Honesty is the Only Policy

What scares people most about online dating is the possibility that online daters can lie. One cannot know easily with any real certainty if a profile accurately portrays its user or not. Predators lurk on the web, we hear. Predators are in every chat room, on every dating site, instant messaging their next victims as we speak.

Caution is the Keyword

Be cautious; don’t be a coward. There are plenty of ways to protect oneself from online predators. Restrict giving out personal information such as your phone number or address online. Avoid conversations about income. Break off conversations that your gut tells you to break off. If you answer “no,” to a question and the user continues to press the matter, it is a clear sign that the user is trying to control you. Terminate the interaction.

Being on guard constantly makes for a lousy dating experience, though. How can you open up? How can you trust anyone online enough to say anything real?

Combat Dishonesty with Honesty

Believe it or not, your honesty is the best weapon against their dishonesty.

Lying isn’t easy. And maintaining a lie proves impossible against a battery of follow-up questions. Do not take information given to you as truth without asking those questions you honestly would want to know about that information. If the user tells you he or she lives in Tempe, Arizona, then ask for details: what is the weather like today? Why Tempe? Do you have family there?

Root Out the Liars

By engaging as you would with anyone in an honest dialogue, you can ferret out the liars. Liars will continually try to turn the conversation back onto you and try to keep it there. They know that if you ask too many questions of them, they may falter. Perhaps they will forget the sister they mentioned earlier or contradict a detail they quickly had given you to hush your earlier interrogation.

The honest user should sound like you sound. And in the same manner that you cannot be tripped up during one of your truthful anecdotes, they, too, should not fall face first when you ask them a simple, honest question to clarify a detail.

Do not be scared online. The example of your honesty is the best test of theirs.