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Is Your Online Love Interest Who They Say They Are?

In this Internet age, online romance is as common as cyber cafes and reality shows, but for those who are looking for real love amongst the emails and jpgs, there's a little more needed than just knowledge of how the technology works. In order to find the love of your life online, you need not only to be able to read the words of your chosen cyber mate, but also read between, under, over and around them!

Everyone is becoming increasingly conscious about identity theft, but it doesn't even have to be as complicated as that to convince someone that you're someone you're not in a online dating situation. This means that once you've made a connection with someone online, you need to verify that they are the person they say they are. The road to real love found online is littered with shattered dreams when people have discovered they have been chatting to a married person, a person of the wrong sex, or even an underage computer geek looking for thrills! You need to protect your emotions as much as you would protect your person if you were meeting someone in real life - and that means digging around to make sure of whom you are chatting with.

What does the person tell you about themselves. Where do they work for instance - does their workplace have a website and if so, if you were to quietly check out that website would you find their name, and maybe even a photo? If there is a photo, does it match the description that they have given you about themselves?

What does your cyber mate tell you they are interested in? What evidence do you find that this is the case? For example, if they tell you they are interested in children or animals, do they have any children from a previous relationship (how much contact do they have - have you seen photos, a doting father/mother will want to show off pictures of their beloved offspring, even if they don't have much contact?), do they have pets?

If you ask personal questions are you given full answers or glib vague ones? If you make a search on the email address, or real name/address, of your friend, what do you find - email groups can be particularly revealing? Do they have other email identities? Have them send you something through real mail - such as a card, and do the same in return. Be wary of PO Box or work address only contacts - it could be very innocent, or it could be a flag of someone keeping you out of their real life for some reason or other!

Once you agree to meet your online partner in real life, make sure that this is in a public place. Ask someone to go with you until you make the first contact and are comfortable enough to be alone with them. If this isn't possible, ask someone to ring you about 20-30 minutes into the 'date' so that if you aren't comfortable or feel that something doesn't feel right, you can use this as an excuse to leave. Never meet an online contact without leaving enough information of where you are going, and who with.

Although many cyber romances end in disappointment, and some of them end with disillusionment about the possibility of find real love through the Internet, there are also a number of success stories that show that if you are careful enough, and do your background research, then you should be able to uncover the 'players' and move on to find another sincere person looking to find the love of their life online.

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