Safe Online Dating

Online dating is a great way to connect with people. Throughout the history of the internet, it has gotten better and better. Most millennials meet their partner online compared to other ways of meeting new people. It’s quicker and easier than ever, where a date with a new person can be arranged within an hour’s notice through your smartphone.

How We Can Help

Despite the concerns that may be raised with some of the risk-related content in the article, online dating overall isn’t a bad thing nor is it something to fear. You can be immensely rewarded and fulfilled by it, and many happily married couples have their origins online. The only thing is, that you have to educate yourself on the environment. Dating online has a different range of risk factors than, say, meeting someone at a nightclub, but just like monitoring your drink in that example, there are steps you can take to avoid being taken advantage of.

We at Centry have been inspired to help people like you after hearing so many stories of online dating gone wrong. We believe you can find something real if you go about it mindfully. So, we are happy to announce that we have opened up an identity verification service called Date Check Online that provides three different levels of private checks to make sure that the person you are talking to is who they say they are. These checks are performed by investigative professionals who have been trained to spot red flags and have data sources available to them to search names against known sex offender registries and watchlists, so it’s a smart way to support your initial Facebook sleuthing if you have a funny feeling about someone.

The Risks

New technologies and phenomena often bring with them concerns that need to be addressed. With the ease of availability comes volume, and, as in any kind of risk management, with increased volume comes increased risk. Online dating can be immensely rewarding, but it should be conducted responsibly; individuals should be aware of their personal safety concerns and online dating risks should be managed accordingly.

Misrepresentation and Catfishing

Misrepresentation is always a risk with online dating, whether it’s something like hiding the fact that someone is married or using a photo on the profile that doesn’t accurately reflect their appearance. It’s so easy to lie behind a digital barrier that you never really know who the person is that you are talking to until you meet them, and even then there could be facts that haven’t been disclosed.

When misrepresentation is deliberate to the point of falsifying an identity, it’s called Catfishing.

It’s a term that refers to situations where someone has been involved in an online romance under the guise of a fake persona. Oftentimes these people will take images of attractive men or women from Google Image Search, come up with a fake name, and create life stories for these personas in order to take advantage of the people who fall for them.

We have all heard of the horror stories of grown  men using these fake personas to take advantage of young girls, but this concept exists across all genders and can affect anyone.

At best these circumstances result in broken hearts and feelings of betrayal when the lie is discovered, but they could also cost you your life savings. Huffington Post reported on a 69 year old woman in Florida who spent two years in a relationship with an individual that ultimately ended up abusing her trust to make money. Over the years of their relationship and phone calls and texts, she had funneled him roughly 1 million USD for the purpose of what she believed was to help him run his business.

Action Fraud reported that targets of romantic fraud lost approximately 41 million GBP in 2017. This number is likely also only the tip of the iceberg, especially considering that it can be humiliating to be taken advantage of in such a way, which can discourage victims from coming forward about their experiences.

Greater Risks for Women

The risks with online dating are greater for women, considering worst case scenarios such as physical or sexual assault, trafficking, or worse. While things like this can also happen to men, statistics for these crimes are heavily skewed toward female victims and that fact cannot be ignored.

This is all the more difficult considering that a number of dating websites perform no screening whatsoever on people who sign up for it. Which means that registered sex offenders can sign up– and approximately 10% of sex offenders use online dating sites.

Online Dating as a Business Risk

For businesses, online dating is a relevant factor that can affect several risks. It is so prevalent that the odds are that someone around you is participating in it. In your technology reliant workplace, most employees feel it is important to have their smartphones with them all the time, and the honeypot tradition has its roots in a long history of espionage. An online romance is a shortcut vector for red teams to breach your company’s security. Other concerns may elevate risk in business travel: online dating apps have been known to be used to lure victims into situations where they can be easily robbed.

While we think that implementing dating controls to your corporate policies is a bad idea, we urge individuals to think about how your personal communications may have have an effect on your professional security. Business is also a great analogy for online dating: as an entrepreneur you would have to take risks that could have negative outcomes, however, with the right planning, the positive outcomes are much much more likely and the impacts of the negative ones are minimized.

Safety, responsibility and integrity considerations aren’t hindrances – they are success enablers. As we always recommend, trust your instinct, and use resources provided to you.

Feel free to reach out to us on any of our social media platforms or on the Date Check website if you have any questions or comments!

For more content like this, please subscribe to Centry Blog. This article was written by Kristina Weber and Oskar Savolainen of Centry Global.