In this chapter, were going to talk about how to steer clear of this second group and stay safe online.
Anonymity Cuts Both Ways
When you meet someone in a bar, the initial pick-up is as much a safety check as it is a check-out. If you spot someone attractive sitting alone at the table next to yours, before you even give them a lookbefore you make any kind of contact at allyou observe them for a few minutes to see how they behave with the waiters, by themselves or with people who pass by. If they are rude, arrogant or just downright unpleasant, it doesnt matter how much of a looker they are, youre still going to look right on by. Only if youre sure theyre normal, civilized human beings do you try to make eye contact, pluck up the courage to face rejection and make your move.
And once you do make that move, youre always looking out for little signals that tell you that the person youre talking to is less than normal. There are all sorts of clues to help you do that: the way someone dresses, the way they talk and their body language to name but a fewand you notice all of them without even realizing that youre looking for them.
A cowboy hat and a Texas drawl for example, tell you instantly where someone is from and where they stand in the countrys cultural divide. Bleached hair and sentences that end with dude tell you much the same. Nervous twitches, roaming hands and peculiar scratching all say something about the person youre sizing up and help you make a decision about whether you should make a date or make an excuse.
Face-to-face, youve got a ton of different signals that tell you huge amounts about the person youre thinking of chatting to.
Online, youve got nothing to go on but what the person puts on their profile and writes in their email.
"Unlike real-life relationships where you have some idea of what a person drives, what they really look like, how they live, etc., online you have none of that, says Lisa Hupman, a veteran cyberdater who set up WildXangel.com, a website that warns other daters about the dangers in online dating. You give more trust than is actually due because you have no choice."
And the reason you have no choiceor more accurately, little choiceabout the level of trust you give is that the main tool that protects you online is the same thing that protects the occasional nutcase who roams the Web: anonymity.
There is no way for two people who exchange emails online to know the real identities of the people theyre writing to. The email you receive lands in an inbox located on the site.
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As long as you dont let your real, full name slip out before youve built up a certain amount of trust, you start an online relationship fully protected by the fact that the person who writes to you has no idea who you are, where you live or how they can get hold of you outside the site.
When you date online, the dating identity thats doing the looking exists only on the Internet. Theres a complete barrier between your online self and the real youand that barrier is your best protection against any wacko you might be unlucky enough to meet online.
If you have the bad luck to meet a loony at a dating site, as long as youve kept your identity a secret, theres no way that they can bother you in real life.
Of course, that works for them too. Because theres no way for you to check the identity of someone you meet online, youve got no idea whether the doctor who sent you an email got his or her degree certificate from Harvard, as they claim, or ordered it from a website in Romania. Youve got no idea if they were really working for the Peace Corps for the last two years or spent that time sewing mailbags in a state penitentiary. And youve got no idea whether the person who described themselves as passionate will leave you alone once you tell them youre not interested or hang around outside your front door waiting for you to come home from work.
It would be nice if there were a checklist that you could go through when you meet someone online. If they mentioned knives more than three times in the first email, you could tick a box. If they mentioned that they served multiple sentences for violent crimes, that would lead you to tick another box. If they talked about their friendship with the Unabomber that would strike them out.
But its not that easy.
The best way to keep yourself safe online is to follow three simple rules: keep your anonymity as long as possible; remember that if something feels wrong, it probably is; and cut them out quick and completely as soon as you smell something fishy.
1. Keeping Your Name (And Everything Else) To Yourself
Theres no reason at the beginning of an online relationship for you to say who you are, where you work, where you live, what your telephone number is or any other identifying detail that you might later regret.
When you start exchanging emails, you can chat about your hobbies. You can talk in general about the kind of work you do. You can say that you like walking in Central Park or heading out to Sequoia. But tell someone youve never seen, never met and whose real name you dont know that you live at 123 Killmenow Road, Apt. 103 and its certainly possible that youll have reason to regret it when you find yourself looking for a new apartment.
In a later chapter we talk in more detail about what the first couple of emails of an Internet relationship are supposed to do. At this stage though, its enough to say that what theyre not supposed to do is draw out personal information that would allow your new pal to find you offline.
If someone asks for a phone number, you can tell them politely that youd rather hold onto it for a while. If they ask exactly where you work, you can just say a big law firm in the city or a clothes store in town. If they ask, in their first email, for your address, you can delete their message, add them to your blocked members list and tell the website that this person looks a bit suspicious.
2. If Something Looks Wrong, It Probably Is...
Thats because on the Internet, it pays to be suspicious.
The vast majority of the people you meet online will be as honest, direct and truthful as the people you meet offline. Its unlikely that youll come across many angels who will lay out their entire life histories, warts and all, right at the beginning, but its also very unlikely that youll be unfortunate enough to come across any axe-wielding psychopaths or the stereotypical man masquerading as a womanor vice-versa (most of those seem to have run off with Netscape in the early days of the Internet).
For the most part, youll find that the vast majority of fibs you encounter on dating sites tend to concern age, weight, income and of course photo, with ten-year-old graduation photos passing as up-to-date snaps.
Thats certainly bad enough but its not a threat and you can decide, when you uncover the real story, whether the truth has been stretched beyond the bounds of forgiveness.
You can also get a feel for when someones lying onlineeven if you cant see the way they behave when theyre spinning you a story and you cant hear in their voice that not even they believe what theyre saying. Its hard to keep a story straight and there are often little inconsistencies the tell you that something isnt quite right.
If someone born in 1974 for example, talks about having been in their current job for twelve years and their previous job for fifteen, then that should set alarm bells ringing. If a potential date who claims on their profile never to have been married mentions a stay with ex-in-laws, that should raise a red flag. And if someone says they dont like spending time with the police that should send out a serious warning.
These are exactly the kind of tell-tale signs that tell you that something isnt quite right. And when you get those signs, its always a good idea to trust your instincts.
3. Cut Them Out Quick
Weve already mentioned that you might come across two different kinds of deception online: the more common truthful economies that exaggerate positive qualities such as youth or wealth at the expense of complete honesty; and the total lies that obscure a character that likes to stalk, harass or otherwise make life miserable for their unfortunate victim.
When you come across the first typeand theres a fair chance that you will come across the first type online, just as youll come across milder forms offline tooyou can decide what you want to do. If youre dealing with just a mild little exaggeration you might be willing to forgive them their trespasses (just you might be hoping that people will forgive you yours).
But if you get the feeling that the person youre dealing with is even close to being on the dangerous side, the best thing to do is cut them out quickly.
Just about all dating sites allow you to block emails from members who are bothering you. Add them to your blocked list and if youve managed to keep your identity details secret, that should be the last you hear from them.
Dont even think twice about it. With millions of people searching for singles online, with such a huge reservoir of people to choose from, theres absolutely no reason for you to take any risks at all on the Internet. The dangers are just too great and the alternatives too many for you to bother with them.
The moment you see even the slightest hint of a red flag waving, cut, run and move on to the next likely prospect. There are far too many fish in the sea for you to waste your time and your safety swimming with the sharks.
Millions of people have used online dating sites without ever coming across the slightest hint of danger, risk or deception. If you do see a flag, its more likely to be the light pink of a couple of years shaved off a birth date than the throbbing red of a Glenn Close looking for a victim. While its perfectly possibleand even easyfor someone to misrepresent their qualifications online, its no less easy for you to protect yourself from any danger and look for someone more honest.
To keep safe online, and to protect yourself from nasty surprises such as lying Lotharios and deceptive divas, youll need little more than common sense and a sensitive nose for the whiff of deceit.
Merav Knafo is the co-founder of LookBetterOnline.com. LookBetterOnline offers an easy and economical solution to the problem of sub-standard online dating photos. Available in over 6000 cities in the US and Canada, all the photographers they employ are pre-screened, are specially trained and will make you look your best! You get 12 great images that are the perfect size and resolution for your profile - and for no additional charge, their staff will recommend the best photos to use!
Do your photos do you justice? If they arent working for you, they may be working against you.
For more information and to schedule a photo session that may change your life, visit http://lookbetteronline.com