Are You Flirting With A Criminal?
Never mind whether your date is smart or good-looking. How do you know you aren’t flirting with a criminal?
For a small fee, a number of US companies want to help people find out by performing background checks on potential flames they encounter on any of nearly 1500 dating sites.
At least two states, New York and New Jersey, have begun regulating dating sites, and legal experts believe changes to the liability laws that protect such sites are on the horizon.
The focus on background screenings comes as about 20 million Americans are using dating sites, more than double the number five years ago, according to the market research firm IBISWorld.
While they are finding casual dates and even love, they are also encountering married people pretending to be single or, worse, sexual predators or convicted criminals.
No one has put a number on how much violence stems from dating sites, say groups that track rape and other violent crimes, like the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Centre for Victims of Crime.
Yet plenty of crime stories begin with two people skimming each other’s online dating profiles, such as the widely case of Jeffrey Maralis, a serial rapist in Philadelphia who met his victims on Match.com.
Such perils have been around since the dawn of the internet but now that online dating is a billion-dollar industry, state officials, public safety advocates and enterprising businesses are calling for further safeguards.
”What we want to do is provide some degree of safety,” said Robert Buchholz, a retired New York State police captain who, co-founded MyMatchChecker.com, a website that went live in April, enabling people to request background checks on anyone they’ve met on a dating site for $US9.95.
Critics say some companies doing background screenings have mishandled information. Another concern involves mobile apps, which can provide personal information to people who may abuse it.