One never knows who’s on the other side of the computer screen.

Online dating is the latest of dating trends, and can be a great way to meet people, but you never know who you’re meeting—without doing a background check first.

Meeting someone in person that you initially met online can be a scary thing; an intimidating thing.  The assumption is that if someone is on a dating website, they’re probably ok, but that’s not necessarily the case.  Things are not always what they seem on the surface, and meeting a person whom you previously knew nothing about, and then making the decision to possibly, at some point, be alone with them, should be a decision that is made very carefully.

Most dating websites do not run background checks on their members, or at least they didn’t previously.  After one woman was sexually assaulted by a man she met on Match.com and sued to company as a result, the matchmaking website said it will start screening its users by comparing them against the national sex offender registry.  Other websites are starting to think about initiating similar practices, but most still don’t have foolproof, or comprehensive, security measures.

Things can always slip through the cracks.  Additionally, sex offenses are not the only crimes that one can commit; just because someone does not appear on the sex offender registry does not mean they are not a criminal.  People can be con artists, thieves, or even already married, which opens up a completely different can of worms.

No system is completely foolproof, and it may not even be possible for every dating website to find out every little thing that may be unfavorable about all of its members.  So, it doesn’t hurt, if you have any suspicion about the person you are meeting—or even if you don’t—to take your safety into your own hands and run a background check.