Online Dating

Finding love on OkCupid: good. Getting scammed out of thousands of dollars on OkCupid: not so much.

Unfortunately for Michael Picciano, he falls into the latter category. Picciano is now suing OkCupid and its parent company, IAC, for failing to conduct “even minimal screening of its subscribers and therefore deceptively creating the impression that their dating service was safe . . . when in fact . . . [it] was a trap for the unwary,” he says in his Manhattan civil suit.

It all began back in February 2013, when he received a message from “genuineguy62.” (Is it just me or is that, like, the least trustworthy name ever?) After 10 days of chatting on the site, Picciano continued the conversation with the man, who called himself Bruce Thompson, via personal e-mails. A month following that, Thompson made his first telephone call to Picciano. And by the end of March, the two had canceled their OkCupid subscriptions because “they had found each other.”

Shortly afterwards, Thompson asked Picciano to wire him money to cover “unexpected fees ”incurred while setting up a new computer parts business. Picciano says he made four wire transfers in steadily increasing amounts to addresses in Texas, Ontario and England. In total, the payments added up to $70,460.

Four weeks following his first payment, Picciano involved the police. A friend of his had found Thompson's photo and information on a site called MaleScammers.com and warned Picciano. Picciano handed over a $100,000 forged check given to him by Thompson to the police, but they were unable to find the con man’s fingerprints.

Picciano is faulting OkCupid for failing to "exercise reasonable care" in communicating "the dangers associated with online matchmaking." There is, however, a page on the site called "Safety Tips" that explicitly warns members against wiring money to other users – or anyone they meet online – because the sender “has no protections against loss.”

In addition to going after OkCupid, Picciano is also suing Capital One for "failure to comply with proper procedures for the transmission of wire funds transfers." The lawsuit allages that none of the wire transfers contained the address of the recipient "as required by law."

According to the court papers, Picciano believes Thompson is back on OkCupid, trolling for new victims under the screen name "bigheartedbt.” While this hasn’t been confirmed, OkCupid users should take note – better safe than sorry.

When you’re online dating, it’s important to be realistic about who you are and what you want. It’s also important to know when you’re carrying baggage along from past dates or relationships.

But let’s face it - it’s hard to be objective about our love lives. After all, our experiences shape our world. If we encounter people who don’t treat us well, or who take advantage or betray us, or otherwise disappoint, we start to look for evidence in each new person of how they might let us down, too.

This kind of emotional baggage is something all of us have. Whether it stems from the break-up of a long-term relationship or a series of potential partners letting us down, we can carry those hurts along with us. We make them part of our story. And we do our best to avoid engaging with these types of people again. Or at least, we try.

There are plenty of niche dating sites available for the picky dater – whether you’re into men or women with the same political preferences, vegetarian eating habits, or love of horses, there’s a site for you.

But what about the touchy subject of STDs? Although our society is more open to talking about sex, many people are still freaked out by the mention of contracting an STD. It’s not sexy – in fact, it’s enough to kill the romance on any date. So what’s the best way to approach dating when you have an STD?

According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control) even though one out of every six people aged 14 to 49 years have genital herpes, there is still a stigma about it when it comes to dating. According to research from the University of Michigan, giving someone an easily cured STD is considered to be worse than giving that person a fatal flu.

Which is why a number of online dating sites have been created to serve this growing market of singles who test positive for anything from Herpes to HIV. Instead of making STDs a stigma, these sites are helping people move past the inevitable and uncomfortable conversations with their dates to be able to focus on getting to know each other. In other words, STD dating sites help members date like everyone else.

Some STD-focused dating sites include PositivesDating.com, STDMatch.net, and PositiveSingles.com among others. (You can match by the type of STD on most of these sites.) Many offer systems of support to members, too – including counseling, support groups, and STD treatment locations. They are providing a much-needed service for those who feel intimidated or embarrassed by their disease.

But there’s a catch: even if you and your date share the same STD, you might not share the same strain. There are more than 100 types of HPV for example. Because an STD can weaken your body’s immune system, it makes it easier to pick up other ones, too. So you might be accumulating and worsening the problem by having sex with a date who shares the same STD.

Ultimately, whether you use an STD dating site to meet people or not, you should still exercise the same precautions as you would with anyone else. Don’t look at joining an STD site as a sexual free-for-all. Use protection like you would with anyone else you date, whether or not you have an STD. And don’t hesitate to get tested.

For more on a dating site for members with STDs you can read our Positive Singles review.

Single baseball fans are about to hit a home run.

If you’ve checked out the homepage of pretty much any Major League Baseball team recently, you probably saw a few ads advertising other single sports fans. On Athletics.com, for instance, ads on each side of the page featured an attractive group of potential matches and text that read "Meet other single Athletics fans.” A banner ad across the top said “Take them out to the Athletics game.”

What’s going on?

With baseball's regular season here, Match and MLB.com are coming together to give singles another reason to cheer this season. Baseball fanatics on Match.com will have the opportunity to connect online through 29 different fan pages (one for every U.S. team) for the duration of the 2014 MLB season – meaning they have way more to look forward to this year than their team making it to the World Series.

To get started, Match members can announce their allegiance to their favorite team (or teams, if they’re the indecisive type) by adding its logo to their profile. Match members can also search for other fans using a new community search tool that allows them to easily connect with members who have also added their favorite team to their profiles.

On the other side of things, MLB.com will be promoting 29 different MLB Club portals where singles can search for and connect with other fans of their favorite teams. When you find a fellow fan who tickles your fancy, you can take them out to the ballgame for the perfect first date.

Noah Garden, Major League Baseball Advanced Media's executive vice president of revenue, said "the Match.com conversation is one we've had on and off over the years to see if there's something we could do together." MLB hopes the promotion will give ticket sales a boost. "The idea is put like people together with similar interest and passion," he said. "There's still always room for more butts in the seats."

It sounds a little blunt, but I guess you've gotta appreciate the guy's honesty. And I'm sure there are plenty of die-hard baseball fans who will be pleased about having an easy way to weed out rivals. In fact, Match.com President Amarnath Thombre said the first question self-identified Yankees fans often ask of singles on the site is: "Who hates the Red Sox?"

Better have your answer ready before you log on to Match.com, baseball fans, or you just might strike out. For more on this service you can read our Match.com review.

With endless addictive game apps for our mobile phones and a never-ending supply cute animal videos on YouTube, it's a wonder we ever have time to get anything done. The number of hours in a day hasn't changed, but somehow the pace of modern life makes it feel like they're shrinking all the time. We barely have time to eat a real breakfast in the morning (hello Starbucks!), so how could we possibly have time for online dating?

The "I'm too busy to date" excuse just doesn't cut it. If you want to find a relationship, you have to make it a priority. Online dating requires a significant time investment, but there are strategies you can use to make that time as effective as possible. To guarantee you’re spending your limited time and energy in ways that actually lead to quality, in-person dates, try these tricks:

• Don’t start what you’re not ready to finish. Ask yourself if you're really prepared to make the commitment that online dating requires. If you aren't willing to set aside time to find and communicate with potential dates, being on an online dating site is not a good use of your time in the first place.
• Know what you're looking for. Dating online requires you to make a lot of decisions. If you go into it with a clear sense of what you want and don't want, you can more quickly decide who is right for you and who is worth reaching out to.
• Segregate your online dating e-mails. Set up a separate e-mail account just for online dating or filter all your online dating e-mails to a dedicated folder. This keeps all of your messages in one place and prevents you from getting distracted by them throughout the day. It's a good idea to make sure all mobile alerts are disabled too.
• Ignore the unimportant information. Lots of the dating sites tell you things like who viewed your profile or how many visits you've had during a certain period of time. It's easy to get stuck on the stats, but they don't tell you anything useful. It's a waste of time (and possibly a source of unnecessary heartache) to check them.
• Get off-line as soon as you feel comfortable. It's easy to spend hours and hours sending messages back and forth, but you could communicate online for months and still find that you don't click when you meet in person. Don't ever meet with someone before you feel safe doing so, but don't waste time bonding deeply before meeting face-to-face either.
• Get out while the gettin’s good. Every date won’t be a home run. If you're not feeling it, get out fast. If you know someone isn't a good fit, be decisive – but kind – and move on.

Do you have any online dating time-saving tips?

People who participate in online dating may be more open to interracial relationships than those who stick solely to traditional dating, says a study published in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers from the University of California, San Diego analyzed the first interactions of 126,134 American OkCupid users to study the complex relationship tween online dating and race. They found, unsurprisingly, that many users tended to send messages to other users of their own race – but they also found that they were much more likely to respond to messages from users of a different racial background. The study also found that once an individual responded to a member of another race, they were even more likely to initiate conversation with other users of different ethnicities in the future.

"It's not that people's levels of prejudice are changing; people are avoiding others from a different racial background because they think those other people won't be interested," study author Kevin Lewis, a sociologist for UC San Diego, told USA Today. "Receiving an interracial contact and replying to it makes you send over twice as many new interracial messages in the short-term future than you would have otherwise."

Online daters may be chipping away at racial barriers, but that doesn't mean they've fallen completely. "Race as a dividing factor is much more important than basically any other attribute," Lewis explained. The study found that white online daters, both male and female, overwhelmingly made contact with other white users (although that's also due to the fact that there are more white people on OkCupid to choose from). Caucasian users were also the most likely to seek out people of another race. Those who identified as black, Hispanic, Indian or Asian were much more likely to stay within their own racial lane while online dating.

The only group that consistently bucked the trend was Asian women. Asian women were more likely to contact white men and other Asian men. They were also more likely to respond to white men (though it's important to note that all races were most likely to respond to white men).

Lewis calls online daters’ reluctance to reach out to users of different ethnic backgrounds "pre-emptive discrimination." Based on the way race has shaped their lives so far, they expect to experience rejection – or at least to have little in common with someone who doesn't share their heritage. But, says Lewis, the study suggests that if someone is bold enough to make the first move and overcome their fear of rejection, they are rewarded with the realization that the pool of potential partners is wider and richer than they had ever imagined.