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The INSIDER Summary: 

• A well-lit, classic headshot is the best option for your dating profile's main photo.
• A full body shot in one of your favorite outifts is also important.
• Photos giving a glimpse of your everyday life will help reveal a bit of your personality.
• Your fourth "bonus photo" should be another headshot or full-body shot that shows you in a different light.

First photo: classic headshot

El Nariz/Shutterstock

Most online dating sites only give you a small one-inch square for your main profile picture to lure people onto your page, which is why the perfect headshot is your best option for racking up clicks, likes, and messages.

Nowadays, most people think of selfies when they hear the word "headshots," but the weird angles often distort your face. (Here are some other mind-blowing facts about selfies you should know.) For the best headshot results, swap out the selfie stick for a best friend or professional photographer to snap the picture for you. The formula for the most desirable headshot is quite simple: look straight into the camera with a nice smile, stand under natural light, style your hair nicely, a groomed face for men and a minimal, natural make-up look for women (that is if you wear make-up), and a simple background like a brick wall.

“Everyone wants someone who is approachable and smiling is the cheapest way to do that,” says Maria Avgitidis, CEO and head matchmaker at Agave Match in New York City. “Looking into the camera shows you're ready to go and the eyes are the window into your soul.” Your picture should look like your best friend took it because you don’t want a photo that looks like you're posing at a cheesy mall portrait studio.

As for picture faux pas, sunglasses, baseball hats, and a stone cold face don't make you look mysterious. If anything, they make you look hard and unapproachable with a hidden agenda. (Check out these 17 signs that you're actually the toxic one in the relationship.)  “These profiles are one-dimensional,” says Michelle Frankel, founder of NYCity Matchmaking in New York. “No one is finding a reason to go out with someone when they look at other people. But they are finding a reason not to go out with someone.”

Don’t be afraid to use the headshot as an opportunity to embrace who you are. If you have curly hair, let those ringlets run wild or if you wear glasses, throw them on for your picture. A little bit of acceptance and self-love can go a long way in finding true love. (These are the 8 things you should never post about your relationship on Facebook.)

Second photo: the full body shot

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In an era where catfish (people who create fake profiles and steal pictures from other people's profiles) wreak havoc all over online dating, the full body shot comes in handy.

“Women tend to lie about their age and weight while men tend to lie about their age and height,” says Janis Spindel. founder and matchmaker at Janis Spindel & Carly Spindell Serious Matchmaking in New York City. “If you’re posting body shots, it’s a little harder to lie.”

The full body shot is your chance to flaunt your best attributes like your long legs, toned arms, or the gentle curves of your hips. Your photos should be current and a year old at most. You should be dressed in an outfit that makes you feel like a hundred bucks whether it’s that dashing suit you wore to your best friend’s wedding, the little black dress you wore out for a girls’ night, or your favorite pair of jeans.

“It’s about your attitude,” says Carly Spindel, matchmaker at Janis Spindel & Carly Spindel Serious Matchmaking in New York City. “If you feel great and you have on a great outfit that flatters your body, it exudes confidence and comes through in the photos.” Also, bear in mind that your dating profile was created to showcase you and no one or nothing else. Save the photos of your hot sports car, pets, expensive dinner, and group shots with friends for your social media accounts. Stop posting these 7 kinds of photos on social media!

Third photo: the lifestyle shot

Heather Goodman/ Shutterstock

The third photo is your opportunity to give a glimpse into your everyday life. The lifestyle photo should show you in action participating in your favorite activity, hobby, or passion like cheering at a football game and donning your favorite team’s jersey or hiking up a mountain. “It should be a conversation starter,” says Frankel. “You want to give someone a reason to engage with you and ask you a question.” Just make sure the activity doesn’t detract from your looks or hide your face. But a heads up for beach bums, try to steer clear of the bathing suit photos. Sometimes they appear overtly sexual, which may attract the wrong type of person or relationship you’re seeking. “Bikini tops and shirtless pictures attract the wrong kind of men and women,” says Carly Spindel. “I think you can show off your physique with a fitted dress or a nice button-down.” Your dating profile isn't the only page that says a lot about you as a person, your social media does too.

Fourth photo: the bonus shot

WAYHOME studio/Shutterstock

Four is the magic number for images you want to post on your dating profile. The fourth picture is like a freebie that gives you the freedom to post another full body shot or headshot, but show you in a different light. It could be you wearing a casual outfit, a dolled up head shot, or a fun photo of your laughing. All four photos should be crisp with no pixelation to maintain that honest and true consistency of who you are throughout your profile photos.  “It’s about marketing yourself,” says Avgitidis, “Make sure you don’t take online dating too seriously. Dating takes courage and everything will fall in place eventually.” These online dating pick-up lines are guaranteed to either get you the date or get ghosted.

I'm a member of various online dating sites in order to find dates outside of my primary (open) relationship. I periodically have people write to me asking me out who don't have pictures on their profiles. Sometimes they offer to send pictures, but they usually don't. When I go to ask them to send me pictures so I can decide if I want to meet them, how can I avoid coming off as completely shallow (I accept that there may not be a way - after all, my goal is pretty heavily weighted toward meeting people I'm physically attracted to).

Let’s just say you met someone pretty cool online dating. Forget cool, you really like them and your conversation is going great! You feel good about them and you definitely think there may be something there. You haven’t met in person yet but you’re sure that you will soon. Suddenly, they ask you if you have any more pictures that you could send them. They want to see more of you, not only the pictures you posted in your profile. Not necessarily naughty ones, just more pictures. What do you do? Do you send them the pictures, or, is it a better idea not to?

The reality of dating in the digital age is that you can increase your dating footprint farther than you could have ever imagined, but, it also means that you’re not dating in the “real world”, you’re dating digitally. Is that a problem? Not if you do it right and you’re smart about it. A lot of people meet online, but, a lot of people also have bad experiences. Why? Those who have bad experience usually get caught up in the moment and forget that stranger danger is real, even if you have crazy chemistry online. No, not everyone is out to hurt you or nor do they have malicious intentions so don’t be paranoid, but managing expectations and using your smarts when online dating is extremely important.

Online Dating & They Want More Pics? Don’t!

I’m not saying be paranoid, no, never, but what I am saying is that there is a better way. You need to date smart. How? Well, by choosing the better option. The better option is telling them NO. Why? Because sending a picture is not as harmless as it sounds. Here’s what to do and why…

• The smarter approach would be to say that seeing you in person is much better. Your profile pictures should reflect who you are and give a potential date enough about you to see what you’re like BUT you need to take it offline as soon as possible for them to get anymore. Why? Because when online dating, you need to meet someone you like as soon as possible in order not to risk entering textationships where you end up in a virtual relationship that never manifests in anything more than wasting your valuable time and energy, and, ultimately, disappointment.
• Another reason is that once you release those pictures to someone you have absolutely no control over them and what they do with them, even if they’re innocent pictures. Remember, you don’t know this person, you just met them online so date smart.
• Not sending additional pictures also gives you an air of mystery and leaves something to the imagination. You want to create a desire and excitement to meet  you in person. Don’t give it all away before even meeting in person!

The whole point of online dating is to find love and you want to set yourself up for success. How you do that is by marketing yourself the right way but also by taking it offline in order avoid time wasters. People who make excuses avoiding a date, those who keep rescheduling and those who keep asking you for more pictures are, more often than not, wasting time. So, do yourself a favor if you’re online dating and they want more pics … DON’T! Instead, tell them they’re just going to have to meet you in person to see you live which is really much better than any picture anyway. Plain. Simple.

READERS: What do you do if someone asks you to send them more pictures? Do you ask someone to send you more pictures? Share in the comments below!

Your Sister in Dating Bliss,

Single Dating Diva

Copyright Single Dating Diva

Your question is: will asking for more pics be perceived as offensive? 

No, it might not be perceived as offensive, but she’s put you in a tough spot. It could be perceived as superficial.  Of course, we all realize online dating is, inherently, superficial, so don’t worry too much about that; focus instead on asking respectfully for more pics.

Here’s how to politely and respectfully ask to see more photos of her:

1) Begin by starting a conversation!

It's better to ask for more photos once you've been talking back and forth a bit, first.  If you don't want to be perceived as superficial, you have to first prove that you're not – by being interested in learning more about herbefore you have a crystal clear, high resolution image of exactly what she looks like.

2) Wait a couple of solid message exchanges.

Get the conversation going first.  Then wait 2 messages each -- if each message is a paragraph of a couple lines or more -- or 5 messages each if they’re quick, texting style messages.

3) Ask politely to see more pics!

After you’ve been talking back and forth and you both seem engaged in the conversation, say something like:

"Hey, I'm sure you probably have a good reason for not wanting it to be really obvious who you are from your pictures. But I'm starting to feel like I don't know who I'm taking with! I'd love to put a face to this great conversation we're having. Could you send a photo or two?"  

You could make it clear that you're not asking for naked pics here, but if your messages have been tame and respectful then she shouldn't perceive your request as creepy.  To be extra careful, though, you can always add:

“Nothing disrespectful implied…Above the shoulders is all I’m asking for!”

What if she doesn't want to share more photos or does accuse you of being a creep for asking? 

Red flag, unfortunately.  She's probably hiding something.  If she accuses you of being a creep after you've been having a completely respectful and friendly conversation, I recommend you save yourself some time and end the communication.

Since her profile is a tiny bit sketchy from the start, be aware this is a possibility!  But hopefully she's just uncomfortable about coworkers or friends finding out she's online dating, and she'll be happy to send you photos privately.

Also, be aware that pictures can lie!  If you’ve been on at least one first date with someone you met online, you’ve probably experienced this!  That's also why it's a good strategy – if you're talking with a girl and it's going well – to suggest meeting as early as possible while still being polite.  Then you'll get to the "what she actually looks like in real life" part.

It's also better to meet in person because then you can see if there's chemistry!

If you’re on the fence about whether or not to ask her for more photos, but you’ve been having a great conversation, consider skipping to the first date!  Check out these articles for how to suggest meeting, how to prepare for an online dating first date, and what to talk about on a first date.  Go get ‘em, tiger!!

READ More Tips for Messaging

Are you wondering why men are always asking for pictures of you when texting?

Maybe you're constantly bombarded for picture requests?

Or perhaps there's just one guy who wants you to send images all the time?

Either way, this can be a confusing experience for women. Their motives and the way they respond to attraction is somewhat different to what happens in the male mind.

That's why I wanted to write this guide for you. It explains the main reasons why guys always ask for pictures when texting.

But, first, I need you to read the following sentences very carefully.

If you're worried what a certain individual is doing with pictures you sent him, there is an online tool that can help to ease your worries.

This online communications tracker tool can send you information based on who specific people are contacting and what they're doing online.

A lot of people use this tool to discreetly keep tabs on romantic interests, or partners who they have are suspicious of.

You'll discover who they're contacting the most, what online services they're using and a lot more.

You'll need a few of this person's basic details to get started using this tool on them, but it begins gathering data as soon as you've done that. Discretion is 100% guaranteed so you don't have to worry about them discovering that they're being tracked.

With that said, let's now take a look at the most common reasons why this guy/these guys are always asking you for pictures when they are texting you. We also explore what you should consider before ever sending a picture to someone you may date or whom you are already dating.

Reasons Why Guys Ask For Pictures When Texting

1. He wants to show your picture to his friends

One reason that a guy may be asking for pictures when texting you is that he is with friends and wants to show them a photo as he is proud of the person he is dating. He may want to make a friend of his envious too, or it may just be that he is so overjoyed that you want to see each other romantically that he wants to sing it from the rooftops. 

This is a really sweet reason that a guy may be asking for a picture, but do be wary of what you, therefore, send as a result! If he is showing your picture to a friend, you probably don’t want to send one totally in the nude!

2. He likes you

Asking for photos is often done by a person who really likes you. Seeing what you are up to at that moment in time or getting a photo that they haven’t seen before is a way of getting closer to you. If you don’t like the idea of sending pictures to a guy until you are sure that they are doing so because they really like, this is definitely something that you can bring up with them. 

If you are unsure of where you stand with a man that you romantically seeing, you need to ensure that your ability to communicate with them is good right from the start to have a long-lasting, healthy relationship.

3. He thinks you are attractive

Guys tend not to overthink things. A simple reason that they may always be asking for a photo or two is simply because they think you are attractive. Seeing another picture of you other than a profile picture is a way of seeing you in another way or light. 

Getting as many photos as possible of you is one of the reasons that they will often request an image of you. They just like to reinforce how lucky they are to have found you. 

4. He wants to start sexting

Of course, it perhaps goes without saying that the main reason why someone you are dating asks for photos of you is because they want to start sexting with you. This means sending much racier images than just a simple selfie. 

For some, this is something that they are not comfortable with and not something that they want to partake in. However, to others, sending a nice picture or two is a fun experience. Either way, don’t feel pressured to do it if you don’t want to. 

5. He wants to exchange pictures with you

An often overlooked explanation as to why a man will be asking for a picture of you is that he wants you to request a photo of him too. Exchanging photos with one another is a new 21st Century way to bond and move your relationship quickly without having to go through other more traditional routes of dating that can be a little slower. 

6. He wants a keepsake

If you have been seeing someone for a while, and you look like you may have to have some time apart for work reasons, he may be asking for images of you because he wants a keepsake. 

It’s also a way of being close to you when you can’t actually be physically close to one another. This is one of the reasons why technology can be so helpful in a relationship in the 21st Century where we all travel a lot more than we may have done previously. 

7. He wants to be more than just a friend

If you are a friend of a man who then starts asking for pictures of you when you are texting, it can be an indication that he wants to be more than just friends. In fact, it is likely that he wants to move your friendship into one that is far more romantic and even sexual. Before you send him images back, it is a good idea to think about whether you want the same thing as he does. 

If you don’t, you could be losing a best friend by inadvertently encouraging them by sending them pictures of yourself. 

While sending images of yourself can be a bit of harmless fun, there are a few things you need to consider before sending pictures to a man when he asks. This is particularly the case with images that are far more sexual in their content. 

1. Will he delete it

Our phones and cloud memory save a lot, if not all, of the pictures that we receive. Think about this before sending a picture of yourself. Do you want your image saved to someone else’s mobile device? If not, it can be a good idea to request that it is deleted as soon as you have sent it. But will he do so? 

2. What if you break up

One of the reasons why you should think about the implications of sending images of yourself is what happens to that image when you break up. More specifically, what happens to that image if you break up acrimoniously? 

3. Are you comfortable doing it

Above all, if you start sending pictures to a man who is asking for them, ensure that you are comfortable with doing so. You may trust the man implicitly, but sometimes sending pictures of ourselves just makes us a little uneasy - more so when they are sexually explicit. 

So make sure you are comfortable with sending your potential love interest images of yourself before you actually do so. 

FAQs

Why Do Guys Always Ask For Pictures When Texting - The Bottom Line

Dating can be a confusing activity at times. Reading between the lines of what someone wants can send us crazy when we go down the path of trying to ascertain what they really do want for you. None more so than someone you are dating is asking for images of you. 

We have listed a number of suggestions above as to why a man may request images of you - the one that is pertinent to you will be down to you to decipher based on the man’s personality and character. However, if you are ever unsure as to why they are asking for photos of you - just tell them directly that you need to know why. 

Meeting women online and through dating apps can feel a bit dodgy in the day and age of “catfishing”—especially now that people have become surprisingly adept at altering how they look in photos. (Oh, the magic of lighting, good angles, and Photoshop.)

Still, there’s a reason photo-based dating apps like Tinder are so popular: Humans like to judge whether or not we’re attracted to someone at first glance, and that means people reveal a lot about themselves—even if they don’t intend to—with their personal dating profile.

Of course that doesn’t mean we’re not immune to dating app traps. Those skimpy, night-on-the-town pics and the racy glamor shots you see? They’re classic ways to catch guys hook, line, and sinker. 

But what do these pictures really tell you about her? We asked online dating expert Julie Spira to weigh in on what her sexy selfies and even sexier beach-bod shots reveal. And while we would never call these hard-and-fast rules—take them with a grain of salt, OK?—they’re certainly useful guidelines for reading between the lines of her Tinder profile.

What it means if: She’s selected a sexy selfie

If her main pic happens to be a sultry, look-at-me selfie, Spira suggests flipping through her other pictures to make sure they’re not all the same. One selfie is fine, but a parade of them is a red flag for a high-maintenance narcissist.

Interestingly enough, while women probably take more selfies on average, men are more likely to use a selfie as their main profile picture than women, Spira says. That’s not always a good idea: “Selfies aren’t that flattering—they’re usually not your best photo,” Spira adds.

In fact, on some apps, a selfie can deter people from swiping or “liking.” Instead, choose these types of photos to get the most interaction. (Hint: Half-naked beach photos are out, and black-and-white pics are in.)

What it means if: She’s showing it all off

“When most guys see a girl in a bikini on a dating profile, they think lingerie,” Spira says. Another way of putting this: You know she’ll look good naked because she’s sporting a barely-there bikini in her profile pic.

But just because she’s basically wearing water-ready lingerie doesn’t mean she’s necessarily looking for that kind of attention. Force your eyes away from her bikini-clad body for a second and look at the context—if there’s more landscape than lady, she’s probably just trying to show off her adventurous, beach-loving spirit, Spira explains. If she’s just rolling around in the sand like a mock Sports Illustrated model, her intentions might be a little more physical. Ultimately, it could just be that she’s confident in her body—and we respect the hell out of that.

What it means if: There are multiple women in the photo

Group photos are tricky to decipher. You’re stuck playing Guess Who?, flipping through the photos in a process of elimination to figure out which of the women she is.

But a fun group photo isn’t necessarily a bad thing, provided she’s got some solo pics on her profile. In fact, people who post group photos on social media are more likely to be agreeable and extraverted, a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania suggests.

If she happens to be sharing her profile pic with just one other person and that person is a guy, however, you’ll definitely want to flip through her other photos before swiping right. “One picture of her with another guy isn’t necessarily a red flag,” Spira says. “But if she has multiple pictures with other men—especially on a dating app, where it’s pretty obvious this would be a turn-off—you have to wonder what might be going on.” Is it a sibling or a boyfriend? You don’t know—so unless you’re ready to tangle with her past, think twice about letting her into your future.

What it means if: She’s got a pet in the pic

If you’re browsing Tinder, approximately 10% of the photos you swipe through will feature pups. According to the dating app’s internal data, women are as likely as men to pose with their dog. But what does this tell you (aside from the fact she’s not heavily allergic to canines and probably doesn’t live with a horde of cats)?

“For some, photographs with dogs may signal she’s kind, compassionate, or capable of potentially caring for children in the future,” says Tinder’s resident sociologist, Jess Carbino, Ph.D.

That, or it’s someone else’s dog. Either way, you have an instant conversation starter.

What it means if: She’s wearing sunglasses

OK, yes: Sometimes it just makes sense to wear sunglasses.

Take note, though, if she’s concealing her eyes, hair, or half her face with accessories in multiple photos. “If she’s covering them up, it might mean she’s hiding something,” Spira says. 

The same goes for other “bad” photos, Spira says. Here’s why: “These days you have so many opportunities to get photos of yourself,” she explains. “There’s just no good excuse for a main photo to be blurry or cutting off parts of your face.” The whole point of dating apps is to get yourself out there and meet new people. If she’s luring people in based on misleading photos, it’s not a great sign.

The bottom line

Always check her other photos, read her profile, and give her the benefit of the doubt.

Her profile picture is the first attention-grabber, but it’s not the only thing you should be looking at. Always take a trip through her other photos. “If she’s not using all six photos on Tinder or the maximum number of photos on any other dating app, that signals she’s not really serious about meeting someone,” Spira says. “Nobody just puts up one or two photos and expects to get matches.”

People who want to find a potential partner are going to make the effort to fill out their bio, select a range of photos that represent who they are as best as possible, and be genuine overall. Anything less, and you might be better off looking elsewhere.

[RELATED6]

They come on strong

If someone starts declaring their undying love for you after a couple of weeks, it could be a sign that they may be trying to catfish you. They may also try and get you off a dating site and into the realm of texts, instant messages or email as soon as possible.

That’s not to say that you can’t develop a deep connection with someone in a short time. However, it’s a bit suspect if they’re talking marriage after a third online conversation.

A common trend in catfishing is for the imposter to rush things and try to get very serious very quickly. This doesn’t allow the person being targeted to think about what’s happening as they get swept up in a whirlwind romance. It’s also a way to play with people’s emotions and keep them invested in this growing “relationship.”

They’re afraid of Skype

If you take nothing else from this article, this is probably the one lesson to learn. The one thing that everyone asks after they’re told a catfish story is “Have they not heard about Skype!?”

One of the consistent things about fraudsters involved in dating scams is that they refuse to have conversations by Skype or to use a webcam for video chats. This should be the signal to sound the “probably not real” klaxon. Texts, messages or even phone calls are all very well but a video conversation seems to be a pretty simple thing to arrange. Unless you’re a 50-year-old posing as a 20-year-old.

People who are scammed generally report that the other person made constant excuses to avoid going on camera. The obvious reason is because that they don’t look like the person in their profile picture. They’ll also want to avoid being identified because that’s a good way to end up in an awkward conversation with the authorities.

They live far, far away

Obviously, the chances of getting into a long distance relationship is higher if you’re using an online service and chatting to people from all over the world. That’s not to say that anyone who isn’t from your street is a crazy fraudster.

However, fraudsters will naturally try and cultivate long distance relationships because it means they have an excuse not to meet with their target. This gives them the space and time to cultivate a “relationship” and get their mark to trust them.
Catfishers often claim to be a soldier who has been posted overseas, someone whose work sees them travel a lot or any other number of professions that make it difficult to meet in person. Another typical example is for a fraudster to arrange to meet up with their target on several occasions and then to cancel at the last moment.

The ask for money

Some cases of catfishing involve people leading a victim on for personal reasons, with no attempt to extort money from them. While this can still be a devastating experience, being manipulated by a stranger can only be exasperated when they also take money from you. Online dating can be an obvious target for fraud, with criminals exploiting the combination of emotion, trust and wishful thinking in the worst possible way.

Common ruses involve asking for money to visit the target of the scam, giving victims a tale of woe about a medical emergency or serious illness, or some other convoluted financial difficulties that require a sudden injection of cash.

Their life sounds like a soap opera

A common theme that reoccurs with catfishing cases is for imposters to create fantastical stories that involve illness, family tragedies or major accidents that conveniently help to postpone a face-to-face meeting. So if your online sweetheart’s daily life sounds like something from a soap opera, it may be time to start asking questions.

While online dating is a perfectly legitimate way to meet people, make sure the object of your affection checks out! If you’ve become entangled with a fraudster, you could end up with a broken heart or an empty bank account – so be very careful!

I'm a member of various online dating sites in order to find dates outside of my primary (open) relationship. I periodically have people write to me asking me out who don't have pictures on their profiles. Sometimes they offer to send pictures, but they usually don't. When I go to ask them to send me pictures so I can decide if I want to meet them, how can I avoid coming off as completely shallow (I accept that there may not be a way - after all, online dating asking if photos are current, my goal is pretty heavily weighted toward meeting people I'm physically attracted to).

Main Findings

• As many as one-in-three people are dating online
• People turn to online dating for a variety of reasons – 48% do it for fun, while some look for more meaningful relationships and one-in-ten are simply looking for sex (13%)
• People share information with others too easily when they are dating online, with a quarter (25%) admitting they share their full name publicly on their dating profile. One-in-ten have shared their home address, and the same number have shared naked photos of themselves this way, exposing them to risk
• Even though lying is one of the most hated aspects of online dating, 57% of online daters lie to each other, faking a range of attributes such as their names, marital status, location and appearance
• People are concerned for their safety when they date online, with some of the main concerns involving worries about IT security – for example, 63% are concerned about the device they use for online dating becoming infected and 61% are concerned about their data being stolen or leaked from the dating app or service itself
• These concerns are well-founded – 55% have experienced some form of threat or problem while dating online. And, people that use online dating are twice as likely to experience an IT security incident than people that don’t (41% vs 20%), primarily due to their increased level of online activity in general
• Protection is also an issue for people that indulge in online dating. Just 27% of online daters use a security solution to protect online dating asking if photos are current device and 16% do nothing at all to protect themselves as they see no risk

Introduction

Digital technology, especially smart devices, have transformed many aspects of our society, including how people meet each other and establish relationships – romantic or otherwise.

Attitudes towards dating apps and services have grown progressively more positive in recent years. Testament to this fact, when Pew Research Centre first questioned Americans about online dating in 2005, just 44% said the activity is a good way to meet people, and the majority thought it was a poor replacement for striking up relationships in the why do people ghost on you on dating apps world. But the way we communicate, meet and express our love has changed dramatically since then, interracial dating rules you need to follow when Pew Research Centre repeated the study ten years later, the number that considered online dating to be a good way of meeting people had grown to 59%.

How we conduct our relationships is changing, and it’s clear online dating asking if photos are current technology has a key part to play in this change. People are now not only turning to their devices to work, shop, and play, but to manage their personal lives and relationships too.

Online dating is becoming more popular. But with concerns rife following incidents such as the infamous Ashley Madison breach, and with the process inherently requiring users to share personal information, it’s important to consider the potential dangers involved. Are online daters giving away too much about themselves? Are they, through online dating, exposing themselves and their devices to malicious people – or indeed malware – all too easily?

To understand the topic better and to help users protect themselves when they are dating online, Kaspersky Lab has undertaken a study into people’s online dating habits. The following report summarises our findings.

Methodology

An online survey conducted by research firm B2B International and Kaspersky Lab in August 2017 assessed the attitudes of 21,081 users aged over 16 years old from 32 countries.

This report outlines the responses of 6,458 online dating users from 30 of the countries surveyed (answers from respondents in China and the UAE have been excluded) regarding their online activity, including the types of devices they use, the kind of information they share, and any concerns they might have about online dating apps and services.

Data was weighted to be globally representative and consistent, split equally between men and women, and not all the results from the study have been included in this report. To request further data please contact Kaspersky Lab at prhq@kaspersky.com.

Look around. Someone near you is dating online

Online dating provides users with the ideal place to meet people that have similar likes, dislikes and character traits to them. It improves the chances of a user actually liking the person they’re going to meet on a date (because they can search for people that meet certain criteria), and, if you believe the online dating services themselves, an increasing number of people are also now finding lasting and meaningful relationships online. Considering all of this, perhaps it’s no surprise our study found that as many as 32% of Internet users are dating online.

So, online dating asking if photos are current, if one-in-three people out there are doing it, who is the typical online dater?

Although such a large number of people are dating online, our study has found that if you decide to take part, you are most likely to be in the company of users that meet the following criteria.

People that date online are most likely to be:

• 33.8 years old on average
• Working full-time (63%)
• Slightly more likely to be male than female (39% of men date online vs 25% of women)
• Device-savvy – they have around 5 mobile devices compared to the usual 3 per household
• They are most likely to work as medium-level managers (20%) or be highly qualified specialists such as scientific workers, teachers and engineers (19%)

Many people dating a black army man are on the online dating scene are young, as the 33.8 average age suggests, with 43% of 25-34 year olds using online dating services, online dating asking if photos are current. This tech-savvy age group is likely embracing online dating as a way to meet interesting new people while balancing busy professional lives.

Meanwhile, people that class themselves as the head of a company or business owners make up a surprisingly large one-in-ten (11%) of the online dating sex dating and relationships websites. Interestingly, we also found that 31% of people that are married or living with a partner are using online dating.

Online daters are most likely to visit dating apps and services from Windows PCs and Android smartphones than any other type of device. And, 51% of online daters admit to using a device that they use for work to carry out their online dating activities, despite the fact that they may be putting confidential corporate data at risk by doing so.

A pocket-sized relationship?

So why are these people going online to start up relationships with others? Certainly, online dating provides all the convenience of making it quick and easy to meet people. Plus, it’s an activity that’s available across multiple devices, at all times of day and night.

Our study asked people why they turn to online dating and while half (48%) said they mostly use online dating for fun, other reasons were also evident, with some saying they are looking for more meaningful relationships, and around one-in-ten simply looking for sex (13%).

These findings suggest that there is still a degree of cynicism around the success of online dating, with people being twice as likely to look for ‘fun’ online, than love (a partner). However, online dating asking if photos are current, with so many people turning to online dating for such a variety of reasons, it’s clear that the activity is literally allowing people to carry their relationships around with them wherever they go.

Gender differences also come into play. For example, men are much more likely than women to use online dating for sex (18% vs 5%), whereas men and women are equally as likely to be looking for new friends.

What people get up fat online dating when they’re dating online

While many different types of people go online to date – and they do it for multiple reasons, our study also asked people about what they get up to when they are dating online, in order to understand the potential security implications.

It’s all in the profile

The profile is understandably a crucial part of online dating. It allows users to share snippets of their lives. It acts as a window, or a preview of a person, enticing others to reach out to them or find out more.

Is the profile crucial to the success of online dating? Yes. But is profile information secure? No. We found that a worrying number of online dating users are, through their profiles, placing sensitive information about themselves into the public domain, which could potentially lead them to harm if the information was to fall into the wrong hands.

For example, one-in-ten online dating users have shared their full home address publicly on their profile, have shared details about their work/ trade secrets, or personal details about their family in this way.

Many share photos of themselves or their loved ones this way – 15% using online dating have shared photos of their family publicly by displaying them on their profile and 17% have shared photos of their friends. Even more worryingly, one-in-ten (9%) have even shared intimate photos of themselves publicly on their profile, literally exposing themselves to the danger of having their precious or sensitive images mistreated by total strangers.

Matching up to danger

People tend to share their information even more willingly with matches and it doesn’t take long for online daters to be persuaded to part with personal information about themselves, such as their home address or phone number.

People are more likely to give up information to those they have been ‘matched’ with in the online dating world – 16% give out personal details to matches, 15% tell matches embarrassing things about online dating asking if photos are current and 14% provide their matches with private or unclothed photos of themselves. All of this information, in the wrong hands, can be used to track online dating users and their families online and offline, to crack their accounts by guessing passwords, for blackmail, and more. What’s more, this risky sharing happens faster than you might expect.

Giving out this information can mean that a relationship struck up online can enter the real world very quickly – with people going from being strangers, to being able to access an online dater’s home address or phoneline within a matter of minutes. That, of course, is not always a safe or a good thing.

However, there is a disparity between men and women. When it comes to personal information, men are ready to share information about themselves much faster than women are. Female users are likely to share information after several online dating asking if photos are current (25% vs 16%), while men are significantly more likely to hand over their personal details after just minutes or hours (16% vs 9%).

Turn-offs

Despite the high proportion of people who use online dating services or apps, there are several factors that can put users off.

For example, one-in-ten users overall are worried about receiving malicious links or malware that infects their device and 9% are being put off by scammers that try to extort information or financial details from them. In both cases, entrepreneurs and self-employed online daters are the most worried about these threats, with 12% of this group worried about malware and 15% concerned about scammers.

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Overall, 9% are also put off online dating by people who send overly private or unclothed images, and 7% are put off the activity when the information they share on dating services is used by others to harm them in some way. But coming across fake information – such as false photos (19%), fake relationship expectations (12%) and dishonest relationship statuses (11%) – was cited by respondents as the online dating asking if photos are current common reason people are put off online dating services overall.

Faking it

People might turn to online dating for fun and to strike up new relationships, but ironically our study shows that a large number of people lie in the process, and this in itself is off-putting. 57% of online daters admitted they lie, most of whom (67%) turned out to be married men.

Among those that admitted they lie during online dating, the most popular things to lie about include their names, marital status, location and appearance – such as by showing fake photos. Yet, those who ‘fake it’ are ironically the most likely to be put off online dating because of the amount of false information they come across. Perhaps they don’t enjoy a taste of their own medicine? Either way, people faking it is one of the most hated aspects of online dating.

So, why are people lying online? Our study offers up many reasons including one-in-ten online daters (11%) using fake accounts as a way to protect themselves from harm. But other reasons vary from people trying to catch their partners cheating, to trying to make themselves look better, or simply lying for the fun of it.

Safety first. People’s concerns about dating online

With people lying for a variety of reasons online, safety, naturally, online dating asking if photos are current, becomes something that we should question. You wouldn’t trust a stranger in the street who lies to you about themselves, so why should you let them into your digital life, or give them access to sensitive information about yourself?

With online dating so prevalent, users are clearly giving strangers access to their lives, which could perhaps be why those who date online have concerns about their online safety.

We found that vulnerable people such as the unemployed, and unmarried women, tend to be most concerned about meeting ‘people with bad intentions’ through their online dating activities. Meanwhile, older age groups have slightly different concerns. 45-54 year olds, for example, tend to be concerned about the possibility of not being able to delete their information from online dating sites, and people aged 65+ are more concerned about fraud.

Overall though, some of the main concerns about dating online involve worries about data protection, with 61% of users being worried about their data being leaked from the dating service/app online dating asking if photos are current addition, 63% are concerned about the device they use for online dating being infected by malware, demonstrating a heightened feeling of insecurity among the online dating community.

When it all goes wrong

Sometimes, people’s concerns about online dating do become a reality. After all, online dating, just like dating in online dating asking if photos are current real-world, doesn’t always go to plan, and it can hurt when this happens.

Overall, 55% of people that date online have experienced some form of threat or problem – ranging from IT security incidents to meeting up with people that didn’t turn out to be who they claimed, or being rejected by potential matches.

The data suggests that men put themselves at risk more than women. Twice as many male online daters online dating asking if photos are current their device has been infected with malware, spyware or ransomware and 13% of men had been sent phishing emails that claimed to be from an online dating site, compared to just 7% of women.

In contrast, 15% of women said they had been involved in a conversation that made them feel uncomfortable compared to just 10% of men.

When it comes to occupations, online dating asking if photos are current, business owners (19%) were the most likely to have had their device infected with malware or ransomware, while entrepreneurs or self-employed daters were most likely to have met someone who was not who they said they were.

People that date online also tend to conduct a higher proportion of other activities on the Internet, making them particularly vulnerable to the dangers of the online world – as well as to the ‘usual’ risks of dating or arranging to meet up with people they don’t know or trust. This is perhaps one of the reasons why people that use online dating websites are therefore twice as likely to experience an IT security incident than people that don’t (41% compared to 20%).

Looking in more detail at the IT security incidents experienced by people that date online, there’s a wide range of things that can go wrong, online dating asking if photos are current. For example, around one-in-three people that use online dating have had their device infected with malware or a virus compared to just 12% who don’t use online dating. In addition, around one-in-ten have had their device hacked, have had their data infected, shared, or become the victim of financial fraud.

Always use protection

So why are people that date online, experiencing more IT security problems than people that don’t? One obvious answer already touched upon is the fact that people involved in online dating do spend a lot of time online, and therefore might naturally come across more dangers than people who don’t. However, the study also shows that people are not filipino4u asian dating themselves properly when they are dating online.

Looking at the protection methods people put in place, just 36% use strong passwords to keep their information secure and only 27% use a security solution to help, leaving the majority exposed to risk. Worryingly, 16% do nothing to protect themselves at all, because they do not see the risk.

Despite not doing much to help themselves, 55% say that strong security and privacy practices are important to them when they choose an online dating website, service, or app, online dating asking if photos are current, and only 12% do not know what security and privacy practices are. So, there is an awareness and certain level of concern about the dangers involved in online dating. This just needs to translate into action.

Conclusion: if you’re going to do it, do it safely

Today, people are time-poor, and we rely on our digital devices to help us manage our schedules, our busy lives, and how we interact with others. Digital devices act as a window to the rest of the world, including our relationships.

This is even more the case where online dating is concerned. This form of striking up new relationships is entirely dependent on our digital platforms or smart devices. People are, online dating asking if photos are current, because of online dating, literally carrying their dates around with them in their pockets.

While this comes with a large amount of convenience, it also comes with its own risks. Like any form of dating, meeting up with strangers isn’t always plain-sailing and this is also the case online. Online dating, indeed, requires the exchange of a certain level of information which, if placed in the wrong hands, can be misused.

Needless to say, our study has found that people that take part in online dating, are likely to share sensitive information with people they don’t know, or have only just met. What’s more, they share this data quickly. They are also at heightened risk of experiencing an IT security-related problem such as having their data leaked or exposed in some way. Yet, they do little to protect themselves, with only one-in-three putting basic security measures in place such as using strong passwords or restraining themselves to sharing limited information about themselves online.

The boundary between online dating and the real world can very easily be blurred. Information about home addresses, once shared, can very quickly result in strangers turning up on doorsteps, online dating asking if photos are current, personal information and sensitive photos can very easily turn into blackmail opportunities or put hacked accounts in the hands of cybercriminals.

Far from advising people to reduce their online dating activities, we simply would like to advise online daters to exercise caution, just like they would in the physical world. If you chose to date online, be careful not to click on unknown links that could be malicious, and try to avoid using insecure Wi-Fi hotspots where data can be intercepted by cybercriminals.

Furthermore, use protection in the form of a security solution and strong, hard-to-guess passwords, be savvy about how much data you give away and, importantly, look after the data you care about the most. That’s where Kaspersky Lab can help.

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Josh Rose/Unsplash

The INSIDER Summary: 

• A well-lit, classic headshot is the best option for your dating profile's main photo.
• A full body shot in one of your favorite outifts is also important.
• Photos giving a glimpse of your everyday life will help reveal a bit of your personality.
• Your fourth "bonus photo" should be another headshot or full-body shot that shows you in a different light.

First photo: classic headshot

El Nariz/Shutterstock

Most online dating sites only give you a small one-inch square for your main profile picture to lure people onto your page, which is online dating asking if photos are current the perfect headshot is your best option for racking up clicks, likes, and messages.

Nowadays, most people think of selfies when they hear the word "headshots," but the weird angles often distort your face. (Here are some other mind-blowing facts about selfies you should know.) For the best headshot results, swap out the selfie stick for a best friend or professional photographer to snap the picture for you. The formula for the most desirable headshot is quite simple: look straight into the camera with a nice smile, stand under online dating asking if photos are current light, style your hair nicely, a groomed face for men and a minimal, natural make-up look for women (that is if you wear make-up), and a simple background like a brick wall.

“Everyone wants someone who is approachable and smiling is the cheapest way to do that,” says Maria Avgitidis, CEO and head matchmaker at Agave Match in New York City. “Looking into the camera shows you're ready to go and the eyes are the window into your soul.” Your picture should look like your best friend took it because you don’t want a photo that looks like you're posing at a cheesy mall portrait studio.

As for picture faux pas, sunglasses, baseball hats, and a stone cold face don't make you look mysterious. If anything, they make you look hard and unapproachable with a hidden agenda. (Check out these 17 signs that you're actually the toxic one in the relationship.)  “These profiles are one-dimensional,” says Michelle Frankel, founder of NYCity Matchmaking in New York. “No one is finding a reason to go out with someone when they look at other people. But they are finding a reason not to go out with someone.”

Don’t be afraid to use the headshot as an opportunity to embrace who you are. If you have curly hair, let those ringlets run wild or if you wear glasses, throw them on for your picture, online dating asking if photos are current. A little bit of acceptance and self-love can go a long way in finding true love. (These are the 8 things you should never post about your relationship on Facebook.)

Second photo: the full body shot

female online dating scammer photos mimagephotography/Shutterstock

In an era where catfish (people who create fake profiles and steal pictures from other people's profiles) wreak havoc all over online dating, the full body shot comes in handy.

“Women tend to lie about their age and weight while men tend to lie about their age and height,” says Janis Spindel. founder and matchmaker at Janis Spindel & Carly Spindell Serious Matchmaking in New York City. “If you’re posting body shots, it’s a little harder to lie.”

The full body shot is your chance to flaunt your best attributes like your long legs, toned arms, or the gentle curves of your hips. Your photos should be current and a year old at most, online dating asking if photos are current. You should be dressed in an outfit that makes you feel like a hundred bucks whether it’s that dashing suit you wore to your best friend’s wedding, the little black dress you wore out for a girls’ night, or your favorite pair of jeans.

“It’s about your attitude,” says Carly Spindel, matchmaker at Janis Spindel & Carly Spindel Serious Matchmaking in New York City. “If you feel great and you have on a great outfit online dating asking if photos are current flatters your body, it exudes confidence and comes through in the photos.” Also, online dating asking if photos are current, bear in mind that your dating profile was created to showcase you and no one or nothing else. Save the photos of your hot sports car, pets, expensive dinner, and group shots with friends for your social media accounts. Stop posting these 7 kinds of photos on social media!

Third photo: the lifestyle shot

Heather Goodman/ Shutterstock

The third photo is your opportunity to give a glimpse into your everyday life. The lifestyle photo should show you in action participating in your favorite activity, hobby, or passion like cheering at a football game and donning your favorite team’s jersey or hiking up a mountain. “It should be a conversation starter,” says Frankel. “You want to give someone a reason to engage with you and ask you a question.” Just make sure the activity doesn’t detract from your looks or hide your face. But a heads up for beach bums, try to steer clear of the bathing suit photos. Sometimes they appear overtly sexual, which may attract the wrong type of person or relationship you’re seeking. “Bikini tops and shirtless pictures attract the wrong kind of men and women,” says Carly Spindel. “I think you can show off your physique with a fitted dress or a nice button-down.” Your dating profile isn't the only page that says a lot about you as a person, your social media does too.

Fourth photo: the bonus shot

WAYHOME studio/Shutterstock

Four is the magic number for images you want to post on your dating profile. The fourth picture is like a freebie that gives you the freedom to post another full body shot or headshot, but show you in a different light. It could be you wearing a casual outfit, online dating asking if photos are current, a dolled up head shot, online dating asking if photos are current, or a fun photo of your laughing. All four photos should be crisp with no pixelation to maintain that honest and true consistency of who you are throughout your profile photos.  “It’s about marketing yourself,” says Avgitidis, “Make sure you don’t take online dating too seriously. Dating takes courage and everything will fall in place eventually.” These online dating pick-up lines are guaranteed to either get you the date or get ghosted.

They come on strong

If someone starts declaring their undying love for you after a couple of weeks, it could be a sign that they may be scholarly journal online dating to catfish you. They may also try and get you off a dating site and into the realm of texts, instant messages or email as soon as possible.

That’s not to say that you can’t develop a deep connection with someone in a short time. However, it’s a bit suspect if they’re talking marriage after a third online conversation.

A common trend in catfishing is for the imposter to rush things and try to get very serious very quickly, online dating asking if photos are current. This doesn’t allow the person being targeted to think about what’s happening as they get swept up in a whirlwind romance. It’s also a way to play with people’s emotions and keep them invested in this growing “relationship.”

They’re afraid of Skype

If you take nothing else from this article, this is probably the one lesson to learn. The one thing that everyone asks after they’re told a catfish story is “Have they not heard about Skype!?”

One of the consistent things about fraudsters involved in dating scams is that they refuse to have conversations by Skype or to use a webcam for video chats. This should be the signal to sound the “probably not real” klaxon. Texts, messages or even phone calls are all very well but a video conversation seems to be a pretty simple thing to arrange. Unless you’re a 50-year-old posing as a 20-year-old.

People who are scammed generally report that the other person made constant excuses to avoid going on camera. The obvious reason dating app for serious relationships because that they don’t look like the person in their profile picture. They’ll also want to avoid being identified because that’s a good way to end up in an awkward conversation with the authorities.

They live far, far away

Obviously, the chances of getting into a long distance relationship is higher if you’re using an online service and chatting to people from all over the world. That’s not to say that anyone who isn’t from your street is a crazy fraudster.

However, fraudsters will naturally try and cultivate long distance relationships because it means they have an excuse not to meet with their target. This gives them the space and time to cultivate a “relationship” and get their mark to trust them.
Catfishers often claim to be a soldier who has been posted overseas, someone whose work sees them travel a lot or any other number of professions that make it difficult to meet in person. Another typical example is for a fraudster to arrange to meet up with their target on several occasions and then to cancel at the last moment.

The ask for money

Some cases of catfishing involve people leading a victim on for personal reasons, with no attempt to extort money from them. While this can still be a devastating experience, being manipulated by a stranger can only be exasperated when they also take money from you. Online dating can be an obvious target for fraud, with criminals exploiting the combination of emotion, online dating asking if photos are current, trust and wishful thinking in the worst possible way.

Common ruses involve asking for money to visit the target of the scam, giving victims a tale of woe about a medical emergency or serious illness, or some other convoluted financial difficulties that require a sudden injection of cash.

Their life sounds like a soap opera

A common theme that reoccurs with catfishing cases is for imposters to create fantastical stories that involve illness, family tragedies or major accidents that conveniently help to postpone a face-to-face meeting. Online dating asking if photos are current if your online sweetheart’s daily life sounds like something from a soap opera, it may be time to start asking questions.

While online dating is russian dating pictures perfectly legitimate way to meet people, make sure the object of your affection checks out! If you’ve become entangled with a fraudster, you could end up with a broken heart or an empty bank account – so be very careful!

Your question is: will asking for more pics be perceived as offensive? 

No, it might not be perceived as offensive, but she’s put you in a tough spot, online dating asking if photos are current. It could be perceived as superficial.  Of course, we all realize online dating is, inherently, superficial, online dating asking if photos are current, so don’t worry too much about that; focus instead on asking respectfully for more pics.

Here’s how to politely and respectfully ask to see more photos of her:

1) Begin by starting a conversation!

It's better to ask for more photos once you've been talking back and forth a bit, first.  If you don't want to be perceived as superficial, you have to first prove that you're not – by being interested in learning more about herbefore you have a crystal clear, high resolution image of exactly what she looks like.

2) Wait a couple of solid message exchanges.

Get the conversation going first.  Then wait 2 messages each -- if each message is a paragraph of a couple lines or more -- or 5 messages each if they’re quick, texting style messages.

3) Ask politely to see more pics!

After you’ve been talking back and forth and you both seem engaged in the conversation, say something like:

"Hey, I'm sure you probably have a good reason for not wanting it to be really obvious who you are from your pictures. But I'm starting to feel like I don't know who I'm taking with! I'd love to put a face to this great conversation we're having. Could you send a photo or two?"  

You could make it clear that you're not asking for naked pics here, but if your messages have been tame and respectful then she shouldn't perceive your request as creepy.  To be extra careful, though, you can always add:

“Nothing disrespectful implied…Above the shoulders is all I’m asking for!”

What if she doesn't want to share more online dating is pointless or does accuse you of being a creep for asking? 

Red flag, unfortunately.  She's probably hiding something.  If she accuses you of being a creep after you've been having a completely respectful and friendly conversation, I recommend you save yourself some time and end the communication.

Since her profile is a tiny bit sketchy from the start, be aware this is a possibility!  But hopefully she's just uncomfortable about coworkers or friends finding out she's online dating, and she'll be happy to send you photos privately.

Also, be aware that pictures can lie!  If you’ve been on at least one first date with someone you met online, you’ve probably experienced this!  That's also why it's a good strategy – if you're talking with a girl and it's going well – to suggest meeting as early as possible while still being polite.  Then you'll get to the "what she actually looks like in real life" part.

It's also better to meet in person because then you can see if there's chemistry!

If you’re on the fence about whether or not to ask her for more photos, but you’ve been having a great conversation, consider skipping to the first date!  Check out these articles for how to suggest meeting, how to prepare for an online online dating asking if photos are current first date, and what to talk about on a first date.  Go get ‘em, tiger!!

READ More Tips for Messaging

Believe it or not, 2022 marks the 10-year anniversary of Tinder. Yes, it would take a couple more years before Tinder and the many other dating apps that popped up in the wake of its success went fully mainstream, and even longer before we finally cleansed ourselves of the stigma that’s followed online dating since we did it on desktops. But whether we knew it or not, when Tinder was founded in 2012, it changed the way we date forever. 

Still, while a lot has changed since we first started swiping on our iPhone 3s a decade ago, plenty of things have stayed the same — including, regrettably, many of the cringeworthy dating app faux pas and missteps that just won’t seem to die. By now you should know that no one wants to see you holding a fish (unless you’re Tim McGraw) and that you shouldn’t catfish people. But take it from me, a person who has spent the vast majority of my adult life on dating apps, there are many, many more ways you can go wrong. 

While I would like to think we’ve all mastered the basics of not being an absolute monster on dating apps by now, the vast trove of social media accounts devoted exclusively to documenting poor (and largely male) dating app behavior suggests otherwise. Whether you’re a recently divorced newcomer to dating apps or you’ve been swiping for the last 10 years, there’s clearly still room for improvement, and when it comes to success on dating apps, what you don’t do is just as important as what you do. 

For your edification, I’ve graciously compiled this list of 22 things you should stop doing on dating apps in 2022. Maybe by 2032 our romantic lives will have been transformed yet again by an entirely new form of dating technology, but in the meantime, ditching these 22  habits will make the increasingly crowded online dating landscape a little more successful for you, and a little more habitable for the rest of us.

1. Pandemic small talk

No more opening with “So how’s the pandemic treating you?” or any related pandemic small talk. In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been stuck in this thing for two years, and while I’m certainly not happy about it, “the new normal” ain’t new anymore. There is no longer anything remotely novel or interesting about pandemic life, and trying to use it as an icebreaker at this advanced stage of the game is about as original as opening with “Hey.” (More on that later.)

2. Hinge voice prompts

Last year, Hinge launched “voice prompts,” a new feature that allowed users to record themselves saying something in their profile. On paper, this seemed like a great idea. After all, for years dating app users have lamented the uniquely disappointing experience of falling for someone on an app only to discover they have a weird voice in person. But because humans are humans and the internet is the internet, Hinge voice prompts quickly became the biggest dating app fail of 2021 after TikTok flooded with clips of men using the feature to record themselves saying offensive, cringeworthy or simply unnecessary things. Even when used appropriately and with the best of intentions, voice prompts have been ruined forever and are best avoided. This is why we can’t have nice things. 

3. Trying to talk people into breaking their pandemic safety boundaries

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the internet has been awash with rumors of dating-app users trying to convince their matches to violate CDC guidelines and/or their own personal COVID comfort zones in order to meet up for a date. Everyone has their own boundaries and ideas of safety when it comes to navigating a social and/or sex life amid the pandemic, and defining that comfort zone is ultimately a personal decision. While it may be frustrating if a match you think you’re really hitting it off with only wants to do virtual dates while you’d prefer an in-person meeting, there’s really nothing to be gained from trying to talk them into breaking those boundaries. Best-case scenario, they give in and you end up on a date with someone who is deeply uncomfortable with being in your presence and regrets ever agreeing to it in the first place. As in other areas of dating, no means no, and respecting someone’s boundaries is not optional. 

Fortunately, some dating apps actually allow users to outline their current COVID dating preferences in their profiles, noting whether they prefer video dates, socially distanced dates, dates with masks, etc. This makes it very easy to determine online dating asking if photos are current you and a prospective date are on the same page, meaning there’s no reason to peer pressure someone into going on a date they aren’t comfortable with when you can just dive back into the massive pool of prospective matches and find someone who is interested in coming within six feet of you. 

4. Pretending to be very over/ambivalent about/too good for dating apps 

This includes any mention of the following: 

“Not really into dating apps just trying this out” 

“We can tell our families we met at *blank*” 

Answering the Hinge prompt: “Worst idea I’ve ever had” with “Hinge” or “dating apps” 

Answering the Hinge prompt: “Change my mind about” with “Hinge” online dating asking if photos are current “dating apps”

Aside from being boring and cliche, this also reinforces very dated attitudes toward dating apps. It’s not 2013. There’s nothing shameful or weird about dating apps. Also not shameful or weird? Not using dating apps! So if you don’t like them, don’t use them! No one’s holding a gun to your head and forcing you to make a Hinge profile. If you really don’t want to use dating apps, a much easier way to convey that than complaining about it in your dating app profile would be to simply not make a dating app profile in the first place! Problem solved. 

5. Asking for someone’s Snapchat before their phone number 

The bigger issue at hand good opening line for dating site is that if you’re over the age of 20 and Snapchat is still your primary form of communication, you shouldn’t be allowed to date at all. If Snapchat is the first place you want to take our conversation when we’re ready to move off the app, I assume you are either: 1. A teen 2. Looking for nudes or 3. Married. Yes, I understand that some people aren’t comfortable exchanging phone numbers with a stranger they met on the internet. Totally reasonable! Might I suggest using another secure messaging app, such as Signal (might still think you’re married but really that’s none of my business), or perhaps just continuing to chat on the dating app, which has a chat feature for this very reason. Which brings us to… 

6. Exchanging numbers too early

There are no hard and fast rules dictating when and how to take a conversation off an app, but attempting to do so too early can work to your disadvantage. No, you don’t want to get stuck in an endless back and forth on the app where your chat will eventually get lost in between all your other matches, online dating asking if photos are current, but weary swipers may be reluctant to add yet another “Matt Tinder” or “Maybe: Matt” to their phone. In my own expert opinion, numbers should be exchanged when you are ready to make plans to meet in person — which may very well (and I’d argue, probably should) happen relatively shortly after matching. The key is not to just ask for someone’s number only to then continue the same back and forth on a different platform. If that’s all you’re interested in, the in-app chat feature will do just fine; it’s not actually “so hard to text on here.” 

7. Starting conversations with “hey”

This isn’t going to get you anywhere, online dating asking if photos are current. Period. It’s 2022, we’re all tired. Just delete your account if that’s all you got.

8. Starting a conversation with one of the app’s pre-written conversation starters 

The person you send it to is obviously also on that app and has also seen all those same conversation starters. But unlike you, that person looked through those conversation starters and thought, “Lol who would use these?” And unfortunately, now they know, online dating asking if photos are current. Frankly, you’re better off with “Hey.” 

9. Overusing someone’s name 

Once upon a time, some social psychologist or other told some sex and relationships writer or other that using someone’s name in a text can help establish intimacy. Unfortunately, all it really establishes is creepiness — especially if this is a person you’ve never even met. Yes, great, you know my name because you read it in my profile. You have established your command of basic literacy. There is no need to use someone’s name on a dating app. If you message me, I already know you are talking online dating asking if photos are current me. There is no one else you could possibly be addressing in our private chat thread. If you like unnecessarily saying my name, I encourage you to save it for when we’re in bed.

10. Selfies 

Attention all men: Exactly 175 percent of you are absolutely terrible at taking selfies. I’m not sure why or how this online dating asking if photos are current, but you really can’t seem to do it well and I suggest you stop trying. Besides looking bad, an overabundance of selfies makes it look like you don’t go anywhere or have anyone willing to take pictures of you. The real way to prove you’re not a weird loner isn’t to use a bunch of group pics, it’s to use non-selfies. One to two mirror selfies are permissible (you seem to fare better with those) and maybe one well-taken selfie of you and some friends. But that’s it — and please ask a trusted woman to verify whether or not that selfie is actually good.

11. Too many group pics 

As someone with very few friends, I understand the impulse to prove that you do, in fact, have them. That said, having all or mostly group photos is a quick way to get left-swiped. We don’t have time to play guess who with your profile. Your first pic should absolutely be a picture of just you. A couple subsequent group pics where you are easy to identify is fine. Please keep any pics of you and 25 of your closest shirtless bros to a minimum.  

12. Having fewer than three photos 

Two pictures is not enough for us to make an informed decision about what you actually look like. It also makes it seem like you’re either extremely lazy and/or not a real account. Three is an absolute minimum. The more the merrier. 

13. Photos that aren’t you 

Cool landscape/skyline/beach etc., but that’s not what I’m here for. You can have one non-you photo if it is truly impressive and related to you, like an award you won or a piece of art you’ve created. But no one wants to see your vacation pics. 

14. Calling yourself an “entrepreneur” 

Some people might be entrepreneurs, but there is very little overlap between them and people on dating apps who call themselves entrepreneurs. As my friend put it, “The guy on Tinder who is an ‘entrepreneur’ and the girl from high school in a pyramid scheme on Facebook who is an ‘entrepreneur’ are two different breeds of equally fake entrepreneurs.” If your job sucks, just don’t include it in your profile. 

15. Lying about your age

This seems to be most common among men around certain milestone ages. I’ve been on a few dates with presumed 38-year-olds, only to find out (much to my preference) that they are actually 42-year-olds who were concerned that too many women cut off their age preferences after 40. Guess what? A woman who doesn’t want to date someone over 40 also doesn’t want to date someone over 40 who is a liar. I promise, there are plenty of people out there who genuinely want to date people in your age range, whatever that age range might be. The beauty of dating apps is they can filter everyone else out for you so you only see people who may have a mutual interest in you. It’s a win-win, and no one has to lie. 

16. Listing very specific height/weight/body type requirements 

This isn’t about being shallow or superficial. We all have preferences about physical appearance and those preferences aren’t inherently bad or shameful or less important. This is about not being a huge jerk. Matters of physical appearance, especially weight and body type, can be extremely fraught and emotionally charged topics for people. It is completely unnecessary to go around stating your physical demands in your dating app bio (and yes, this goes for women who establish “deal-breakers” about men’s height too). Many dating apps allow you to privately filter based on height anyway, and a few allow you to filter based on body type as well. Again, it’s completely fine to have and act on these preferences, but there’s literally nothing to be gained from mentioning them in your profile. If you don’t have anything nice to say, just only match with people who suit your fancy and leave everyone else alone. 

17. Really long bios 

TL;DR. Keep it short and sweet. We don’t need your life story and the fact that you enjoy long walks on the beach. Many dating apps, like Bumble and Hinge include other places for you to lay out the fundamentals in your profile anyway — like whether or not you want kids, drinking/smoking preferences, religion, etc. Since the basics are already covered, you can save your bio for something chill and hopefully funny and/or clever. (Note, a quote from The Office is neither.) 

18.  Making your entire profile about dogs 

Liking dogs may very well be a personality, it’s just a really boring one. Yes, dogs may be important to you, and many people like them, which makes it a great place to establish common ground. But the whole “only here for cute dog pics” / “probably will like your dog more than I’ll like you” / “probably like my dog more than I’ll like you” / “Fido comes first” etc. is played out and boring as hell. Yes, we all love our dogs. It’s very endearing and not at all unique or interesting. 

19. “Swipe left if you are/are not *arbitrary thing I like/dislike*”

Again, no one needs to see a list of demands that you’ve decided make for the perfect romantic partner. It’s presumptive, makes you seem closed-minded, and it also suggests you assume that you have the ideal qualities everyone must be seeking in a mate and the onus is on the rest of the world to evaluate themselves for you rather than the other way around. 

20. Messaging matches you’ve never met in real life because you happened to actually spot them out in the wild and recognized them from the app 

One time I was walking out of the CVS in my neighborhood and looked down and saw a Tinder message from a match I’d never met in real life and had barely spoken to on the app that said, “Hey did you just walk into CVS?” This online dating asking if photos are current absolutely terrifying. Please don’t do this. In very densely populated cities like New York or Los Angeles, it’s entirely possible that you might bump into someone in real life who you recognize from an app. Do not acknowledge it! This is not fate, it’s online dating asking if photos are current your in, it’s not a fun conversation starter. It’s terrifying and a really quick way to get blocked and/or reported. 

21. Rapid-fire right swiping on every single prospective match 

I’d heard rumors that men would just open up Tinder or Bumble and swipe right on every single profile in the hopes of racking up some matches, but I didn’t believe it until one day at the gym when I watched in horror from my perch atop a stair climber while a guy online dating asking if photos are current along on a stationary bike did exactly that. Don’t do this. Best case scenario, you clutter up your match queue with a bunch of people you aren’t actually interested in. Otherwise, you’ll just end up feeling disappointed when, after all that swiping, you still only come up with one match. It’s a quick path to swipe fatigue and/or carpal tunnel. Slow down and swipe with intent.

22. Getting unduly upset about ghosting 

The advent of dating apps gave birth to a decade of ghosting outrage. Let’s leave that behind in 2022. Yes, it’s rude to just disappear on a person you’ve been seeing, but times have changed, and ghosting isn’t the egregious moral ill it once was. In fact, there are many situations in which ghosting is not only permissible, but in fact preferable. If you’ve been on a few dates with a person, yes, you should probably let them know if you’re no longer interested in continuing to see them. But if you never even took things off the app, no one owes you an explanation. In fact, no one owes you anything, online dating asking if photos are current. Ghost and let ghost.

Believe it or not, 2022 marks the 10-year anniversary of Tinder. Yes, it would take a couple more years before Tinder and the many other dating apps that popped up in the wake of its success went fully mainstream, and even longer before we finally cleansed ourselves of the stigma that’s followed online dating since we did it on desktops. But whether we knew it or not, when Tinder was founded in 2012, it changed the way we date forever. 

Still, while a lot has changed since we first started swiping on our iPhone 3s a decade ago, plenty of things have stayed the same — including, regrettably, many of the cringeworthy dating app faux pas and missteps that just won’t seem to die. By now you should know that no one wants to see you holding a fish (unless you’re Tim McGraw) and that you shouldn’t catfish people. But take it from me, a person who has spent the vast majority of my adult life on dating apps, there are many, many more ways you can go wrong. 

While I would like to think we’ve all mastered the basics of not being an absolute monster on dating apps by now, the vast trove of social media accounts devoted exclusively to documenting poor (and largely male) dating app behavior suggests otherwise. Whether you’re a recently divorced newcomer to dating apps or you’ve been swiping for the last 10 years, there’s clearly still room for improvement, and when it comes to success on dating apps, what you don’t do is just as important as what you do. 

For your edification, I’ve graciously compiled this list of 22 things you should stop doing on dating apps in 2022. Maybe by 2032 our romantic lives will have been transformed yet again by an entirely new form of dating technology, but in the meantime, ditching these 22  habits will make the increasingly crowded online dating landscape a little more successful for you, and a little more habitable for the rest of us.

1. Pandemic small talk

No more opening with “So how’s the pandemic treating you?” or any related pandemic small talk. In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been stuck in this thing for two years, and while I’m certainly not happy about it, “the new normal” ain’t new anymore. There is no longer anything remotely novel or interesting about pandemic life, and trying to use it as an icebreaker at this advanced stage of the game is about as original as opening with “Hey.” (More on that later.)

2. Hinge voice prompts

Last year, Hinge launched “voice prompts,” a new feature that allowed users to record themselves saying something in their profile. On paper, this seemed like a great idea. After all, for years dating app users have lamented the uniquely disappointing experience of falling for someone on an app only to discover they have a weird voice in person. But because humans are humans and the internet is the internet, Hinge voice prompts quickly became the biggest dating app fail of 2021 after TikTok flooded with clips of men using the feature to record themselves saying offensive, cringeworthy or simply unnecessary things. Even when used appropriately and with the best of intentions, voice prompts have been ruined forever and are best avoided. This is why we can’t have nice things. 

3. Trying to talk people into breaking their pandemic safety boundaries

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the internet has been awash with rumors of dating-app users trying to convince their matches to violate CDC guidelines and/or their own personal COVID comfort zones in order to meet up for a date. Everyone has their own boundaries and ideas of safety when it comes to navigating a social and/or sex life amid the pandemic, and defining that comfort zone is ultimately a personal decision. While it may be frustrating if a match you think you’re really hitting it off with only wants to do virtual dates while you’d prefer an in-person meeting, there’s really nothing to be gained from trying to talk them into breaking those boundaries. Best-case scenario, they give in and you end up on a date with someone who is deeply uncomfortable with being in your presence and regrets ever agreeing to it in the first place. As in other areas of dating, no means no, and respecting someone’s boundaries is not optional. 

Fortunately, some dating apps actually allow users to outline their current COVID dating preferences in their profiles, noting whether they prefer video dates, socially distanced dates, dates with masks, etc. This makes it very easy to determine whether you and a prospective date are on the same page, meaning there’s no reason to peer pressure someone into going on a date they aren’t comfortable with when you can just dive back into the massive pool of prospective matches and find someone who is interested in coming within six feet of you. 

4. Pretending to be very over/ambivalent about/too good for dating apps 

This includes any mention of the following: 

“Not really into dating apps just trying this out” 

“We can tell our families we met at *blank*” 

Answering the Hinge prompt: “Worst idea I’ve ever had” with “Hinge” or “dating apps” 

Answering the Hinge prompt: “Change my mind about” with “Hinge” or “dating apps”

Aside from being boring and cliche, this also reinforces very dated attitudes toward dating apps. It’s not 2013. There’s nothing shameful or weird about dating apps. Also not shameful or weird? Not using dating apps! So if you don’t like them, don’t use them! No one’s holding a gun to your head and forcing you to make a Hinge profile. If you really don’t want to use dating apps, a much easier way to convey that than complaining about it in your dating app profile would be to simply not make a dating app profile in the first place! Problem solved. 

5. Asking for someone’s Snapchat before their phone number 

The bigger issue at hand here is that if you’re over the age of 20 and Snapchat is still your primary form of communication, you shouldn’t be allowed to date at all. If Snapchat is the first place you want to take our conversation when we’re ready to move off the app, I assume you are either: 1. A teen 2. Looking for nudes or 3. Married. Yes, I understand that some people aren’t comfortable exchanging phone numbers with a stranger they met on the internet. Totally reasonable! Might I suggest using another secure messaging app, such as Signal (might still think you’re married but really that’s none of my business), or perhaps just continuing to chat on the dating app, which has a chat feature for this very reason. Which brings us to… 

6. Exchanging numbers too early

There are no hard and fast rules dictating when and how to take a conversation off an app, but attempting to do so too early can work to your disadvantage. No, you don’t want to get stuck in an endless back and forth on the app where your chat will eventually get lost in between all your other matches, but weary swipers may be reluctant to add yet another “Matt Tinder” or “Maybe: Matt” to their phone. In my own expert opinion, numbers should be exchanged when you are ready to make plans to meet in person — which may very well (and I’d argue, probably should) happen relatively shortly after matching. The key is not to just ask for someone’s number only to then continue the same back and forth on a different platform. If that’s all you’re interested in, the in-app chat feature will do just fine; it’s not actually “so hard to text on here.” 

7. Starting conversations with “hey”

This isn’t going to get you anywhere. Period. It’s 2022, we’re all tired. Just delete your account if that’s all you got.

8. Starting a conversation with one of the app’s pre-written conversation starters 

The person you send it to is obviously also on that app and has also seen all those same conversation starters. But unlike you, that person looked through those conversation starters and thought, “Lol who would use these?” And unfortunately, now they know. Frankly, you’re better off with “Hey.” 

9. Overusing someone’s name 

Once upon a time, some social psychologist or other told some sex and relationships writer or other that using someone’s name in a text can help establish intimacy. Unfortunately, all it really establishes is creepiness — especially if this is a person you’ve never even met. Yes, great, you know my name because you read it in my profile. You have established your command of basic literacy. There is no need to use someone’s name on a dating app. If you message me, I already know you are talking to me. There is no one else you could possibly be addressing in our private chat thread. If you like unnecessarily saying my name, I encourage you to save it for when we’re in bed.

10. Selfies 

Attention all men: Exactly 175 percent of you are absolutely terrible at taking selfies. I’m not sure why or how this happened, but you really can’t seem to do it well and I suggest you stop trying. Besides looking bad, an overabundance of selfies makes it look like you don’t go anywhere or have anyone willing to take pictures of you. The real way to prove you’re not a weird loner isn’t to use a bunch of group pics, it’s to use non-selfies. One to two mirror selfies are permissible (you seem to fare better with those) and maybe one well-taken selfie of you and some friends. But that’s it — and please ask a trusted woman to verify whether or not that selfie is actually good.

11. Too many group pics 

As someone with very few friends, I understand the impulse to prove that you do, in fact, have them. That said, having all or mostly group photos is a quick way to get left-swiped. We don’t have time to play guess who with your profile. Your first pic should absolutely be a picture of just you. A couple subsequent group pics where you are easy to identify is fine. Please keep any pics of you and 25 of your closest shirtless bros to a minimum.  

12. Having fewer than three photos 

Two pictures is not enough for us to make an informed decision about what you actually look like. It also makes it seem like you’re either extremely lazy and/or not a real account. Three is an absolute minimum. The more the merrier. 

13. Photos that aren’t you 

Cool landscape/skyline/beach etc., but that’s not what I’m here for. You can have one non-you photo if it is truly impressive and related to you, like an award you won or a piece of art you’ve created. But no one wants to see your vacation pics. 

14. Calling yourself an “entrepreneur” 

Some people might be entrepreneurs, but there is very little overlap between them and people on dating apps who call themselves entrepreneurs. As my friend put it, “The guy on Tinder who is an ‘entrepreneur’ and the girl from high school in a pyramid scheme on Facebook who is an ‘entrepreneur’ are two different breeds of equally fake entrepreneurs.” If your job sucks, just don’t include it in your profile. 

15. Lying about your age

This seems to be most common among men around certain milestone ages. I’ve been on a few dates with presumed 38-year-olds, only to find out (much to my preference) that they are actually 42-year-olds who were concerned that too many women cut off their age preferences after 40. Guess what? A woman who doesn’t want to date someone over 40 also doesn’t want to date someone over 40 who is a liar. I promise, there are plenty of people out there who genuinely want to date people in your age range, whatever that age range might be. The beauty of dating apps is they can filter everyone else out for you so you only see people who may have a mutual interest in you. It’s a win-win, and no one has to lie. 

16. Listing very specific height/weight/body type requirements 

This isn’t about being shallow or superficial. We all have preferences about physical appearance and those preferences aren’t inherently bad or shameful or less important. This is about not being a huge jerk. Matters of physical appearance, especially weight and body type, can be extremely fraught and emotionally charged topics for people. It is completely unnecessary to go around stating your physical demands in your dating app bio (and yes, this goes for women who establish “deal-breakers” about men’s height too). Many dating apps allow you to privately filter based on height anyway, and a few allow you to filter based on body type as well. Again, it’s completely fine to have and act on these preferences, but there’s literally nothing to be gained from mentioning them in your profile. If you don’t have anything nice to say, just only match with people who suit your fancy and leave everyone else alone. 

17. Really long bios 

TL;DR. Keep it short and sweet. We don’t need your life story and the fact that you enjoy long walks on the beach. Many dating apps, like Bumble and Hinge include other places for you to lay out the fundamentals in your profile anyway — like whether or not you want kids, drinking/smoking preferences, religion, etc. Since the basics are already covered, you can save your bio for something chill and hopefully funny and/or clever. (Note, a quote from The Office is neither.) 

18.  Making your entire profile about dogs 

Liking dogs may very well be a personality, it’s just a really boring one. Yes, dogs may be important to you, and many people like them, which makes it a great place to establish common ground. But the whole “only here for cute dog pics” / “probably will like your dog more than I’ll like you” / “probably like my dog more than I’ll like you” / “Fido comes first” etc. is played out and boring as hell. Yes, we all love our dogs. It’s very endearing and not at all unique or interesting. 

19. “Swipe left if you are/are not *arbitrary thing I like/dislike*”

Again, no one needs to see a list of demands that you’ve decided make for the perfect romantic partner. It’s presumptive, makes you seem closed-minded, and it also suggests you assume that you have the ideal qualities everyone must be seeking in a mate and the onus is on the rest of the world to evaluate themselves for you rather than the other way around. 

20. Messaging matches you’ve never met in real life because you happened to actually spot them out in the wild and recognized them from the app 

One time I was walking out of the CVS in my neighborhood and looked down and saw a Tinder message from a match I’d never met in real life and had barely spoken to on the app that said, “Hey did you just walk into CVS?” This was absolutely terrifying. Please don’t do this. In very densely populated cities like New York or Los Angeles, it’s entirely possible that you might bump into someone in real life who you recognize from an app. Do not acknowledge it! This is not fate, it’s not your in, it’s not a fun conversation starter. It’s terrifying and a really quick way to get blocked and/or reported. 

21. Rapid-fire right swiping on every single prospective match 

I’d heard rumors that men would just open up Tinder or Bumble and swipe right on every single profile in the hopes of racking up some matches, but I didn’t believe it until one day at the gym when I watched in horror from my perch atop a stair climber while a guy pedaling along on a stationary bike did exactly that. Don’t do this. Best case scenario, you clutter up your match queue with a bunch of people you aren’t actually interested in. Otherwise, you’ll just end up feeling disappointed when, after all that swiping, you still only come up with one match. It’s a quick path to swipe fatigue and/or carpal tunnel. Slow down and swipe with intent.

22. Getting unduly upset about ghosting 

The advent of dating apps gave birth to a decade of ghosting outrage. Let’s leave that behind in 2022. Yes, it’s rude to just disappear on a person you’ve been seeing, but times have changed, and ghosting isn’t the egregious moral ill it once was. In fact, there are many situations in which ghosting is not only permissible, but in fact preferable. If you’ve been on a few dates with a person, yes, you should probably let them know if you’re no longer interested in continuing to see them. But if you never even took things off the app, no one owes you an explanation. In fact, no one owes you anything. Ghost and let ghost.

Josh Rose/Unsplash

The INSIDER Summary: 

• A well-lit, classic headshot is the best option for your dating profile's main photo.
• A full body shot in one of your favorite outifts is also important.
• Photos giving a glimpse of your everyday life will help reveal a bit of your personality.
• Your fourth "bonus photo" should be another headshot or full-body shot that shows you in a different light.

First photo: classic headshot

El Nariz/Shutterstock

Most online dating sites only give you a small one-inch square for your main profile picture to lure people onto your page, which is why the perfect headshot is your best option for racking up clicks, likes, and messages.

Nowadays, most people think of selfies when they hear the word "headshots," but the weird angles often distort your face. (Here are some other mind-blowing facts about selfies you should know.) For the best headshot results, swap out the selfie stick for a best friend or professional photographer to snap the picture for you. The formula for the most desirable headshot is quite simple: look straight into the camera with a nice smile, stand under natural light, style your hair nicely, a groomed face for men and a minimal, natural make-up look for women (that is if you wear make-up), and a simple background like a brick wall.

“Everyone wants someone who is approachable and smiling is the cheapest way to do that,” says Maria Avgitidis, CEO and head matchmaker at Agave Match in New York City. “Looking into the camera shows you're ready to go and the eyes are the window into your soul.” Your picture should look like your best friend took it because you don’t want a photo that looks like you're posing at a cheesy mall portrait studio.

As for picture faux pas, sunglasses, baseball hats, and a stone cold face don't make you look mysterious. If anything, they make you look hard and unapproachable with a hidden agenda. (Check out these 17 signs that you're actually the toxic one in the relationship.)  “These profiles are one-dimensional,” says Michelle Frankel, founder of NYCity Matchmaking in New York. “No one is finding a reason to go out with someone when they look at other people. But they are finding a reason not to go out with someone.”

Don’t be afraid to use the headshot as an opportunity to embrace who you are. If you have curly hair, let those ringlets run wild or if you wear glasses, throw them on for your picture. A little bit of acceptance and self-love can go a long way in finding true love. (These are the 8 things you should never post about your relationship on Facebook.)

Second photo: the full body shot

mimagephotography/Shutterstock

In an era where catfish (people who create fake profiles and steal pictures from other people's profiles) wreak havoc all over online dating, the full body shot comes in handy.

“Women tend to lie about their age and weight while men tend to lie about their age and height,” says Janis Spindel. founder and matchmaker at Janis Spindel & Carly Spindell Serious Matchmaking in New York City. “If you’re posting body shots, it’s a little harder to lie.”

The full body shot is your chance to flaunt your best attributes like your long legs, toned arms, or the gentle curves of your hips. Your photos should be current and a year old at most. You should be dressed in an outfit that makes you feel like a hundred bucks whether it’s that dashing suit you wore to your best friend’s wedding, the little black dress you wore out for a girls’ night, or your favorite pair of jeans.

“It’s about your attitude,” says Carly Spindel, matchmaker at Janis Spindel & Carly Spindel Serious Matchmaking in New York City. “If you feel great and you have on a great outfit that flatters your body, it exudes confidence and comes through in the photos.” Also, bear in mind that your dating profile was created to showcase you and no one or nothing else. Save the photos of your hot sports car, pets, expensive dinner, and group shots with friends for your social media accounts. Stop posting these 7 kinds of photos on social media!

Third photo: the lifestyle shot

Heather Goodman/ Shutterstock

The third photo is your opportunity to give a glimpse into your everyday life. The lifestyle photo should show you in action participating in your favorite activity, hobby, or passion like cheering at a football game and donning your favorite team’s jersey or hiking up a mountain. “It should be a conversation starter,” says Frankel. “You want to give someone a reason to engage with you and ask you a question.” Just make sure the activity doesn’t detract from your looks or hide your face. But a heads up for beach bums, try to steer clear of the bathing suit photos. Sometimes they appear overtly sexual, which may attract the wrong type of person or relationship you’re seeking. “Bikini tops and shirtless pictures attract the wrong kind of men and women,” says Carly Spindel. “I think you can show off your physique with a fitted dress or a nice button-down.” Your dating profile isn't the only page that says a lot about you as a person, your social media does too.

Fourth photo: the bonus shot

WAYHOME studio/Shutterstock

Four is the magic number for images you want to post on your dating profile. The fourth picture is like a freebie that gives you the freedom to post another full body shot or headshot, but show you in a different light. It could be you wearing a casual outfit, a dolled up head shot, or a fun photo of your laughing. All four photos should be crisp with no pixelation to maintain that honest and true consistency of who you are throughout your profile photos.  “It’s about marketing yourself,” says Avgitidis, “Make sure you don’t take online dating too seriously. Dating takes courage and everything will fall in place eventually.” These online dating pick-up lines are guaranteed to either get you the date or get ghosted.

Main Findings

• As many as one-in-three people are dating online
• People turn to online dating for a variety of reasons – 48% do it for fun, while some look for more meaningful relationships and one-in-ten are simply looking for sex (13%)
• People share information with others too easily when they are dating online, with a quarter (25%) admitting they share their full name publicly on their dating profile. One-in-ten have shared their home address, and the same number have shared naked photos of themselves this way, exposing them to risk
• Even though lying is one of the most hated aspects of online dating, 57% of online daters lie to each other, faking a range of attributes such as their names, marital status, location and appearance
• People are concerned for their safety when they date online, with some of the main concerns involving worries about IT security – for example, 63% are concerned about the device they use for online dating becoming infected and 61% are concerned about their data being stolen or leaked from the dating app or service itself
• These concerns are well-founded – 55% have experienced some form of threat or problem while dating online. And, people that use online dating are twice as likely to experience an IT security incident than people that don’t (41% vs 20%), primarily due to their increased level of online activity in general
• Protection is also an issue for people that indulge in online dating. Just 27% of online daters use a security solution to protect their device and 16% do nothing at all to protect themselves as they see no risk

Introduction

Digital technology, especially smart devices, have transformed many aspects of our society, including how people meet each other and establish relationships – romantic or otherwise.

Attitudes towards dating apps and services have grown progressively more positive in recent years. Testament to this fact, when Pew Research Centre first questioned Americans about online dating in 2005, just 44% said the activity is a good way to meet people, and the majority thought it was a poor replacement for striking up relationships in the ‘real’ world. But the way we communicate, meet and express our love has changed dramatically since then, and when Pew Research Centre repeated the study ten years later, the number that considered online dating to be a good way of meeting people had grown to 59%.

How we conduct our relationships is changing, and it’s clear that technology has a key part to play in this change. People are now not only turning to their devices to work, shop, and play, but to manage their personal lives and relationships too.

Online dating is becoming more popular. But with concerns rife following incidents such as the infamous Ashley Madison breach, and with the process inherently requiring users to share personal information, it’s important to consider the potential dangers involved. Are online daters giving away too much about themselves? Are they, through online dating, exposing themselves and their devices to malicious people – or indeed malware – all too easily?

To understand the topic better and to help users protect themselves when they are dating online, Kaspersky Lab has undertaken a study into people’s online dating habits. The following report summarises our findings.

Methodology

An online survey conducted by research firm B2B International and Kaspersky Lab in August 2017 assessed the attitudes of 21,081 users aged over 16 years old from 32 countries.

This report outlines the responses of 6,458 online dating users from 30 of the countries surveyed (answers from respondents in China and the UAE have been excluded) regarding their online activity, including the types of devices they use, the kind of information they share, and any concerns they might have about online dating apps and services.

Data was weighted to be globally representative and consistent, split equally between men and women, and not all the results from the study have been included in this report. To request further data please contact Kaspersky Lab at prhq@kaspersky.com.

Look around. Someone near you is dating online

Online dating provides users with the ideal place to meet people that have similar likes, dislikes and character traits to them. It improves the chances of a user actually liking the person they’re going to meet on a date (because they can search for people that meet certain criteria), and, if you believe the online dating services themselves, an increasing number of people are also now finding lasting and meaningful relationships online. Considering all of this, perhaps it’s no surprise our study found that as many as 32% of Internet users are dating online.

So, if one-in-three people out there are doing it, who is the typical online dater?

Although such a large number of people are dating online, our study has found that if you decide to take part, you are most likely to be in the company of users that meet the following criteria.

People that date online are most likely to be:

• 33.8 years old on average
• Working full-time (63%)
• Slightly more likely to be male than female (39% of men date online vs 25% of women)
• Device-savvy – they have around 5 mobile devices compared to the usual 3 per household
• They are most likely to work as medium-level managers (20%) or be highly qualified specialists such as scientific workers, teachers and engineers (19%)

Many people that are on the online dating scene are young, as the 33.8 average age suggests, with 43% of 25-34 year olds using online dating services. This tech-savvy age group is likely embracing online dating as a way to meet interesting new people while balancing busy professional lives.

Meanwhile, people that class themselves as the head of a company or business owners make up a surprisingly large one-in-ten (11%) of the online dating population. Interestingly, we also found that 31% of people that are married or living with a partner are using online dating.

Online daters are most likely to visit dating apps and services from Windows PCs and Android smartphones than any other type of device. And, 51% of online daters admit to using a device that they use for work to carry out their online dating activities, despite the fact that they may be putting confidential corporate data at risk by doing so.

A pocket-sized relationship?

So why are these people going online to start up relationships with others? Certainly, online dating provides all the convenience of making it quick and easy to meet people. Plus, it’s an activity that’s available across multiple devices, at all times of day and night.

Our study asked people why they turn to online dating and while half (48%) said they mostly use online dating for fun, other reasons were also evident, with some saying they are looking for more meaningful relationships, and around one-in-ten simply looking for sex (13%).

These findings suggest that there is still a degree of cynicism around the success of online dating, with people being twice as likely to look for ‘fun’ online, than love (a partner). However, with so many people turning to online dating for such a variety of reasons, it’s clear that the activity is literally allowing people to carry their relationships around with them wherever they go.

Gender differences also come into play. For example, men are much more likely than women to use online dating for sex (18% vs 5%), whereas men and women are equally as likely to be looking for new friends.

What people get up to when they’re dating online

While many different types of people go online to date – and they do it for multiple reasons, our study also asked people about what they get up to when they are dating online, in order to understand the potential security implications.

It’s all in the profile

The profile is understandably a crucial part of online dating. It allows users to share snippets of their lives. It acts as a window, or a preview of a person, enticing others to reach out to them or find out more.

Is the profile crucial to the success of online dating? Yes. But is profile information secure? No. We found that a worrying number of online dating users are, through their profiles, placing sensitive information about themselves into the public domain, which could potentially lead them to harm if the information was to fall into the wrong hands.

For example, one-in-ten online dating users have shared their full home address publicly on their profile, have shared details about their work/ trade secrets, or personal details about their family in this way.

Many share photos of themselves or their loved ones this way – 15% using online dating have shared photos of their family publicly by displaying them on their profile and 17% have shared photos of their friends. Even more worryingly, one-in-ten (9%) have even shared intimate photos of themselves publicly on their profile, literally exposing themselves to the danger of having their precious or sensitive images mistreated by total strangers.

Matching up to danger

People tend to share their information even more willingly with matches and it doesn’t take long for online daters to be persuaded to part with personal information about themselves, such as their home address or phone number.

People are more likely to give up information to those they have been ‘matched’ with in the online dating world – 16% give out personal details to matches, 15% tell matches embarrassing things about themselves and 14% provide their matches with private or unclothed photos of themselves. All of this information, in the wrong hands, can be used to track online dating users and their families online and offline, to crack their accounts by guessing passwords, for blackmail, and more. What’s more, this risky sharing happens faster than you might expect.

Giving out this information can mean that a relationship struck up online can enter the real world very quickly – with people going from being strangers, to being able to access an online dater’s home address or phoneline within a matter of minutes. That, of course, is not always a safe or a good thing.

However, there is a disparity between men and women. When it comes to personal information, men are ready to share information about themselves much faster than women are. Female users are likely to share information after several months (25% vs 16%), while men are significantly more likely to hand over their personal details after just minutes or hours (16% vs 9%).

Turn-offs

Despite the high proportion of people who use online dating services or apps, there are several factors that can put users off.

For example, one-in-ten users overall are worried about receiving malicious links or malware that infects their device and 9% are being put off by scammers that try to extort information or financial details from them. In both cases, entrepreneurs and self-employed online daters are the most worried about these threats, with 12% of this group worried about malware and 15% concerned about scammers.

Overall, 9% are also put off online dating by people who send overly private or unclothed images, and 7% are put off the activity when the information they share on dating services is used by others to harm them in some way. But coming across fake information – such as false photos (19%), fake relationship expectations (12%) and dishonest relationship statuses (11%) – was cited by respondents as the most common reason people are put off online dating services overall.

Faking it

People might turn to online dating for fun and to strike up new relationships, but ironically our study shows that a large number of people lie in the process, and this in itself is off-putting. 57% of online daters admitted they lie, most of whom (67%) turned out to be married men.

Among those that admitted they lie during online dating, the most popular things to lie about include their names, marital status, location and appearance – such as by showing fake photos. Yet, those who ‘fake it’ are ironically the most likely to be put off online dating because of the amount of false information they come across. Perhaps they don’t enjoy a taste of their own medicine? Either way, people faking it is one of the most hated aspects of online dating.

So, why are people lying online? Our study offers up many reasons including one-in-ten online daters (11%) using fake accounts as a way to protect themselves from harm. But other reasons vary from people trying to catch their partners cheating, to trying to make themselves look better, or simply lying for the fun of it.

Safety first. People’s concerns about dating online

With people lying for a variety of reasons online, safety, naturally, becomes something that we should question. You wouldn’t trust a stranger in the street who lies to you about themselves, so why should you let them into your digital life, or give them access to sensitive information about yourself?

With online dating so prevalent, users are clearly giving strangers access to their lives, which could perhaps be why those who date online have concerns about their online safety.

We found that vulnerable people such as the unemployed, and unmarried women, tend to be most concerned about meeting ‘people with bad intentions’ through their online dating activities. Meanwhile, older age groups have slightly different concerns. 45-54 year olds, for example, tend to be concerned about the possibility of not being able to delete their information from online dating sites, and people aged 65+ are more concerned about fraud.

Overall though, some of the main concerns about dating online involve worries about data protection, with 61% of users being worried about their data being leaked from the dating service/app itself.

In addition, 63% are concerned about the device they use for online dating being infected by malware, demonstrating a heightened feeling of insecurity among the online dating community.

When it all goes wrong

Sometimes, people’s concerns about online dating do become a reality. After all, online dating, just like dating in the real-world, doesn’t always go to plan, and it can hurt when this happens.

Overall, 55% of people that date online have experienced some form of threat or problem – ranging from IT security incidents to meeting up with people that didn’t turn out to be who they claimed, or being rejected by potential matches.

The data suggests that men put themselves at risk more than women. Twice as many male online daters said their device has been infected with malware, spyware or ransomware and 13% of men had been sent phishing emails that claimed to be from an online dating site, compared to just 7% of women.

In contrast, 15% of women said they had been involved in a conversation that made them feel uncomfortable compared to just 10% of men.

When it comes to occupations, business owners (19%) were the most likely to have had their device infected with malware or ransomware, while entrepreneurs or self-employed daters were most likely to have met someone who was not who they said they were.

People that date online also tend to conduct a higher proportion of other activities on the Internet, making them particularly vulnerable to the dangers of the online world – as well as to the ‘usual’ risks of dating or arranging to meet up with people they don’t know or trust. This is perhaps one of the reasons why people that use online dating websites are therefore twice as likely to experience an IT security incident than people that don’t (41% compared to 20%).

Looking in more detail at the IT security incidents experienced by people that date online, there’s a wide range of things that can go wrong. For example, around one-in-three people that use online dating have had their device infected with malware or a virus compared to just 12% who don’t use online dating. In addition, around one-in-ten have had their device hacked, have had their data infected, shared, or become the victim of financial fraud.

Always use protection

So why are people that date online, experiencing more IT security problems than people that don’t? One obvious answer already touched upon is the fact that people involved in online dating do spend a lot of time online, and therefore might naturally come across more dangers than people who don’t. However, the study also shows that people are not protecting themselves properly when they are dating online.

Looking at the protection methods people put in place, just 36% use strong passwords to keep their information secure and only 27% use a security solution to help, leaving the majority exposed to risk. Worryingly, 16% do nothing to protect themselves at all, because they do not see the risk.

Despite not doing much to help themselves, 55% say that strong security and privacy practices are important to them when they choose an online dating website, service, or app, and only 12% do not know what security and privacy practices are. So, there is an awareness and certain level of concern about the dangers involved in online dating. This just needs to translate into action.

Conclusion: if you’re going to do it, do it safely

Today, people are time-poor, and we rely on our digital devices to help us manage our schedules, our busy lives, and how we interact with others. Digital devices act as a window to the rest of the world, including our relationships.

This is even more the case where online dating is concerned. This form of striking up new relationships is entirely dependent on our digital platforms or smart devices. People are, because of online dating, literally carrying their dates around with them in their pockets.

While this comes with a large amount of convenience, it also comes with its own risks. Like any form of dating, meeting up with strangers isn’t always plain-sailing and this is also the case online. Online dating, indeed, requires the exchange of a certain level of information which, if placed in the wrong hands, can be misused.

Needless to say, our study has found that people that take part in online dating, are likely to share sensitive information with people they don’t know, or have only just met. What’s more, they share this data quickly. They are also at heightened risk of experiencing an IT security-related problem such as having their data leaked or exposed in some way. Yet, they do little to protect themselves, with only one-in-three putting basic security measures in place such as using strong passwords or restraining themselves to sharing limited information about themselves online.

The boundary between online dating and the real world can very easily be blurred. Information about home addresses, once shared, can very quickly result in strangers turning up on doorsteps, personal information and sensitive photos can very easily turn into blackmail opportunities or put hacked accounts in the hands of cybercriminals.

Far from advising people to reduce their online dating activities, we simply would like to advise online daters to exercise caution, just like they would in the physical world. If you chose to date online, be careful not to click on unknown links that could be malicious, and try to avoid using insecure Wi-Fi hotspots where data can be intercepted by cybercriminals.

Furthermore, use protection in the form of a security solution and strong, hard-to-guess passwords, be savvy about how much data you give away and, importantly, look after the data you care about the most. That’s where Kaspersky Lab can help.

Let’s just say you met someone pretty cool online dating. Forget cool, you really like them and your conversation is going great! You feel good about them and you definitely think there may be something there. You haven’t met in person yet but you’re sure that you will soon. Suddenly, they ask you if you have any more pictures that you could send them. They want to see more of you, not only the pictures you posted in your profile. Not necessarily naughty ones, just more pictures. What do you do? Do you send them the pictures, or, is it a better idea not to?

The reality of dating in the digital age is that you can increase your dating footprint farther than you could have ever imagined, but, it also means that you’re not dating in the “real world”, you’re dating digitally. Is that a problem? Not if you do it right and you’re smart about it. A lot of people meet online, but, a lot of people also have bad experiences. Why? Those who have bad experience usually get caught up in the moment and forget that stranger danger is real, even if you have crazy chemistry online. No, not everyone is out to hurt you or nor do they have malicious intentions so don’t be paranoid, but managing expectations and using your smarts when online dating is extremely important.

Online Dating & They Want More Pics? Don’t!

I’m not saying be paranoid, no, never, but what I am saying is that there is a better way. You need to date smart. How? Well, by choosing the better option. The better option is telling them NO. Why? Because sending a picture is not as harmless as it sounds. Here’s what to do and why…

• The smarter approach would be to say that seeing you in person is much better. Your profile pictures should reflect who you are and give a potential date enough about you to see what you’re like BUT you need to take it offline as soon as possible for them to get anymore. Why? Because when online dating, you need to meet someone you like as soon as possible in order not to risk entering textationships where you end up in a virtual relationship that never manifests in anything more than wasting your valuable time and energy, and, ultimately, disappointment.
• Another reason is that once you release those pictures to someone you have absolutely no control over them and what they do with them, even if they’re innocent pictures. Remember, you don’t know this person, you just met them online so date smart.
• Not sending additional pictures also gives you an air of mystery and leaves something to the imagination. You want to create a desire and excitement to meet  you in person. Don’t give it all away before even meeting in person!

The whole point of online dating is to find love and you want to set yourself up for success. How you do that is by marketing yourself the right way but also by taking it offline in order avoid time wasters. People who make excuses avoiding a date, those who keep rescheduling and those who keep asking you for more pictures are, more often than not, wasting time. So, do yourself a favor if you’re online dating and they want more pics … DON’T! Instead, tell them they’re just going to have to meet you in person to see you live which is really much better than any picture anyway. Plain. Simple.

READERS: What do you do if someone asks you to send them more pictures? Do you ask someone to send you more pictures? Share in the comments below!

Your Sister in Dating Bliss,

Single Dating Diva

Copyright Single Dating Diva

I'm a member of various online dating sites in order to find dates outside of my primary (open) relationship. I periodically have people write to me asking me out who don't have pictures on their profiles. Sometimes they offer to send pictures, but they usually don't. When I go to ask them to send me pictures so I can decide if I want to meet them, how can I avoid coming off as completely shallow (I accept that there may not be a way - after all, my goal is pretty heavily weighted toward meeting people I'm physically attracted to).