"Tall, fit and divorced" might be short, overweight and married. Or "very attractive woman; 125 lbs." can be at the opposite end of the attractiveness and weight scale.
Ask anyone who has ever joined a dating site what the biggest drawback is and they'll all agree it's the misrepresentation by other members of themselves.
And it's not just small things: Age, height, weight, income, occupation and marital status are the main areas where the truth is fudged.
Marital status is one of the biggest beefs by women who go online to meet someone. How do you know if a guy is married? Well, you don't.
Even the photo situation is suspect with many online daters (especially older ones). Posting a very out-of-date picture is common.
You can connect with someone on a dating site who seems like a good match for you, only to finally meet them and discover they're nothing like their photo or description. It's wasted time, effort and expense.
This is a strange deceit. What are the deceivers thinking? Despite the anonymity of being online, if you're on the site looking for a date, at some point you're going to be meeting them face to face.
It's a problem that a number of dating sites are trying to resolve before such disappointment and disaster occurs.
Some, like True.com, screen not only for marital status via U.S. public records but also do a background criminal check.
Others have a photo credibility system where photos are taken by designated photographers and then certified as a true likeness.
Credibility systems are commendable, but the best person to know when someone is lying is surely the online member who has met them.
It's a truth that Jamie Diamond says had been overlooked and one which he and co-founder Mark Geller felt merited a speciality site for online daters to post their experiences. The site TrueDater.com, launched last January, has been created, Diamond says, "to allow the online dating community to write reviews on their dates for others to read -- like virtual best friends." He is quick to add that no personal attacks are allowed. "The focus is exclusively on the validity of photos and profile content and we review everything first."
The free -- and anonymous -- site, deals (at present) only with a few major dating sites such as Match.com, Yahoo Personals and American Singles. The most popular site in Canada, Lavalife, isn't included yet.
"We'll be adding more sites as we go along," Diamond says.
The idea is for those who have found "discrepancies" in photos or profile to post a review saying what they are. Is he or she a "true dater" or not?
Cecilia Alegria of Miami, a TrueDater, says she was almost a victim of a scam via an online dating site.
"I had many e-mails and phone conversations with a man whose photo and profile turned out to be false. He was actually a Nigerian scammer. He sent photos to me of a magazine model saying they were him, but he was really after my money. I was relieved I could denounce him and his scam on TrueDater to stop it happening to anyone else."
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