Background Checks Could Offer Protection When Dating Online

If you’ve ever struggled with whether to do a background check on the person you’ve met online, you’re not alone. Millions of Americans are single, and you no longer need to leave your comfort zone to find a date. People are meeting in chat rooms, through online date matching services, and classified listings. Sending pictures through email seems like a great idea, until you’re the recipient of a picture of what your date wishes they look like, instead of what they really look like. You may also find that there are married people using the internet to find affairs without being seen around town, and keeping you unaware of their marital status.

Generally speaking, if you meet a person in a traditional dating scene such as a bar, club, bowling alley, or a dog park (yes, it happens), people can give us different feelings, right off-the-bat. The guy who walks up to a woman and feeds her a cheesy line has probably been doing it all night, and still no success. Some people may give you the warm-fuzzies, while others just plain give you the creeps. These are signs we can only see (or feel) in person. People can write anything online about themselves, and yet reading those words on the screen gives us a sense of having gotten to know a person through their words. The fact of the matter is, most people – even honest people – tend to hold back things that embarrass them. We candy-coat the truth, sweep secrets under the carpet, and stuff the closet with skeletons when we describe ourselves online.

With meeting people over the internet, we lose the ability to establish a first impression. Worse yet, our first face-to-face meeting could be tainted by information that was fed to us without facial expressions, body language, or even a “vibe” we get from people when we talk in person. This can distort a person’s view of who they are meeting, and our mind tries to match up everything we think we know about the person with the face we are seeing. We complain if our mother sets us up with a blind date, yet we have no qualms about setting ourselves up on them. Sometimes this unawareness sets us up for identity theft, among other potential dating dangers.

On the internet, we can hide behind a façade that we create; perhaps making ourselves out to be the person we wish we were. The person on the other end of the chat is most likely doing the same thing, although they have the unique opportunity to become the person you want them to be. Sometimes we are trying so hard not judge people in a bad way, and we forget not to judge people in a good way either. Just look at how many people are getting their selves into a bad situation because they trusted someone, thinking they were a good person. We can’t automatically assume that someone is a “good person”, yet it’s a mistake almost all of us make. If you think that doing a background check on a potential dating partner is wrong, think again. When you meet a person online, just as when you meet them in person, they could be hiding anything.

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background checks, ID theft, identity protection, online dating, people, safety