Internet Dating: Lies and Frauds in Online Dating

It was Anatole France who said, "Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom." Well, you may or may not agree with that; but people do lie, whether online or in real-life.

Ordinary people often tell lies to try to make themselves feel or better, or to protect themselves from embarrassment. The anonymity of internet dating makes it easy for people to claim to be what they are not, which can be enticing to some people.

The biggest lie revolving around internet dating is of marital status. Married people claim to be single – it's rarely the other way around. Though both sexes are guilty of this, men clearly outnumber women.

This type of liar might claim one of several types of "singleness". One type feigns being single as in never married. Another may claim to be divorced. The more audacious (and loathsome) type claims to be widowed.

There is also the type that claims to be "almost divorced". Well, may be there is such a thing as "almost pregnant".

Married types are usually vague, and sensitive to being questioned about personal matters. In most cases, they can only communicate at certain times and days (such as weekdays but never weekends).

The next big lie in online dating, it appears, is about age. For some reason, they never lie older, just younger. One way to spot this type of liar, especially if the person is subtracting one too many years, is by style of clothing on their dating profile photograph.

The age lie one is one I fail understand, as it will almost certainly be found out. If the disparity is not too great, one might just get away with it for a while. But often the number of years knocked off is more than enough to show.

Other lies involve existence or number of children, height and weight.

There are also the frauds and criminal elements. These include international con artists the biggest number being, seemingly, from Russia and Nigeria. They often but not always target older singles, scamming them out of their money or lifetime savings.

One way to sniff out a con artist is to insist for a live webcam (video) chat. You could also ask a particular type of photograph, taken from a day to day scene such as in the kitchen.

In all, you are most likely to meet liars and fraudsters at free dating sites. Credit cards leave a paper trail that can lead back to the owner, therefore crooked people often avoid paid sites.