Online Dating Australia site suggests some ideas when it comes to internet dating. Chatting online offers people opportunities to get to know each other briefly before meeting up for the first time.

Online Dating – checking them out without the chat In these days, more and more people are finding their perfect match on the Internet – and some are finding their perfect nightmare! The Internet is a faceless communications medium in which any person can be anything they claim to be. This makes it easy for the liars to fool their way into your head and heart – but it can also make for the beginnings of a very strong relationship.

How do you determine whether you’ve caught a keeper or a throw-me-back? So think you’ve found a perfect bloke! You’ve been hanging about in your favourite chat room, and just last week this new fellow came in. His nickname is RussellCrowe, which set your heart a-thumping the minute you saw it, and of course you had to talk with him.

“You’re not REALLY Russell, are you? No? Do you look like him?” He answers in the negative to both, telling you that he looks better than Crowe, actually. He’s a Sydney solicitor, with offices in the CBD. And you’re off and running.

Over the course of a few days you spend ten or twelve hours chatting with him online. You feel like you can tell this man everything, and he seems to be telling you all of the deeper thoughts and feelings he has. Is he too good to be true? Here are a few ways to find out. What does she look like? For starters, always ask for pictures. That is pictures, plural. Why? A poser may have found a generic photograph of some gorgeous Shiela on the web and downloaded it to pass off as her own.

It is unlikely that they will have more than one photo to share with you if this is the case. In this modern era of inexpensive digital cameras and high speed connections for uploading images quickly, there is almost no reason for a person not to have three, four, a half-dozen photographs of themselves doing various things, from sitting in their lounge to hoisting a schooner at the hotel and back again.

If you’re presented with pictures that were clearly taken all at one sitting, and moreso, if they appear to be professional sorts of images, this should raise a warning bell. If she looks like she’s flawless in the pictures, this too, should raise the alarms. Real people don’t tend to be flawless. What are his interests? Does the fellow seem to be interested in everything that you are? Or does he have any interests that you don’t share? If he’s just involved in the things that you mention first, ask him what else he enjoys. An answer of “Oh, you know, this and that! Let’s talk more about YOU!” is really unacceptable.

A real human being has strong likes and dislikes of his own, and is generally willing to share them, sometimes in nauseating detail. Do you have friends in common? You both live in Sydney or its environs, and you both chat in the Sydney chat room on your favorite website. It’s an odds on bet that you’ve got at least one or two friends in common, if not in offline life, then online.

Talk to your common friends and ask them about this girl. Be prepared to be disappointed, but hope for a good report. Is he consistent? The number of fakers who are caught through simple inconsistencies is phenomenal. If he tells you on Tuesday that he’s a big fan of Cold Chisel, but then on Friday he doesn’t recognize the lyrics to “When the War is Over”, you may have a problem there.

If she tells you that she’s a big Star Wars fan, but doesn’t know which planet Luke Skywalker was from, you should probably be concerned. If, on the other hand, she tells you every detail of Luke’s life, and knows how his face got mangled in real life, she’ll be apples, mate! Is she willing to let you ring her? If a person you meet online is unwilling to give you her home telephone number, this could be a sign that she’s got a reason she doesn’t want calls at home – for example, she’s married or living with somebody. This is not definitive, as, for example, some people these days only have mobile phones, and others may be concerned about giving out personal contact information to a total stranger from the Internet.

The show-down! Of course, nothing will guarantee that this person is everything that they claim to be, except for meeting them in person and really getting to know them. The first few meetings should be conducted with some amount of safety precautions, as once again, this is a stranger you are meeting. Just as you wouldn’t want to go off alone with a stranger you’ve just met at a pub, you want to ensure maximum safety with somebody you’ve just met online.

Meet in a well populated place, for example, under the dome at the QVB. Bring a friend, and suggest that he bring one as well. If you can’t bring a friend for whatever reason, make sure that at least two friends know where you are going and why you are going there. Arrange check-in times to ring them up and let them know that all is well. Don’t bring this person you’ve just met to your home, nor should you go to theirs. Save that for when you know each other better.

Recap The simple fact is that most of the people you meet online will be pretty much what they present themselves as, but there’s always one bad apple in every barrel. By checking for consistency, believability, and keeping basic safety in mind, you could end up meeting the person you will marry one day. Anybody who doesn’t feel that expecting these things from a potential date or mate is probably not somebody you want to seriously consider spending much time with, either online or off. Happy dating!