How to Tell if Your Online Sweetheart Is Lying

Some online liars will tip their hands quickly, but the clever ones are hard to detect. That's a good reason to take your time before meeting your cybersweetheart.

Difficulty: Moderately challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Internet Access
• E-mail Accounts
• Paper And Pencils
• Computers

1. Communicate with your new flame privately and on message boards and chat rooms.

2. Allow the cyber-romance to develop slowly.

3. Avoid exchanging addresses or phone numbers for the first couple of weeks.

4. Watch for exaggeration or undue evasiveness in your cybersweetheart.

5. Question your friend about his or her job, education, hobbies and family.

6. Determine whether his or her expertise matches his or her supposed background.

7. Ask more probing questions about his or her location, family, past and job after a month.

8. Exchange pictures, but send them as files attached to e-mail or use a post office box. Decide whether his or her appearance matches the self-description he or she offered you.

9. Try phone calls only after the friendship has endured a few months.

10. Verify some of his or her story by using work phone numbers if possible.

11. Call his or her workplace when he or she is not there for further verification.

12. Arrange to meet in a public place if everything checks out. If not, say, "Good bye."

Tips & Warnings

• Do not check your intuition at the door as you enter cyberspace.
• Take notes on the comments your partner makes during chat sessions and save his or her e-mail. Check for contradictions as the relationship proceeds.
• Never ignore your intuition about a cybersweetheart.
• People who stubbornly refuse to reveal much about themselves should not be trusted.
• Don't forget that you are dealing with a stranger in a medium where it is easy to lie.

[pendingattack]

on 7/18/2009 they could pay someone to be somebody they aren't. It happened to a girl of the blogging community I'm at. A 37 year-old man pretended to be a 19 or so year old girl. After endless phone and video chats, eight months later, the man said he paid a girl to be "him". It took a toll on that girl. You can't tell. You never really can, unless you meet face to face, and that person isn't a total perv.

[Haoie]

on 7/18/2008 You can't really tell if someone's lying online, the way you can in a face-face meeting, unfortunately.

on 8/8/2006 Never believe an age someone tells you. You may think that you are chatting to a 16-year-old but they are really 40-something or older.

on 4/3/2006 *He's planned a date with you and he cancels saying he has heart problems.

*You go over for dinner and he says an hour later that a satellite dish guy is coming over to set him up with new channels.

*He doesn't return your call after you've left 3 messages, and when he does call he says he was busy.

Any of these three, or a combination, means cut him loose!

on 1/27/2006 Don't just use care in what you tell the other person, listen to what they are asking you. If they are a foreigner looking for an American spouse and a green card, they won't care who you are or what your opinions are or whatever, they will be so in love with you! If you mention to them their lack of interest in your past or present life, they will tell you they don't need to know about your past, they know all they need to know and they are in love and the past is the past, blah blah blah - be careful!
If someone really loves you, they will want to know your favorite color, your favorite movie, they will want to know about your childhood and your best friends and most of all, what you love about your life and what you want and need.