Are you the shy type? You're not alone. Many daters have trouble approaching someone new, striking up conversation, and asking someone out - even online.

That's why a new dating app called Anomo could help you in breaking the ice. Created by James Sun, a self-proclaimed introvert, the app helps shy people create an avatar - or "anomo" - to hide themselves while they strike up new conversations. In essence, they can hide behind a mask.

This might seem risky in today's dating environment, but the app verifies its users through Facebook. (Nothing is posted or shared from Facebook, and other users can't see your profile, but they do see your verification.)

There has always been a nagging problem lurking in the back of the online dating industry's head: when you've built your business around helping singles find true love, what happens when they find it? On one hand, your marketing department has a lot to brag about. On the other hand, you just lost a customer.

HowAboutWe has answered the question and solved the online dating paradox with an innovative strategy: aim for a whole new market. Co-founders Brian Schechter and Aaron Schildkrout turned the problem into a business advantage by creating a dedicated site for people who are already paired up. The site was christened HowAboutWe for Couples, and a new era of online dating was born.

"We had always focused on bringing online dating offline," Schildkrout told Fast Company. "All the sites are designed to keep users chatting, poking, and endlessly searching profiles online," but HowAboutWe's purpose was "to connect people in the real world." Its original incarnation earned over 1 million users easily, but the dating experience doesn't end at a meet up.

"Couples go on thousands of dates in the course of their relationship," Schildkrout observed. Multiple studies have shown the positive effects of date nights for committed couples. One such study from the National Marriage Project found that married men and women who go on dates at least once a week are 3.5 times more likely to report being "very happy" in their marriages. Consequently, they're also less likely to get divorced than those who do not spend dedicated time with their mates.

To help its couples stay together, and keep them coming back for more, HowAboutWe for Couples curates a list of date ideas culled from existing data on dates, information gleaned from the site's user base, and a team devoted to uncovering the best undiscovered dates. Think dessert tastings, archery lessons, hot air balloon rides, and an aphrodisiac pop-up dinner, whatever that is.

The couples' site operates similarly to the original dating site. Users pay a membership fee ($18 per month) to browse dates, and pay per date based on the ones they choose. Unlike coupon sites like Groupon or LivingSocial, HowAboutWe doesn't extract a percentage from the cost of the date. 100% of the proceeds go to the vendor. Because of this, Schildkrout says, HowAboutWe is able to offer more unique experiences then the daily coupon companies.

So far, HowAboutWe's move seems to be a good one. Though only 12% of users who met through the site are currently using the couples service, Schildkrout reports that it has maintained a 90% month-over-month retention and has over half a million users. To find out more about this dating and couple service you can read our How About We review.

A recent survey from Harris Interactive of 5,517 UK citizens found that one in 12 (8%) users of social media sites have been the victims of online abuse in some form or another. That part of the story won't surprise anyone who's spent even a marginal amount of time on the Internet. We've seen time and time again that when you put people behind a screen name, the anonymity creates a sense of invincibility and depersonalization that makes it easier to bully others.

The part of the story may be a surprise to some is the response we are taking to online abuse. Only a third (35%) of participants in the study said they reported their abuse to the social media platform on which it took place. Half said they would have reported it, if only they knew how. Another 12% said they chose to respond to the problem by turning the situation around and bullying their abusers.

"It's interesting to note the high percentage of people who say they would have reported the abuse had they known how to, or if the process was simpler," Lee Langford, research director for telecoms, media, technology and entertainment at Harris Interactive, said. "More steps need to be taken by networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Ask.fm, to increase the effectiveness of reporting tools to prevent trolling."

Another survey, conducted by campaign group Bullies Out, found that 50% of their response pool had been victims of cyber bullies, some of whom were as young as seven years old. The CEO of BeatBullying, Emma-Jane Cross, believes both the problem and the solution lie with the social networking sites themselves. "Social networking sites need to take their users' safety seriously," she said, "which includes making reporting procedures much clearer and ensuring a swift response when abuse is recorded."

The difficulty in reporting abuse on websites is that it isn't just used for reporting abuse. Even the system for reporting abuse is abused. In many cases, a disgruntled user files an unwarranted abuse report simply to get another user in trouble and exact revenge. There is no system in place to distinguish malicious abuse reports from real abuse reports, meaning that many are never taken seriously.

So what can you do? We can't eradicate abuse from the Internet completely, but there are a few steps that can be taken to decrease the likelihood of bullying:

• Only post things you want the public to know. Once something is online, it is no longer under your control.
• Guard your personal information closely, and ask your friends to do the same. Request that they not post personal info, negative comments, check-ins, or any other information that you're not comfortable sharing.
• Don't say or do anything online you wouldn't in person. It may seem easier to express yourself when you are not face-to-face, but don't forget that online communication has real-life consequences.
• Always report inappropriate behavior, harassing messages, and abusive comments to the site administrators. Even a small amount of action is better than no action.

I've talked about what to do after a break-up when your heart is hurting. It's a time for healing, finding yourself again, and learning how to move on.

Break-ups can be devastating, but what happens when you're on the other side of things - when you want to do the breaking up? Maybe a long-term relationship just isn't working for you anymore. But how do you know if breaking up is the right thing to do when the friendship is important? And how do you break up with someone you care about without looking like a jerk, or worse, wondering if your ex will hate you?

First, it's important to understand that not all relationships are meant to last. Sometimes they are learning experiences, which isn't a bad thing. They help us find ourselves - without hurt and loss, we don't realize how strong we can be. We don't grow.

But breaking off a long-term relationship is a difficult process. After all, you've spent holidays and birthdays together, you know your partner's family, you know intimate details about him, like how he has to wash his face three times before going to bed or that he leaves his socks in little piles around the house. You share the same friends. How do you even begin to separate from each other's lives?

These are difficult questions that only you can answer. All I can say is, if you don't wake up in the morning excited to be with your partner, or you'd rather spend time alone than have dinner together, you're probably not in the right relationship.

Many relationships start out with passion and romance, but these don't last. If you're constantly chasing passionate love, you might want to take a look at what you're doing and ask yourself if it's making you happy. The basis of a good relationship is very simple: if you enjoy being together despite your fights, your problems, and your differences, then you're probably in the right relationship. If you'd rather find the next plane out of town regardless of whether or not you hit a rough patch, then you're probably with the wrong person.

Don't stay in a relationship because you don't want to disappoint your partner. If you're not emotionally invested, then you're not doing yourself or her any favors, and you will both end up hurt and resentful.

Breaking up isn't the worst thing that can happen to a person. Sometimes it's the best thing. Let her move on and find someone else who is right for her. And allow yourself to move on, too.

You might have missed a recent article in The New York Times about how group dating is becoming a new way to date.

Instead of meeting a match one-on-one like you would with most online dating sites, some are now offering to set you up on a group date with five to eleven matches - 3 to 6 men and 3 to 6 women total, to offer you more choices and a more relaxed and engaging first date.

The reason? Group dates tend to take the pressure off of individuals. You don't have to make a list of interesting things to say or questions to ask, or try to keep conversation going whenever there's an awkward pause. Plus, it's like having three to six dates in one night!

Best of all, you increase your chances of clicking with someone. It maximizes the chance you'll hit it off with someone in a way that speed dating doesn't. For one, you get to spend more time with your potential dates and really get to know them, instead of being rushed through a five-minute meeting and going on a first impression.

Group dating is an interesting proposition, and has been met with a lot of interest. Online dating and now even speed dating sites are opening up to this concept. So what are the drawbacks?

Some people tend to be more shy and reserved, especially around new people. If there is a gregarious, fun person in the group, he might steal the attention away from other great dates by leading the conversation or suggesting what to do next. It's hard to compete for attention. The beauty of a one-on-one date is that there aren't really any distractions and you can focus on each other.

But there is something to be said for a relaxed, no-pressured group date. There isn't an expectation of sex or romance by the end of the evening, at least not with one particular person. You don't have to plan the date in terms of picking the place and paying for both you and your date - the dating site offering the group date experience plans a location to meet and each person is responsible for her own tab.

If you're new to dating or if you've been through a recent break-up, this might be the best way to dip your toe in the dating pool. Instead of working up the nerve to go on a date, a group date is like dining with new friends, which may or may not lead to romance.

Somewhere in the back of our heads, rattling around with all the other information we ignore like "You really shouldn't drink that last shot of tequila," we know that having an online account means accepting the risk that that account might be hacked. But no matter how many times we hear horror stories of it happening to someone else, we never quite believe it could happen to us.

Imagine the surprise, then, that Cupid Media users must have felt when the service was hacked early in 2013 and the names, e-mail addresses, and plaintext passwords for 42 million accounts were exposed. Ouch. That has gotta sting.

Ars Technica reports that "The cache of personal information was found on the same servers that housed tens of millions of records stolen in separate hacks on sites including Adobe, PR Newswire, and the National White Collar Crime Center." An official from Cupid Media explained that the hack appeared to be connected to "suspicious activity" that was detected on the site in January and officials say they believe they have notified all affected users, but those actions and explanations are likely to do little to appease users whose personal information has been compromised.

The Cupid Media hack will go down in history as one of the largest passcode breaches on record so far, a dubious distinction made even worse by the fact that the data was in plaintext, rather than a cryptographically protected format that requires significant effort to crack. Because many Internet users reuse the same passwords on multiple websites, a hack on this scale can give thieves instant access to tens of thousands of sensitive accounts tied to a user's e-mail address.

"Making matters worse," Ars Technica speculates, "many of the Cupid Media users are precisely the kinds of people who might be receptive to content frequently advertised in spam messages, including male enhancement products, services for singles, and diet pills."

And making matters even worse than that, a review of the Cupid Media user records that were exposed reveals that a significant portion of them were protected with weak passwords in the first place. More than 1.9 million accounts were protected with the password "123456." Another 1.2 million used "111111." How is it that, in this day and age, there are still people who think those are secure passwords? Have they never seen the Internet before?

Take note, online daters: the more random your password is, the safer it is. And please, please, never use the same password on multiple sites.