One of the great things about online dating is the ability to read the profiles of hundreds of people in the peace and quiet of your own home. You can scan for key interests and age groups in perfect anonymity without expressing your preferences “in public”.

However, you are often relying on the honesty of the other person to make your search a worthwhile one.

Obviously, when out in pubs and bars, this is still an issue, and lets be honest, who hasn’t embellished their jobs and social life story at least a tiny bit to impress that prospective date.

So, online dating can solve that problem – but it does sometimes bring up another issue – the less than honest profile photos.

Unlike in a real world bar or pub, you are relying on the honesty of the photo that the other person has uploaded to their web site.

A lot of people will try to take the most flattering photo possible – and who can blame them for that!

However, there are those who will pull out a computer graphics program and deliberately lie about their appearance by making subtle modifications to their appearance. Even worse, are those people who steal other peoples photos and use them – not only is this fraud, we would be rightly concerned about meeting people who would consider doing that.

So, how do we avoid these pitfalls with online dating.

One great way that is now starting to take off is webcam chatting via dating web sites.

It is practically impossible to modify your appearance via an online live webcam chat service and it really does offer a fantastic way of meeting people for a few minutes in the safety of your own home before you decide to meet up in the scary "real world".

By using dating web sites to manage your webcam chat you also gain the added level of privacy in that that website should hide your IP address and physical location – something which would not be possible if you chatted directly with the person.

This can be important if you are just dipping your toe in the world of online dating and want to protect your privacy – while still letting people see who you are and what interests you have.

In summary, webcams offer an exciting and safe new way of online dating that offers security and honesty in both parties.

Ian Mansfield is a staff writer at http://www.mand8.com a large gay dating site that offers secure and anonymous webcam chatting services.

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