Many women are concerned with safety issues pertaining to using an online dating service. You've probably heard stories about crazy people on the Internet and (understandably) don't want to let one into your life. Some aspects of staying safe as a woman online are up to you, but others can be in the hands of a good online personals site.

Safety for Women Who Are Dating Online

A good site will have an anonymous messaging system. People who are responding to your profile will not know your real email address--they just click on a link that says "reply" and the site redirects their messages to you. Sometimes you have to pay a site to be able to respond to profiles, so people try to thwart the system by putting their real email address somewhere in their profile. If you do this, or if you respond to a message like this, you sacrifice an important safety measure, so think twice about the real costs involved.

Realize that with the ease of gathering information on the Internet, giving any piece of personal information is like giving every piece. If you tell someone your full name, that person can get your address. If you give out a phone number, the person can find out your full name, and consequently your address as well. Some people mistakenly think that giving out a phone number is relatively safe, but you should never give it to a stranger.

People tend to fall into two camps regarding the issue of when you ought to meet in person. Some say you should wait for quite a while until you have a strong sense of the person from online conversations, in order to minimize the chances that the person is crazy. Others say you should meet in person relatively soon so that you can verify that the person is who he claims to be, and that you shouldn't give out any personal information before this meeting in person. If you choose the second option, meet in a public place and make sure that someone knows where you are going and when. You can even schedule a time for a friend to call and check in on you.