Free Online Dating Dangers

Free Online Dating can be dangerous

Over the last few years, online dating has opened new doors to new relationships. Are you looking for love? Willing to look online? Then you are in luck! A live Internet connection and a computer will get you started with online dating. Then a few mouse clicks, you’re on your way. At your fingertips: millions of potential love matches.

You’ll find two basic types of dating sites: free sites and paid sites. Not having to pay fees is an obvious advantage. But under their fee-free surface, these sites also have many drawbacks. On the flipside, the fee at the paid sites does get you a little more: they are set up to give you a better user experience and you can expect certain general security measures for members.

Not all dating websites are created equally. So keep this in mind when choosing between paid or free. You only get what you pay for - or don’t pay for, in the case of free sites. Using a free dating site could open the door to risk and unknown potential dangers.

Dating sites are businesses, just like any other service. But if that’s the case, how do the supposedly free ones work? How can they stay around and not charge members for their services? To begin with, the free sites just don’t offer the fancy communication tools. You will most likely not find free webcam chatting or video hosting capabilities on a free site. But of more concern, possibly, is the lack of customer service. If you get into trouble, you may not find anyone who can solve your problem. Don’t even think of calling their customer support phone line; you won’t find one.

But you will get something for nothing from the free dating sites: you’ll get tons of advertising thrown at you when you log on. Expect to swim through a sea of pop-ups and pop-unders. They’ll also be dumping e-mail advertising on you - at least once a week. And perhaps worst of all, your personal info can be sold to a large advertising network.

Are you still considering joining a free dating site?

So, let’s pretend you go ahead and sign on with a free dating site. Next thing you know - you find someone interesting. You start by e-mailing each other for a few weeks. Then you move on to phone conversations with this person. You’ve enjoyed his or her company virtually. But now you both say you’re ready to try a face-to-face meet. This person could be virtually anyone. Since there were no fees paid to use the service, there was probably no membership screening done. Hi or her images and personal information could be completely false. And this person could have done it all just to convince you to meet in person. Sadly, this isn’t unusual and happens all time. Not everyone who does this is malicious or intends to hurt the person being deceived, but too often, that is exactly what he or she means to do.

If you were to meet someone from a free dating site and you were to be robbed or otherwise assaulted, what information can you give to the police? How are they going to find this person when there is no credit card on file or other form of official payment information?

You won’t have to worry about any of these drawbacks on a paid dating site. While they will certainly charge you a fee, you’ll also get much more in exchange. You won’t be sifting through paid advertisements or dumping spam from your e-mail box.

The user interface for paid dating sites lets you do much more, such as performing elaborate search functions. And many offer alternate ways to communicate outside of e-mail. For instance, some sites offer instant messaging or webcam chatting.

Paid sites offer another perk, one that is very subtle and often undervalued. If you eventually found someone you liked, and you set a date to meet, you have some assurances; the other member’s real personal information is on file with the dating site.