Tech columnist urges caution when using online dating apps

With roughly 14.3 million single people in Canada and more than one third of Canadians using online dating, a tech columnist says caution is needed when looking for love on the world wide web.

"It is no different than meeting someone anywhere else," Jamey Ordolis told Daybreak Alberta on Sunday.

"The same rules and warnings and risks apply because you can meet someone at a party or a bar and you don't know anything about them."

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Ordolis says sometimes it's easier for someone to be dishonest when not meeting in person.

"Accepting that people do lie and there are sexual predators and scammers on these sites and of course they are everywhere but when you are talking to someone on a phone it is even easier to lie, it is even easier to have a false identity, it is even easier to lure people to create a sense of intimacy and trust without them ever having seen you," she said.

According to dating site eHarmony.ca, 53 per cent of users lie on their profiles, mostly about things like age, height, weight and income.

Ordolis says sometimes less is more when it comes to sharing, especially when it relates to your location.

"You need to hold back your location, where you live, where you are going to be or where you are at the present moment," Ordolis cautions.

"We Snapchat, we tag all of our social media posts with locations and it creates a false sense that it is a safe thing to do and it is not. I wouldn't share so much that an online predator could manipulate you, use something to prey on your vulnerabilities and then lure you in."

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For single parents, Ordolis recommends keeping children out of the equation, pointing to a recent Prince Edward Island court case.

"In this case she met him in a private place on his boat and she brought her infant on the date, so it seemed like it might be a safe situation, not too sexual, but in fact she has put herself in a situation that is even harder to get out of because she is in a small, closed cabin space and she also had her infant in a stroller and couldn't get away very quickly when he did attempt to sexually assault her."

With files from Daybreak Alberta