10 Critical Safety Tips Women Should Know If They Use Online Dating Sites

If you are a woman thinking about using online dating sites in the future (or are already using them now) to meet men, please read this post!  Below are 10 Critical Safety Tips that you should know and apply to your dating practices, they could save your life.

I feel more than qualified to share this advice with you because I have "been there and done that" with online dating.  I met a lot of creeps, a few nice guys, been the victim of rape, and ultimately met my husband with whom I'm about to celebrate our eleventh anniversary.  Along the way I have learned quite a bit, mostly through my own mistakes that I am going to share with you, so hopefully you can avoid having the same negative experiences that I had.  Both of my adult daughters have used online dating because they saw the end result of their mother using it (and they now have an awesome step-dad). But thankfully they heeded my warnings and have been safe. Not everyone that I have shared this with has listened, and some of those women later regretted it.  Please don't be one of those women. 

I'm not suggesting that online dating is bad, or that you will surely have horrible things happen to you if you go that route to meet your future partner, but I am suggesting that you read each of the Safety Tips below so you have some ideas on how to keep yourself safe.  While this post is my "List of Safety Tips" that may seem scary, my next post is a "List of Tips for Success with Online Dating" to help you avoid the mistakes and pitfalls that so many women experience, so hopefully you will be more successful in your search for a great partner. I am the first to say that online dating was right for me, in-spite of the negative things I went through. Those results can be avoided if you just read these safety tips, take off your rose colored glasses so you can see things the way they really are, and use your good judgment.

My 10 Critical Safety Tips You Should Know If You Use Online Dating Sites:

1. Before you even sign up, get a totally new email address!  This is vitally important, and it's free to do, so do this first!  The reason that you need a new email address that is only used for online dating sites is because it gives you some anonymity.  Don't use your real name, or any part of your real name in the address. Don't use this email with your Facebook (or any social media sites where you can be found my searching for an email address). Create a unique email address that can't be linked to the real you.  Example, don't think you are being sly by dropping all the vowels in your name either.  I know a woman who did this and a man who connected with her once through a dating site was able to get her email address in their one correspondence.  He could see that it was obviously a name without vowels, so he was able to easily put her name together.  In that one correspondence she mentioned that she lived in a particular city too far from him, so dating him wasn't an option for her.  This additional information (her city) allowed him to do a quick Facebook search and he matched the faces to the one on the dating site, then contacted her through Facebook.  If the guy is a creep, you don't want him being able to find you this easily. So, create a unique email address and enter a made up name when filling in the email data. Use this email address ONLY for the dating site(s).  

2. For the reasons stated in #1, don't "friend" him on Facebook. If things don't work out, he would have too much access to you and your friends and too much personal information about you. Just a bad all around idea. Since we are talking about Facebook, check your privacy settings, make sure you are not that easy to find and strangers are not seeing everything you post or too much information about you

3. NEVER under any circumstances allow a man to pick you up at your home!  Women from my generation and older grew up in a time when the man was expected to pick you up at the door.  Well tines have changed ladies!  You don't want any man you just met to know exactly were you live, who lives with you, whether you have a guard dog, alarm system, close neighbors, etc.  This doesn't just apply to the first date, it should apply to all dates until you have been seeing each other at least for several months.  It takes that long for you to learn enough about a person to make that judgement, and sometimes even longer.  

4. Meet at a neutral location that is very public, with nearby parking. My suggestion is to meet for lunch somewhere, or maybe for a coffee.  The goal is to meet this virtual stranger in the most public place possible where he wouldn't dare try anything for fear of being seen.  Once you meet him, don't leave that place with him no matter how nice he seems.  If this paranoia disturbs him then you should take that as a warning.  A real gentleman will want you to be cautious.  He won't ask you to do anything that he wouldn't want his single sister doing. 

5. When getting to know each other don't share your life story.  Too much information given out could come back to haunt you if he turns out to be a creep.  If you never want to see him again, it's best if he doesn't know exactly where you work, what gym you attend, that you live alone or with just small children, that you don't own a gun...you get the idea.  Be general in telling him about yourself.  Best to share generally, like "I work out at the gym several days a week", but don't name the gym, "I work in the 'blank' field", but don't offer your company name.  Just don't be too eager to share everything, if he turns out to be a nice guy there will be plenty of time later to share particulars.

Listen to his life story (or as much as he will share) very closely. Do the facts add up?  Could he have really accomplished all he says he has in his adult lifetime? Does he contradict himself in his stories? You can learn a lot about someone by just listening.  

6. DO NOT have this man around your children!  Dr Jenn Berman suggests that you not introduce him to your kids for at least 18 months, although I think a minimum of six months to a year might be more realistic.  You should know there are men who troll dating sites specifically looking for single women who have small children they can exploit.  They just need to win the mother over and then it's easy to take advantage of their children. Don't give a pedophile a chance! I don't recommend that you even mention you have kids in your dating profile.  You can always mention that you have children when you are face to face, but still don't share particular beyond, "I have x number of children.  Don't show him pictures either, you can make an excuse like you changed purses for this date so they are in your other bag, anything that seems plausible.

7. Don't assume you know a man well after only a few dates, or after many hours of chatting online or via text.  A man can pretend to be whoever the thinks you are looking for.  He can do this for quite a long time in order to win you over.  Keep track of things he says that contradict things he said before...these are red flags that you should pay special attention to. 

This naïveté is how I was raped.  I chatted online with a man for a few weeks. We emailed back and forth during that time as well.  He shared with me a lot about himself (which I later learned was all lies), and the information he fed me made him sound like such a great, honest, upstanding guy in his community. He told me he worked at a high school in their IT department. His job was to help students and staff with computer problems and also to monitor their use to make sure no one was visiting sites with porn, or shopping when they were suppose to be working.  He said he was divorced because his wife cheated on him (poor guy), he owned his own house, helped his widowed mother financially, etc. He was very clean cut and fit the look of someone in his stated profession and lifestyle.  We seemed to like the same things too.  We never talked on the phone, just communicated via text, email, and chatting. This afforded him the ability to think about his responses to what I said so he could answer in just the right way. (This is a trick used by con men.) I was fooled, and agreed to pick him up at his place -this seemed safe since he wouldn't be coming to my place, right?  Well when I arrived he answered the door with the phone on his ear, appearing to talk to someone he cared about, his shoes were not on, but he had them in his hand.  He covered the phone and whispered, "I'm so sorry, I'm kinda running behind" then he pointed at the phone and gave me a look to say, "What can you do?" He waved me inside whispering with the phone covered, "come on in, I will just be another minute, ok?"

I walked in, he shut and locked the door behind me...I would rather not relive the rest, but you get the gist of what happened next.

8. Before you meet a man somewhere, get his full name, telephone number, and any other identifying information about him that you can gather.  Print out his profile page and make notes about what he says about himself.  Then give all this information to at least one close friend or family member. Include the time and place where you will be meeting him and what time you expect to return. Have a text check-in set up with that safe person, at least once during the date. My daughters do this, they text me when they arrive, during at least one pee break, then when they are safely back in their car away from him.  If anything were to happen during that time, I have an idea where she is, or was at a particular time. 

9. Don't drink alcohol on your dates.  It lowers your judgment and could get you in a situation that you otherwise would have been able to avoid.  You can't listen to details well if you are intoxicated even a little.  You need to be thinking clearly.

10. Use a smartphone app like the "B Safe You Personal Safety App".  I personally use this app when I am going to be by myself and want a little security, especially if I am traveling alone, or trying a new outdoor adventure and want someone to know when to expect me back and where to find me if I don't come back on time.  The app is FREE!  Had I used this service the night of my rape, someone could have sent help during the act, so he could have been apprehended. I can't stress the value of this type of product enough.  Please go check it out on their website at http://getbsafe.com/ to see how it could save your life.  It is available for both iPhones and Android devices.

I don't mean to sound like a commercial for them but... I tested it out using my husbands phone as my emergency contact.  I hit the emergency button (there are multiple ways to activate it) and it instantly sent a message to his phone that included an SOS message from me along with my exact GPS location AND a live recording of what was happening to me at the moment.  You see, the moment I activated the emergency, it turned on the video and audio recording and transmitted a link to that info to my husband.  If this had been an actual emergency I could have recorded my attackers face without him knowing.  I could have recorded my surroundings, his license plate, a building or room I was in, and our entire conversation. The app continues to monitor my GPS location and sends that to my emergency contact so they can give it to law enforcement.  The only way to turn this off is to enter a secret code.  If my attacker demanded my code to deactivate it, I could give him a 'fake' code, that once entered, it would 'pretend' to be shutting off the emergency service, but it would then send a message to my emergency contact saying I used a fake code, Send Help! and it would continue transmitting GPS location and audio/video secretly. 

This app makes me feel very safe.  I had my daughters each download the app as well. I hope you will download it too!

Now enough of the scary stuff.  I didn't give up on online dating sites after that horrible experience happened to me.  I took a break for sure, but when I came back to it, I did so with a much higher awareness of what I needed to do to be safe.  My actions helped me to stop attracting such creeps too.  If you are sending the signal of being a vulnerable woman, the creeps will spot you quickly but they wont waste too much time on a wise, cautious woman. 

My next post is "Tips to Make You More Successful With Online Dating".  Be sure to subscribe to my posts so you don't miss it!