A Free Educational Resource Created by Carnegie Mellon University to Empower You to Secure Your Part of Cyberspace

Online Dating

A web service for establishing friendships and romantic relationships

Online dating is the use of the Internet to allow people to meet online with the aim of developing friendships and possibly romantic relationships. An online dating site is a Web site where this service is offered.

Some of the features offered by online dating systems are:

  • Having a public profile. This is like a limited personal page where information like photos, name, physical features, personality, hobbies, income, a self-description and a description of the person/people one is interested in meeting is publicly displayed.
  • Sending of "winks," "flirts," or short ice-breakers from one person to another.
  • Using internal email service between the members of the site.
  • Having instant messaging conversations with the people currently connected to the online dating site.

Normally the individuals have to pay to use the main features of the system, such as reading emails or seeing some profiles. There are, however, a few completely free online dating sites. Some sites are restricted to people that want a certain kind of encounter (from just pen pals to sexual relationships), or that have certain lifestyles (as characterized by religious belief, hobbies, etc.).

Protective Measures

Practices

  • Don't show sensitive personal information in your profile. Examples of personal information are your phone number or address. Also, only consider giving such information to someone after you have had at least some conversation or email exchange with her/him.
  • Don't believe everything you read in other profiles. Be warned that many of the profiles in an online dating Web site are fake or have inaccurate information. In some cases, people that want to be accepted by others won't put their real characteristics, but the ones they think will attract the attention of the kind of people they are looking for.
  • Monitor your children's use of the web. Do not under any circumstance let minors use an online dating system.

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