Online Dating Safety For Over 60s In Canada

Online dating is, on balance, safer than the way most of us met people forty years ago. You get to hold somebody at arm's length for as long as you like, you can check your impressions before you commit an evening, and walking away costs you nothing more than a shrug. That is a genuine advantage, and it is worth using properly.

What follows is not a list of things to be frightened of. It is the small set of habits that let you stop worrying and get on with it.

While you are still online

• Your instinct is data. If something feels off, that is decades of reading people doing its job. You do not need to justify it, to them or to yourself. Wind it down politely if you can, and if that does not work, simply stop replying. You owe a stranger nothing.
• Be honest in your own profile. The whole thing runs on trust and it runs both ways. Shaving eight years off is easy online and impossible across a table.
• Check the background of your photos. Not just who else is in them, but what is behind you: the house number, the street sign, the plate on the car, the view that only exists from one block.
• Your contact details stay yours. Your email address is hidden from other members, so if you stop replying inside your account, that really is the end of it. Keep it that way until you are ready.
• Nothing financial. Ever. Not your bank, not your card, not what you have, not what you get. Nobody you meet here has any reason to know. The only time you enter payment details is upgrading your own account, in account settings, never in a chat window. Unsure? Ring our support team on the number below before you do anything at all.
• Requests for money are the whole game. This holds however long you have been talking and however genuine the crisis sounds. Someone who has spent three months being lovely to you and then needs help with a plane ticket is running the standard script. Say no, tell our support team, and if money has already gone, call your bank and then the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre on 1-888-495-8501.
• Do not be pushed on photos or details. No is a complete sentence and anyone worth meeting takes it well.
• Do not be pushed on meeting either. You set the pace. Persistent pressure tells you something useful about the person applying it.
• Ask for a recent photo if you are unsure, and take it with you when you meet so you can satisfy yourself the right person walked in.
• Read your messages back before sending. Dry humour without a tone of voice attached can land very differently from how you meant it.
• Be wary of very early declarations of love, especially from somebody you have never seen in person. Speed is a technique.

When you meet in person

You have got on well enough to want to meet. Good. This is the fun part, and a small amount of planning is what lets you relax into it rather than keeping half an eye on the exit.

• Somewhere public, with staff and other people about. A busy coffee shop, a restaurant at lunchtime, a table at the mall. Daytime beats evening for a first one, and daylight beats dark for the walk back to the car.
• Tell somebody the details. Who, where, what time, when you expect to be home. Send them the profile if you like. If the plan changes on the day, update them. People half your age do exactly this and think nothing of it.
• Agree a check-in. Some people arrange a phrase beforehand so they can report in without it being obvious. "The food is better than I expected" versus "I did not fancy the soup" does the job.
• Your own transport, both directions. Do not depend on a lift from somebody you have just met. Have a cab number saved or the app already set up, so leaving early is a decision rather than a negotiation.
• The five minute call still works. Step away, ring a friend, ask them to call you back with something urgent.
• Do not share a cab home. If it is genuinely unavoidable, insist on being dropped last so your address stays yours. If that is argued with, do not share it.
• Go easy on the drink. One to settle the nerves is fine. Keep it with you, and if you have the slightest doubt about a drink or a plate, leave it and say something to a staff member.
• Charge your phone and check you have signal where you are going. In winter, tell somebody your route as well as your destination.
• Trust the instinct on the day too. You can end a date whenever you want, without a reason. If that goes badly, ask a staff member for help. In an emergency, call 911.
• They are nervous too. Do not push, and do not talk anybody into anything.
• Do not take an early finish personally. Meeting a stranger is hard at any age, and they turned up, which counts for something.

That is the lot, and it is mostly common sense written down. Do these once or twice and they become automatic, at which point you can forget about them entirely and pay attention to the person in front of you, which was the point of the exercise.

Two numbers worth keeping. 911 in an emergency. 2-1-1 for anything else, any time, in any language, if you want to find something local and do not know where to start.

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