I can't resist but tell of a recent experience. A friend of mine is doing a sociology paper on online dating. she's using my computer so we signed in and chatted in a normal wellknown chat room. This guy started talking to us, and I admit he was a charmer/gentleman and so on. so after he left the chat room we asked others in the room if they knew him. we were told where to find his profile and picture on another website. So we logged in to this different kind of website and then typed in the handle we were given and his profile came up... The guy in the picture was none other than another one of my friends husband. His profile said he was not married and no children. This friend and the husband had separated when she found out he was on this type of website but were back together after he swore he would never be associated with porn sites again. I knew this friend would want to know so we called her and she came over and we showed her what we found. Her reaction - Who wants to play hook line and sucker. Yup we did. we activated an email and got the guy going for a couple weeks then suddenly we got over our shyness and set a meeting date and place. Only when he got to the restraunt to meet "Rebecca Amos" he met the three of us (me, the fried doing the paper and the friend he was married to. We had the waitress seat us in a very busy section so that he wouldn't see us until he was at the table. He sat down very red and very confused. with no talking we handed him the emails for the past two weeks and his responses and his profile and picture. His wife said "I told you one of these days the person you would end up talking to could be your real life friends, relatives, boss, co workers or even our children spending the night at a friends for a slumber party and they decide to mess around on the computer. You said it could not happen but it did just by so and so doing a term paper about online dating and porn. I wonder how many people saw your picture and recognized you?" and she wasn't quiet about saying it. The man couldn't get us out of the restraunt and into his car fast enough and he has not gone anywhere near their home computer since and everytime he goes grocery chopping and so on he does so with great embarrassment.

Please be careful when using on line dating.

there is NO guarentee the person is who they say they are. It is ssooo easy to create a bogus email account under a bogus name and so on. besides possibly being friends relatives and so on the person on the other side could be a criminal of some kind. I for one am glad you are checking out you prospective dates. I wouldn't tell them you are checking them out. While doing our research we got more factual information when they didn't know what we were doing with the information.