Dating Safety

Meeting people you found online is normal, and the overwhelming majority of dates end with nothing more dramatic than a mediocre coffee. The point of the precautions below is not to make you suspicious of everyone. It is to make sure that if something does feel wrong, you have already given yourself an easy way out.

Protect your personal information

Early on, someone needs remarkably little information about you to be able to find out a great deal. Your full name plus your employer is usually enough to locate your address. Hold back the following until you have met in person and actually trust the person:

• Your full name, home address or neighbourhood in detail
• Your workplace name, or photos with a visible employee badge or building
• Financial details of any kind, including where you bank
• Your daily routine — the gym you use, your commute, when you are away

Keep conversation inside the app until you are comfortable. Handing over your phone number moves the conversation somewhere you cannot block or report as easily, and a number is often enough to find your other accounts.

Meet in public, the first few times

A cafe, a busy bar, a gallery, a park in daylight — anywhere with staff and other people around. Not their home, not your home, and not somewhere remote where you would depend on them for a lift back.

Arrange your own transport in both directions. Being able to leave the moment you want to, without needing anyone's cooperation, is the single most useful thing you can arrange in advance.

Tell someone where you are going

Tell a friend or family member who you are meeting, where, and when you expect to be finished. Send them a screenshot of the person's profile. Most phones can share your live location with a chosen contact for a set number of hours — that takes about fifteen seconds to set up and is worth doing.

Agreeing a simple check-in — a text when you arrive and another when you are home — means someone notices if you go quiet.

Be extremely careful with money

This is the clearest warning sign there is. Nobody you have not met in person has a legitimate reason to ask you for money, and that stays true no matter how compelling the story is. The usual ones are a medical emergency, a customs or visa fee, a temporarily frozen account, or a business deal that needs a short-term loan.

• Never send money, gift cards or cryptocurrency to someone you have not met.
• Never share card numbers, banking logins or one-time passcodes.
• Never receive or forward money on someone else's behalf — this can make you an unwitting participant in money laundering.
• Be wary of anyone steering the conversation toward investments, however casually it starts.

Recognise how romance scams work

Romance scams follow a recognisable shape. Someone is unusually attentive and moves very fast emotionally. They have a plausible reason never to video call or meet — working offshore, deployed overseas, travelling for work. The relationship deepens for weeks or months. Then a crisis arrives that money would solve.

The intensity is the mechanism, not a coincidence: it is much harder to think critically about someone you believe you are falling for. If a connection feels remarkably strong with someone you have never seen on camera, that combination alone is worth pausing over.

Verify that someone is who they say they are

A short video call before meeting resolves most doubt, and someone genuine will not be offended by the suggestion. A reverse image search on their photos will show whether the pictures belong to someone else. Consistency is also telling — details that shift between conversations, or a story that does not quite line up with their photos, are worth noticing.

Be cautious of profiles with only professional-quality photos, no photos with friends, very little written content, or an immediate push to move to WhatsApp, Telegram or email.

Report and block

Every major dating app has reporting built in, and reports are how patterns get spotted. Report profiles that ask for money, send unsolicited explicit images, behave aggressively, or appear to be using someone else's photos. You do not owe anyone a warning or an explanation before blocking them.

If you have lost money, contact your bank immediately and report it to the relevant national fraud authority. In the United States that is the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. Acting quickly materially improves the chance of recovering funds.

Trust your instincts

If you feel uneasy, that is a sufficient reason to leave. You do not need evidence, and you do not need to be able to explain it. Politeness is not worth more than your comfort, and anyone who makes leaving difficult has told you something important about themselves.

Tell a member of staff if you need help getting out of a situation — bar and restaurant staff deal with this more often than you would think and will generally help without making it obvious.

When to stop communicating entirely

Stop, block and report if someone:

• Asks for money, gift cards or cryptocurrency, in any amount
• Refuses to video call or meet after weeks of intense conversation
• Pressures you for explicit photos, or sends them unrequested
• Pushes to meet somewhere private after you have suggested a public place
• Reacts angrily to a boundary, then apologises and repeats it
• Tries to isolate you from friends and family early on
• Will not accept that you are no longer interested