As online dating has now been around for over 25 years, we’re seeing a large influx of new people taking to the digital landscape to find love. But, it’s not just young people, seniors are using the technology to find friends, find love, and find romance in their seasoned years of life.
While this is incredibly exciting, it does raise the need to make sure you’re being safe, especially if you’re new to technology.
Today, we want to share four of the most important things to remember to keep yourself safe when dating online as a senior.
1. Educate yourself on romance scams.
The single biggest threat to seniors when it comes to online dating is romance scams. Romance scams are when bad people, often from another country, pretend to be someone they are not in order to get you emotionally invested and then they try and scam you out of your money.
While this may be scary, there is good news. If you take the time to educate yourself about romance scams and know what to look out for, the risk goes down dramatically. To help, we have put together a full guide on how to spot and avoid online romance scams.
Some of the most important takeaways are:
- Never send money to anyone for any reason, even if they have what sounds like a really important emergency need.
- Never share any information about your bank or finances with someone you are talking to online.
- If anyone ever asks you to send them gift cards, it is always a scam.
- Until you’ve had a video chat or met a person in real life, you can never truly know that the person you’re talking to is who they say they are.
- Be very careful about what information you share, what links you click, and how you communicate with new matches.
2. Stick to safe dating sites with security features in place.
Unfortunately, romance scammers and other users aren’t always the only threat to be aware of. Sometimes, dating apps and websites may be created with the sole purpose of stealing your information.
Again, this is not meant to scare you away from using online dating. Instead, it’s an encouraging warning to make sure you stick to reputable, well-known dating apps and websites, ideally ones that are based in the United States with a long track record of success.
3. Make sure you understand everything that is going on.
Most romance scams and threats to seniors using online dating apps count on one thing. They count on the fact that you might not be the best with technology and you may not fully understand how things work.
The reality is that just because you may not be the best with technology doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to enjoy meeting people through online dating.
Here are some recommendations:
- Read everything that the apps provide you about how the service works. Read their rules, FAQ, helpful guides, and any other resources they share about how features work.
- If you don’t understand something, ask for help! You can contact their customer support or ask a friend or family member who may be better with technology.
Remember, nothing is urgent in the world of online dating. A match isn’t going to become uninterested just because you take a little longer to understand how things work. If someone tries to pressure you into doing something faster than you’d like, this may very well be a red flag.
Even if it’s not a red flag of a bad actor, it’s a red flag of someone who doesn’t respect your wishes.
4. Take advantage of security features.
Leading dating apps, especially ones designed for seniors, have a lot of security features in place to help protect you. However, if you don’t take advantage of these, they can’t do you much good.
Take the time to learn what features are available and how they can work to protect you.
These security features include things like:
- Verified profiles
- Flags and pop-up warnings when risky things are said in chat
- Proactive removal of fake accounts
- Safety training resources and courses
- Report and block functions
- In-app video chatting (rare)
Healthy Framework Center for Digital Safety Team
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