As I’ve stated in various other articles, the internet really is a large place. Online dating is no exception, and it’s important to keep your personal banking information as secure as your personal identification. You need to use the utmost caution in protecting your security.

I was surfing online and I ran into a really interesting story written by Jessica Langdon in the Wichita Times Record News titled “Cheated Love: Woman Feels She Was Victim of Nigerian ‘Sweetheart Scam’.”

Before I go too much further, I have one quick confession I would like to make. I really do feel for the people of Nigeria. It’s a proud country with a storied history and rich cultural heritage. It is ranked as the 8^th most populous nation in the world with over 140 million citizens. Yet when most internet users think of Nigeria, negative images immediately come to mind.

Think about your own email inbox and how many times you’ve come across a variation of the great Nigerian Scam. I know if I had $1 for each of them I’ve received, I would literally have thousands of $$$’s sitting in my back account.

Each variation of the scam involves the victim wiring funds from their bank account in exchange for the promise of bigger riches in the future. Sadly, these riches never materialize. This scam has morphed itself in many forms; in this instance it involves a budding long distance relationship and innocent requests for money.

I think this article is a must read for anyone getting started in online dating. It gives a real life example of what you need to be cautious of when getting to know people in the cyber world. The article goes into great detail about a woman named Carrie Thompson, who fortunately did not suffer financial hardship but she goes to great lengths to show how it would be possible to get taken for a ride.

Some of the best bits of advice to take from the article:

1. Do not let the relationship move too quickly.

Although you may feel a real connection developing with another person, be cautious of someone who is inclined to say how much they “love” you or can’t imagine being without you before an actual face-to-face encounter.

2. If you meet through a dating site, be very cautious about moving all correspondence from the site’s email/chat system over to a private system.

In this story, Ms. Thompson met her acquaintance at Match.com, but her friend quickly convinced her to move all of their correspondence over to a personal Yahoo account. Think about it, if a person has nothing to hide, why would they be inclined to move the discussion elsewhere?

3. Be wary of a match who constantly brings up money.

Remember, dating online is not much different that meeting someone in a traditional method. Finances are not something that people readily share with one another. Money should never enter into a dating conversation until the relationship is very well established. If someone goes out of their way to mention how tight their finances are, use caution. Chances are they have an ulterior motive.

As with everything else with online dating, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. If your instincts are telling you that something doesn’t seem quite right, the smart thing to do is to err on the side of caution and follow your gut.

To read the full article, click here.

It seems for some people that when it rains, it pours. In case you missed it, former New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer was reported in the New York Times as being a client in a prostitution ring that was under investigation by the federal government. Spitzer was forced to resign from his post following immense public pressure.

Spitzer is reported to have spent over $80,000 on prostitutes during his tenure as first New York State Attorney General and then as Governor. To compound Spitzer’s problem, he was also married with three children.

Never missing a chance for some free PR, online dating site Ashley Madison took out a full page newspaper ad in the New York Post to capitalize on Spitzer’s misfortune. Ashley Madison is an online dating site that caters to married couples looking to have a discreet affair (click here for our review). The website bills itself as the place to go when “monogamy turns into monotony.”

The ad, made out to look like an email to Spitzer and copied to New York State, states that “fooling around with ‘professionals’ is bound to get you into hot water.” It goes on to further state that “we hate to say we told you so. Approaching an affair the wrong way is always a recipe for disaster … We’re all of the fun and none of the trouble. …No headlines, no scandals.”

Advice that Spitzer probably could have used…..

To see the article and actual ad, click here.

When you are trying to choose an online dating site for the first time, one thing you should pay close attention to is whether or not the site displays the “last login” for each profile.

While this may seem an insignificant stat to look at, let me spell out the reason I find it to be important.

On almost all major dating sites, profiles are sorted according to their last login. What I mean by that is that when you pull up your desired search preferences, the site will return the results in the order of their most recent log in. What this does is it filters the active accounts from the inactive ones.

If you really think about it, this is pretty much common sense. If a profile’s last login in is 3 months old, it’s safe to assume that it is not an active profile.

How long is too long? I think anyone who hasn’t logged in within two weeks should be considered a dormant profile. We all have reasons why we can’t login, including business travel and vacations. If someone has paid to use a dating service, it’s safe to assume that if they’re serious, they would be logging in regularly.

Why wouldn’t a member log in? There are only two reasons: 1. they aren’t seriously looking to meet other quality singles, or 2. they may have met already met one.

Anyone who’s been involved with online dating will tell you that the most important thing with online dating is getting your profile in front of as many people as possible. What makes online dating such an attractive alternative for many people is the ability to meet a ton of quality singles in one area.

When choosing an online dating site, it’s imperative to find out whether or not a site will work for you based on the amount of singles in your local area. Search options will give you different parameters to choose from, including sorting profiles by zip code.

This is done based on what you feel to be an acceptable distance to drive (i.e. 5, 10, or 25+ miles) because remember the goal of dating online is to actually go out and meet the person face to face. It does you no good to find that dream date online, only to find out they live three hours away from you.

If you perform this search, and the results come back and 5 of the first 10 results are profiles with no activity within the last two months, than odds are that the pool of available candidates at the site is not going to fit your needs. Conversely, if you pull this search and it returns pages of profiles that are active, sign up right away.

Why would a site not display the last login for each of their profiles? My guess would be because they want possible customers to think the site is a lot more active than it really is.

One note of caution, not all sites will operate in this style. A handful of sites give their members the option of purchasing a “premium” membership for an additional fee. The perk of this type of membership is that “premium” members will have their profile listed at the top each time a search is requested.

One last suggestion if you are planning to use an online dating service, make sure to log on regularly. You want to keep your profile in front of as many people as possible. The more you login, the higher your profile will show. It’s that simple!

Previously I have stated that one of the best tips to piecing together your online dating profile is to visit other profiles that you find interesting. Study your competition and see what it is about those profiles that drew you in.

Once you’ve figured that out, use the parts of those profiles as a template to work off of but insert your personal info. The most important part of this plan is that you need to make sure to write the things and beliefs that make you unique and will set you apart.

An example of this would be that you’ve seen a profile that drew you in because it quoted the lyrics of a song that you really enjoy.

The use of the song lyric is what drew you in, so incorporate a similar strategy when piecing together your profile. I’m not suggesting that you use that exact lyric, but rather come up with another favorite lyric or line of poetry to help convey your message.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but these profiles were interesting to you and most likely will be interesting to people with tastes similar to yours. It only works if you personalize it to represent you. If not, the people that you’re trying to meet will recognize this as soon as they get to know you and in many cases dismiss you as a fraud.

In the online community, many people aren’t even bothering to put any thought or originality into their own online persona. There’s a fantastic article written by Jennifer Saranow of the Wall Street Journal titled “The Cut-and-Paste Personality” which goes into great detail.

The gist of the article is that there is rampant plagiarism running through not only online dating site profiles but also many of the social networking sites such as MySpace. For a lot of people, it’s much easier for them to copy a dating profile than to sit down and put the effort into creating their own original profile.

Ms. Saranow points out that people aren’t just taking lines or small quotes from other profiles, but that they are actually copying profiles in their entirety. She uses the example of a writer named Hugh Gallagher, who has had parts of one of his college essays from over 20 years ago copied in over 50 different profiles on Match.com alone.

That’s just one dating site. Imagine with all of the dating sites out there how many other times his work has been plagiarized?

The anonymity of the internet makes a lot of this quite possible. It’s quite easy to google any subject imaginable and it will return hundreds or even thousands of pages that reference what you’re looking for. The amount of written material to borrow from is immense, and it grows on a daily basis. I speak from experience as I’ve visited numerous other dating sites and I’ve found many of the articles I’ve written posted on their sites without any credit being referenced back to me.

The bottom line is that when you are creating your online dating profile; make it as unique as possible. Make sure it represents who you are. You may be able to fool someone into clicking onto your profile, but relationships built on false pretenses rarely succeed.

For men out there who are looking for tips on how to pick up women, I ran into an intriguing method called the Mystery Method. It was developed and popularized by Erik Von Markovik, who also goes by the name of Mystery.

Von Markovik claims to have been a late bloomer, not hitting puberty until the age of 16 and not losing his virginity until the age of 21. Frustrated with his loneliness and inability to meet women, he set out on a study to learn how to be successful. After years of research and thousands of approaches, he developed his method of seducing the other sex.

He classifies people by two values, their S and R value. “S” stands for the survival value and “R” stands for their replication value. Women tend to evaluate men based on their “S” value and men judge women for their “R” value.

The largest principal behind this is that all people gravitate to a person with a higher value. We all want a mate who we feel is above our level. Once people pin point a potential target that is “above their level” their emotions and adrenaline appear to get the better of them.

They just aren’t themselves for a variety of reasons. How many times have you found a man or woman who you really wanted to get to know and then couldn’t figure out why you came off as a stammering fool when you approach them?

An example of this is a very attractive woman, who would possess a very high “R” value. She is quite used to men being interested in her, and she’s also aware of the fact that they tend to have difficulty interacting with her.

When she meets a man who appears not to be emotionally affected by her, it confuses her and she starts to believe that he must be of a “higher value” than her and she begins to desire him. It’s based less on her physical attraction to him and more on an intellectual level.

The Mystery Method works off of these foundations. It plays upon this human nature and breaks the approach into a three step process. It claims if these steps are followed properly, success is bound to happen.

For the sake of our example, let’s use the example of a man going after a woman.

Step 1-Attraction

• The man begins a conversation with the woman.
• His focus is to portray his value to the woman and highlight his strong “S” value.
• He portrays a growing interest in her through the conversation while downplaying anything to do with her looks.

Step 2-Comfort

• The man works on establishing a trust and general rapport with her. This is the most critical stage of the entire process, and it can take many hours or in some cases even days to play out.
• Von Markovik claims it can be accomplished in as little as 3-9 hours.

Step 3-Seduction

This deals with the escalation to physical contact, and it includes the “Last Minute Freezeout” in which the man withdraws from the sexual encounter with a line like, “you’re right, we really shouldn’t be doing this.”

I’m not sure if this method is fool proof or not, but Von Markovik does have a tremendous reputation in the industry. If you’re interested in finding out more about this method, feel free to check out his book, The Mystery Method.

I’m sure that you’ve heard countless times that over 50% of all marriages end in divorce. This is an overwhelming statistic, and it just goes to show how difficult relationships with the other sex can be.

Each person has a different time table for getting over a divorce, and it’s important not to rush from one bad relationship into another. Before getting ready to date again, it’s wise to make sure that you’ve had a chance to work through your issues before jumping into the next relationship.

You need to be honest with yourself, and ask yourself if you are prepared mentally, physically, and spiritually to commit yourself to finding a new relationship. Some people are ready the moment their previous relationship ends and others can take months or years until they reach that point.

The longer you were married, the more difficult it becomes to find other singles. Married couples tend to develop and foster relationships with other married couples. Once a divorce is finalized, one of the divorced couple tends to lose this base of friends.

Where are the best places to meet other singes? This is an age old question, and there is a variety of old stand bys: the local bar or pub, night clubs, social clubs, and church to name a few. Many singles rely on friends or people they already know to help them find someone (i.e. a blind date or prearranged meeting). Finally many singles cling to the hope of a chance encounter (i.e. bumping into someone while shopping, etc.) leading to finding Mrs. Right.

The internet becomes a great source for meeting other singles. It’s an ever increasing pool with more and more people getting connected to the internet. For seasoned internet veterans, it’s hard to believe that tens of thousands of people use the internet for the first time each and every day, and this trend won’t be ending any time soon.

Where is the best place for these people to find other singles?

I’m sure you’ve read countless stories about free social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. These sites are great for keeping in touch with people that you already are familiar with, but finding quality singles is not something these sites are renowned for.

For older singles, these sites also seem quite intimidating to use. They tend to be oriented towards younger web surfers, with the majority of users under the age of 35.

Online dating sites provide a great service for divorced men and women. They provide a large pool of qualified singles that are also looking to find someone else.

Technology has gotten to the point where anyone is able to use one of these sites. If you know how to type out an email, then you’re more than qualified to navigate your way through an online dating site.

There are countless sites out there, and the service they offer cover a wide gamut. There are sites for divorced singles, single parents, disabled singles, interracial, ethnic (i.e. Italian, German, Asian, Arab, Indian, Russian, etc.), mail order brides, seniors, gay and lesbian, as well as various sites set up for singles just looking for sexual experiences either online or in person.

Most paid sites will offer a free trial membership so you can get a chance to look around a site and see what it has to offer before making a decision on whether or not to join. See what the pool of singles look like in your local area and take the time to investigate the various options out there.

The world is a really big place, and the task of finding someone can become overwhelming, but online dating sites do a really good job of helping you narrow down your search.