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Online dating has become the number one way to meet somebody new, particularly during the past year where the COVID19 pandemic has made it impossible for many of us to meet new people face to face. If you are single and looking for love, you might already be using some of the most popular dating sites and apps like Tinder, Bumble, eHarmony and Match.com. However, one of the main risks of online dating is that you can never be sure who you are talking to until you meet your match in person. Therefore, giving too much information away about yourself too soon could put your privacy and your safety in jeopardy. Here are some of the best ways to protect your privacy when dating online.
Know Who You’re Talking To:
Get peace of mind by using Nuwber to find out more about that great person you’ve been chatting to online. The sad truth is that anybody can be anybody online and you could be being catfished at best or talking to a criminal who has sinister plans at worse. This people search site allows you to search for any information that you have on your match such as a phone number, email address or full name to find out more publicly available information on them including whether or not they have any criminal records.
Lock Social Media Down:
Many of us will share details about our lives to social media without giving it a second thought. And while there’s nothing inherently dangerous about letting your friends know what you are up to, when was the last time that you checked your social media privacy? Perhaps you changed your privacy settings to ‘public’ on Facebook once to share a post about a lost dog in your area and have forgotten to change it back since, meaning that all your posts are out there for the world to see. Unfortunately, people who are up to no good on dating sites will often scout social media for more information – so make sure that your profiles are completely locked down so you can control who sees what.
Use a Temporary Phone Number:
Talking to your matches within the app is always the best way to communicate since it controls how much information you are able to give out about yourself to them. However, it makes perfect sense for you to want to swap telephone numbers at some point so that you can have a voice call or a video call before arranging to meet in person. However, if you give your phone number to somebody that you decide not to take things further with, you don’t know if things are going to turn sour. Thankfully there are various services that you can use to get a temporary online phone number to give out, without giving away your real contact number.
Meet in Public:
Finally the golden rule for protecting your safety when dating online is to always meet in a public place. This gives you the chance to get to know the person in a safe environment and allows you to quickly call for help or get away if you feel unsafe at any point. It’s a good idea to let somebody that you trust know where you are going and ask them to give you a call if they do not hear from you by a certain time to check that everything’s going OK.
