In the past, singles met available dating partners mainly at social events and through introductions by mutual acquaintances, but the Internet has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Today, with seemingly endless opportunities for making a good match online, the potential for trouble is also on the rise. Online personal ads, dating services and chat room romances can and do lead to deception, violence and—in rare cases—death.
Dealing with Online Dating Profiles or Ads Forged in Your Name
There’s no way to know if someone has placed a personal ad in your name until you begin receiving phone calls, emails or you receive an unwanted knock on your door. If you are approached, here are six simple steps to take:
1. Try to remain calm and ask the person who has contacted you where he or she saw the ad.
2. If possible, get a URL for the offending webpage; go to the page and print out several copies of the ad to keep as evidence.
3. Contact the webhost of the page or site where the ad was placed and ask for the ad to be removed.
4. If the webhost refuses to remove the ad, contact your local police and ask for intervention on your behalf to have the ad removed (provide them with the URL and hard copy of the ad). Assuming they agree, this usually resclves the issue.
5. Contact an online organization such as http://www.haltabuse.org/ or CyberAngels for help.
6. Consider changing your email address with your ISP. If you do, share your new email address only with people you know and trust; open a free email account on a website such as Hotmail or Yahoo! and use it for general email.
Online Dating Resources
Of the hundreds of online dating sites available, here is a list of some of the most popular. Search for “online dating” in your favorite search engine to find additional sites, and add other terms to the search if you have special dating interests.
Match.com: One of the oldest dating sites (founded in 1995), Match.com claims 49 percent of online users look for love online rather than offline.
Cupid.com: Cupid.com is known for its advertising campaign, which it claims attracts more new members than any other comparable site. It offers a free basic membership, which allows you to place a personal ad/profile with photo, send and receive Eye Contacts (to let someone know you’re interested), and reply to a member who contacts you.
eHarmony.com: You fill out a personality profile and the service scientifically selects the best matches for you. This is the only dating site of which I’m aware that boasts a team of Ph.D. psychologists who conduct follow-up research into the quality of the relationships that result.
True.com: More than 90 percent of women said they’d feel better if members of online dating sites were prescreened. All members of True.com go through criminal background and marital screening checks. In fact, when you log into its website, a warning appears: “If you are married and posing as single, be aware that you could be guilty of fraud and subject to civil and criminal penalties under federal and state law. For each offense, Title 18, Section 1343 of the U.S. Code authorizes fines of up to $250,000 and jail sentences of up to five years. TRUE reserves the right to report violators to law enforcement authorities and seek prosecution or civil redress to the fullest extent of the law. If you are married, please close your browser.” That may sound intimidating, but if you have nothing to hide—no problem!
SeniorFriendFinder.com: This is not the only dating site for seniors, but is one of the best known. It offers a free standard membership and is for those who are looking for friends or serious relationships and not merely flings. The site does not tolerate verbal abuse or harassment and will block anyone who doesn’t follow the rules.
Online Dating Safety Tips
1) If there’s something in a profile that concerns you, raises a red flag or just doesn’t match with what you’re seeking, move on; there are plenty of fish in the online sea.
2) When you find an interesting profile, take your time emailing back and forth, asking the questions that are important to you before exchanging telephone numbers or making plans to meet in person.
3) Googling can offer important clues to an individual, especially if he or she has a personal or professional website or has posted or been profiled on the Internet or has a social media profile. Googling basically is typing in a person’s first and last name in quotes, such as “Jane Doe” instead of typing in the name. This way, you get refined results for people with only that full name. Click on “Advanced Search” for more suggestions for further refining your searches. You may discover contradictions to what you’ve been told. If you want to be sure you’re not corresponding with a married person, stick with dating services such as True.com that conduct marital screenings. A word of advice: Don’t tell anyone you Googled him or her, which could jeopardize a potential relationship.
4) Once you’ve decided to meet for the first time, do so in a public place, and don’t make it dinner (too intimate). Try lunch, coffee, a local fair, festival or some similarly casual venue where you know other people will be present. Arrange to meet there; do not pick up your date or agree to be picked up. If an unpleasant date follows up by asking to meet again, decline by email or phone, saying firmly yet politely that you are not interested.
5) Trust your instincts. If something feels wrong, do not pursue the relationship.
Jayne A. Hitchcock is a noted cybercrime expert and president of WHOA and WHOA-KTD (Kids/Teen Division). She is the author of nine books, the latest of which is True Crime Online: Shocking Stories of Scamming, Stalking, Murder and Mayhem. She also freelances for several magazines and trains law enforcement, educators, librarians, students, parents and others how to deal with online situations. When she has spare time, she spends it with her husband, Chris, and her Siberian Husky, Phoebe.
WHO@ 2012 Online Harassment Stats
Think you’re smart? Chances are pretty good that right now you are being watched in some way—your children, your email, your bank account, your workout routine, your shopping habits, your favorite dinner spots—and you won’t have any idea until it’s too late. You leave an electronic footprint on nearly everything you do each day. From bullying to identity theft to murder; Midwest teens to Wall Street financiers to Hollywood celebrities—we all are at risk to being a victim of cybercrime!
WHOA (Working to Halt Online Abuse), a volunteer organization founded in 1997 to fight online harassment through education of the general public, education of law enforcement personnel and empowerment of victims, has released its preliminary stats from 2012 on online harassment.
The organization’s president, Jayne Hitchcock, is a cyberbullying and cybercrime expert and regularly speaks at conferences training law enforcement personnel as well as at schools, colleges/universities and more. She is also the author of nine books. The most recent, True Crime Online, was released in January 2013.
WHO@ receives up to 75 reports of online harassment/cyberstalking incidents each week. Of these, 90 to 95 percent are legitimate cases. WHO@ resolves over 70 percent of the cases they receive. More preliminary results are as follows:
• Each year, the primary way harassment began was via email no matter where the victim previously encountered his or her harasser/stalker.
• This was followed by Facebook in 2012, then websites, message boards, IM, forged profiles and texting.
• However, in 2011 it was email followed by Facebook, websites, texting, message boards, blogs and chat.
• WHO@ saw an increase in how the harassment escalated Facebook first, followed by texting, websites, multiple SNS, message boards, forged profiles and email.
• More than 60 percent of the complete cases submitted to WHO@ showed the harasser and victim were NOT in the same state/country.
• Male and female harassers were very close; males were 49 percent, females 25 percent (the remainder were unknown gender by the victim). When WHO@ began calculating statistics in 2000, 68 percent of harassers were male.
• Every year, victims were about 50/50 on whether they had a prior relationship to their harasser.
• Of those that had a relationship, more than half were an “ex”; followed by online acquaintance, work, family, friend, then school.
“From entertainment to education, from shopping to dating, the Internet has provided an entirely new virtual world for everyone to enjoy,” Hitchcock says, but she warns that the online world is also a breeding ground for murderers, kidnappers, child predators, scam artists, terrorists, hackers and other criminals. “The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center found that in 2011 a record-setting 314,246 fraud complaints were filed. That’s a 3.4 percent increase from 2010, with a monetary loss for victims at a staggering estimate of $485.3 million—almost double the number for the previous year.”
