Online Dating – How Risky Is It?

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(Free-Press-Release.com) December 29, 2009 -- The last few years have seen online dating soar in popularity. There’s an array of online dating websites in Australia with more appearing all the time and with the sites becoming increasingly targeted according to peoples’ interests and backgrounds, whether that’s by sexuality, sexual interest, religion, geographic location or even pet ownership!

Many of the sites include some tips or information on how to use online dating safely. These tips include things like:
* Guard your anonymity, by not sharing too much personal information early on.

* Set up a separate email account for your online dating correspondence, that way you can easily close it if things go wrong.
* Meet dates for the first time in a safe, public place for a short amount of time.
* Make sure the person is who they say they are by checking out a selection of their photos or web camming before meeting.
* Keep an eye out for scammers, such as people asking for help and money.
So with all these different tips for keeping safe, is online dating really that risky? The research around the place is mixed…

A few years ago there was some research done in the U.S. that suggested that online dating might present risks for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), mainly because of the speed at which people can meet via the internet, have sex, pass on an STI to potentially many people and those people might then also infect many more people.

Other research has also found that people who use the internet to look for sex have higher rates of risky sexual behaviour with casual partners, than people who don’t use the internet in this way. But also that people looking for sex via the internet were just as likely to find their high-risk casual partners offline as online, so the internet really just offers another channel for these people to find partners for sex.

In the U.S. there have been some widely publicised cases of fraud and other crimes being carried out via online dating sites . As a result there’s been consideration of legislation to make dating sites state if do background checks on their members. One American site, Sweetheartchecks.com, does background checks using US criminal and sex offender databases so that online daters can feel confident that the person they want to meet isn’t a criminal (or at least hasn’t been caught!).

As part of some Australian research into people’s online dating experiences, www.hookmeup.com.au and latrobe.edu.au - public health research project has been interviewing people online about whether they think online dating is risky and if they do think so, how they manage the risks. The research has also been investigating what issues and problems people have encountered.

In this project, researchers from Latrobe University encountered people who have picked up an STI from someone they’ve met online, however this also incuded people who have picked up STIs from meeting people elsewhere. Other respondents indicated they’ve had people try to scam them for money. One particular individual interviewed by Latrobe said she’d had her drink spiked from someone she’d met online, and others felt they’ve been stalked from people they’ve met online. These certainly aren’t great experiences, but experiences like this that can happen when you meet someone in a club or bar or at the gym or supermarket.

Most people indicated that online dating is as risky as meeting people any where else – that it’s just as risky as meeting someone in a bar or the supermarket. And most people feel confident they can manage any risks and situations they encounter.

People have different techniques for how they manage the risks. Some techniques I’ve heard about include having two different mobile numbers, having a friend take a picture of your date’s licence plate when you are picked up, and checking out your potential date’s Facebook or MySpace profile to see if they are who they say they are. One way or another most people have some kind of process they follow from initiating first contact online to actually meeting in person, in the hope that this will reduce any risks associated with meeting people online.

More information can be found online at http://www.hookmeup.com.au

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