The Internet Dating Safety Act became law in the state of New Jersey, the home of Lovefraud, on January 13, 2008. It is supposed to take effect next month.
The law applies only to New Jersey, USA, residents. It mandates that any Internet dating site must disclose to New Jersey members, clearly and conspicuously, whether it conducts criminal background checks. “The disclosure shall be provided when an electronic mail message is sent or received by a New Jersey member, on the profile describing a member to a New Jersey member, and on the website pages of the Internet dating service used when a New Jersey member signs up,” the law states. “A disclosure shall be in bold, capital letters in at least 12-point type.”
“Internet dating companies bear a responsibility to their customers to provide basic screening to weed out threatening individuals,” said Richard J. Codey, president of the New Jersey Senate, one of the law’s sponsors. “At the very least, Internet daters should at least know whether or not their chosen Web service provides such screening. This will open a lot of people’s eyes to the dangerous aspects of Internet dating.”
Cody’s last sentence represents only possible good that will come from this law—people in New Jersey may become aware of the dangers of Internet dating. In reality, the law is bogus. Online dating companies will never be able to screen out threatening individuals, even if they tried.
True.com lobbied for law
New Jersey, I’m embarrassed to say, was the first state to fall for a lobbying initiative by the dating website True.com.
I wrote about True.com a year ago, in Lying, cheating and online dating. True.com claims that it does not allow married people to sign up, and that it conducts a criminal background check of all members. Users should not believe that True.com is safe.
How does True.com screen for married people? It asks them to certify that they are not married.
And how does True.com run a background check? According to the Internet Alliance, True.com provides the names people give when they sign up—without attempting to verify any identities—to Rapsheets.com, which then runs the names through its database of criminal records. Rapsheets.com gets its information from various state governments that choose to participate—and many of them don’t. Plus, state records are notoriously incomplete—many counties do not even report crimes to a publicly accessible central database.
The bottom line is that True.com claims to screen for married people and criminals, but it reality, its screening is almost useless.
The law is, however, a marketing coup. True.com has succeeded in legislating its business model.
Other big players in online dating—such as Match.com and Yahoo Personals—opposed the law. Match.com concluded that background checks were worthless. But many users won’t know that.
“If consumers see a state mandated warning on the page of one company that doesn’t do screenings, over and over again, they’re going to think something is wrong,” says Braden Cox of NetChoice, who testified against the bill during hearings. “They’ll search out a site that does these screenings, and they’ll not read about the failures of criminal screenings because these will be buried in the terms of service. The result—a mistaken sense of safety.”
For more information on True.com’s shenanigans, see Hot but virtuous is an unlikely match for online dating service, in the New York Times.
Falling in love with a fantasy
Online dating is a huge business. According to Juniper Research, an Internet consultancy, online dating represents a $700 million market. Every month, 20 million people visit online dating sites.
Here’s what these 20 million people should know: All Internet dating sites are dangerous.
As Lovefraud explains in Online Seduction, anyone who falls in love with someone over the Internet falls in love with a fantasy. You never really know who you’re talking to. And much of the interpersonal information you usually use in order to evaluate someone—tone of voice, body language—is missing.
Furthermore, background checks on dating sites will never work because:
- It is impossible to find out if someone is married.
- Criminal records databases are incomplete.
- Crimes like fraud are rarely prosecuted, so there is no conviction and no record.
- Domestic violence often goes unreported.
- Many people who do not have criminal records are still predators.
Lovefraud readers have told many, many stories of becoming involved with sociopaths who seemed to be upstanding members of their communities, but were, in fact, emotionally, financially and even physically abusive. Much of this behavior never gets exposed in court, either criminal or civil. Therefore, there is no record.
Report dating ads on Lovefraud
Lovefraud endorses no dating sites. In fact, we make every effort to block dating sites from advertising on Lovefraud. Every time we see one, we add it to our banned list.
Still, you may see dating ads on Lovefraud.com. This is because Google enables advertisers to target ads geographically. So a dating site for Australians, for example, may advertise on our website, and here in New Jersey, we’ll never see it.
If you see an ad for a dating site on Lovefraud, please let us know. Send the url (www.datingsite.com) to terry@lovefraud.com, and we’ll block it.
Listen to your instincts
Dating sites represent a perfect storm for cheaters, criminals and con artists. Predators see plenty of targets who have already admitted to being lonely. Predators can hide their true identities and intentions. Predators can work many targets at once, looking for one—or more—who will give them what they want.
Yes, there are normal people on dating sites who just want to meet someone nice. So if you’re going to use a dating site, here’s my advice: Only get involved with people who live near you. This way, you can spend quality time with them—and check them out.
Finally, with online dating, keep your eyes and ears open, be skeptical—not starry-eyed, and always listen to your instincts.
FREE; THAT IS EXACTLY HOW HE DID IT TILT HIS HEAD I NEED A HUG LIKE OH POOR ME. AND AFTER WE BROKE UP TOO. HUGS ALL ROUND. HE EVEN LIFTED ME OFF THE GROUND AND HUGGED I AM PRETTY SAMLL, LIKE I AM THE BIG STRONG GUY AND YOUR THE LITTLE FEMALE I CAN DO ANY THING WITH. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP. THEY COULD BE TWINS BY THE SOUNDS OF IT. BY THE WAY IM IN AUS TOO.
free; hell i think he might hold his own cuddle party. i might have a cuddle party for all the nice woman who have been done over by s paths and ns what do you say about that. we need it more than them all the cuddles in the world would not take away the pain they inflict on us. cheers. mine wa s almost addicted to affection and felt ripped off if he didnt get that sort of attention. something seriously wrong with that.
FREE,
You said, “I am glad that I have been questioning people’s agenda, because I was brought up to accept everyone without question and I was very naive because of it.”
Sometimes I am guilty of implying what I mean but you pointed it out here. We are being trained by our Culture… at least in the US, to be open and non-judgemental. We think if we reject something it means we are “judging” something and that reflects negatively on us. I found a definition of the word “judge.”
to judge: To form an opinion or estimation of after careful consideration
Right… after CAREFUL consideration.
Don’t we all need a cuddle? I do! Being cuddled is one of our earliest comforts and these parties are designed to tap into that sweet space in our psyche. This is why it is a perfect place for people to cross eachother’s boundaries. It makes things blurry. If you felt a little strange about someone, and let’s say you never had an encounter with a Sociopath, wouldn’t you struggle a little in this environment? You would want to go along with what was happening in the name of being “open” and if you did have boundaries come up… well, isn’t this Cuddle Party supposed to help you with that? Maybe you are having intimacy issues? So, you are in the right place. Do you get me?
I can imagine easily that this is the “coaching” one might recieve from the facilitator. This is why I think Cuddle Parties and things like that are not safe. They are a MAGNET for people who want to be a place with unclear boundaries. Doesn’t this sound a lot like what happened to many of us? Endless arguing and looping about the instincts that popped up to tell us something wasn’t right and then being talked out of these instincts… and being punished for having them.
When I was with the Bad Man, every time my good judgement kicked in, I was talked out of it. It was easy too. All he had to do was call me “uptight” and “Church Lady.” This would cause me to waiver because I considered myself to be open… and a Christian… but an OPEN Christian. I did not want to be associated with any Bible thumping.
I remember a conversation around drugs. He was into taking some kind of VERY strong hullucinagenic herb, “guided” in a ceremony by an Amazonian tribal guy that visited Maui a few times a year. I was not interested. The Bad Man got mad at me because I didn’t want to do this. I remember saying, “Are we actually arguing over the fact that I am not interested in doing drugs of any kind and you have a problem with this?!”
This “ceremony”, I was told, involved people babbling incoherrantly and vomiting. That was why the special Amazonian guy was there… to protect you.
Why don’t YOU PROTECT YOU?
Being niave and “open” and trying my very best to be non-judgemental cost me a lot. Now, I stand firm in what I know and what my instincts tell me and I listen to my judgement because “judgement” is a good thing.
Let us heed the warning: “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”
BTW.. about Puppy Eyes. The Bad Man had an adorable look that swept across his face as well. Over time, I learned that when I saw this face, I was in DEEP TROUBLE. For me, this was when something I said was being twisted in his mind and an attack was soon to follow.
Free
“By the way LilOrphan, my ex was tall, dark and handsome with gray eyes. Sound like your last online date?”
Hahaha. No. But they all sound like that on “paper” or screen, right?
And anyway, he poofed after a short period of time. So I figure that staying on that trajectory would mean meeting a whole lot of different people who would do that, and that’s too much like revolving door dating to me. I don’t want to share myself with the entire world. Just one special person, and am willing to wait for that person until I’m sure they want to actually become part of someone’s life – not just jump in and then out again.
On to cuddle parties — I have no ideas about them. One thing, though, did jump out at me: in the five years I spent between dating the Wolf and then re-dating the Wolf, there was a point I was so starved for physical, non-sexual touching that it actually HURT. That was even with having a snuggly child who was very hands-on. I’m very hands on, and I felt the absence of having someone adult and male to hold and be held by. So maybe I guess I get it, a little, those parties, but still think it’d be too much for me, personally, to do with strangers.
The politically correct concept of not being “judgmental” has I think kind of thrown the baby out with the bath water.
Does it mean that if I want to sacrifice my child on an altar to Baal, that no one can “judge” my religious beliefs? That I should be allowed to do this?
How about female circumcision? Which is a horrible mutilation of the little girl’s genetalia if that is my “culture”?
How about if I only believe in “faith healing” and my child is sick with diabetes and I refuse to give them insulin?
How about the “Man boy love association” who believe that we are depriving young boys from being loved by adult males? Can we “judge them”?
“Judging” someone has become a BAD thing today it seems, but how else can we have any moral or legal codes by which society works?
As a SOCIETY we have decied that “judging” someone because of their skin color or religion is not OK, or to refuse to give them a job because of that, or their gender is not okay? But does that mean that you cannot form any opinons about any kind of behavior?
We all should have the same HUMAN rights, from the “bag lady” or the “wino” on the street to the president of the US, but each of us by the way we dress and by the way we act set ourselves up to be part of a “group”—there are so many people on the face of the earth that none of us can know them individually so we use these external appearances to form some kind of idea about these people. If I dressed up in old clothes and pushed a filled shopping cart down the street like a homeless person would you be wrong for thinking I was a homeless person? No you wouldn’t be wrong for that because that is the way I potrayed myself. BUT you would be wrong if you treated me mean just because you thought you could treat a “worthless” homeless old woman mean.
I don’t think the 3-little Pigs were wrong in “racially profiling” the wolves—they were using common sense. This absolute and totally not “judging” (by politically correct nonsense) is absolutely absurd.
I’m in agreement that you should be able to pray to any god you want to, or none. That you should be able to dress to “express your individuality” or your “culture” but you still are not allowed to walk down the street naked if that is your “culture” and you are still not allowed to sacrifice your children as a blood sacrifice to your god, or to mutilate your daughters in this country.
There must be some mutually agreed upon societal rules that are appropriate and enforced…it is just the personal and petty stuff that we shouldn’t “judge” people on and treat them with contempt because of it.
I think Benjamin Franklin was the one who said “Sin is not bad for you because it is labeled sin, it is labeled sin because it is bad for you.”
The things that we as a culture and society and a country label “sin” (crime) are the things that we as a country have decided are “bad for people.” That does not cover ALL the things that are bad for you though, and there are many things that are not illegal that are “bad” for us as a people and a culture and also as individuals. Most of the things our Ns and Ps have done to us are NOT “illegal” yet we know that these things are BAD and cause devestation to lives.
It isn’t illegal to get falling down drunk every night of the year. That is still not good for you or your family if you have one. It is illegal to smoke marijuana ever.
alohatraveler and OxDrover, great posts as usual:)
I slid a little backwards today. I went to my counselors and she said that there must have been something there that he stayed so long and he loved me for awhile( as much as a N can). I explained to her that he stayed because he had nowhere to go. He couldn’t hold a job. When my money was gone so was he. If he would have found a $#%^& (gf name) earlier he would have been gone sooner. Then she said well you stayed because you had nowhere else to go too. I’m not sure where she’s trying to go with this. Just when I think I’m seeing things clearly, I get confused again.
I’ve really been able to see my role in letting him do everything he’s done. I have accepted my responsibility for it. I know he thinks a certain way and has never thought any other way. He thinks everyone thinks the way he does and that’s how the world works. ( I do have trouble with the last one because why does he pretend to be a “good person” if he thinks they don’t exist?)
I’m sorry that I’m rambling. It just took me so long to come to terms with the fact I was the same as a toaster to him, that her saying he must have felt something for me upsets me.
Please excuse me if Im a little behind the topic of cuddle parties – whatever they are, but you have all been busy and I have alot of reading to catch up on.
The main two points that came to my mind were – P/N/S’s carry out their predatory behaviour with such aplomb that it is not detectable to start with. Secondly, even if a staff member could hold bad behaviour from guests in check, this would only delay the exhibiting of that behaviour which would then not be in a controlled environment. I was on online dating and apart from loads of guys who seemed to want to collect my picture, it really isnt worth the effort. Someone commented on another thread (I will have to go back and find it) – that they are realising that romance is not to be contained in a box, like everyone going after that illusive box. My horoscope said that if we compartmentalise romance, we are setting ourselves up to be let down and I think we have all learnt that lesson in the most extreme way possible. So why are we all trying the same actions and struggling with this, if it bought us pain the last time. Me – Im removing myself from all dating websites and Im gonna try and make a good life for myself and keep the bad stuff out.
Yea, thinking back, if I kissed him on the cheek he would look very affronted and demanded to be kissed on the mouth. When I found saw the womens phone numbers and turned my back on him in bed, he started telling me off, as though I was being the unreasonable one! Neat ploy eh!
I wouldnt give a cuddle to anyone, and I certainly am more ‘selective’ about what I give away to anyone – even if it is my time or a reply to their question. I am not going around mistrusting pepple, but I am more restrained until I am convinced or at ease.
Beverly, I can’t remember who said this (on another thread) and would give them credit if I did, but they said
“insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting DIFFERENT results”
Boy is that a one sentence mouthfull. That is what “victims” have done, is that even when we were uncomfortable and in pain, and we keep repeating being “reasonable” when it has NEVER ACCOMPLISHED the desired result. Why do we keep thinking if we keep doing more of it it will succeed?
Another animal training analogy is training a horse.
You put a bit in a horse’s mouth and you pull on the reins, which causes discomfort tothe horse. When the horse, in an effort to ease the discomfort turns his head to the right, you release the pressure and the discomfort goes away.
The horse learns that if he moves to release the discomfort that you do not apply more discomfort, so riding and guiding the horse starts out with discomfort and release of discomfort.
Before you get on that horse though and start the discomfort/release you feed him and pet him, and do comforting things to him to gain his trust first.
So essentially we are treating the animal we are training just as an N or P treats us, we are being “nicey” nicely” feeding him and petting him, making him trust us and then we start the pain/release, and in between times we give him another bite of feed so he thinks we are the “feed-god, the giver of all good things” but, we do require that he carry us on his back, and make him go the way WE want him to go, and if he decides he does not want to go that way, we INCREASE the pain until he does.
God forbid that he should decide to defend himself from us in the only way he knows by kicking or biting, or try to run away from us—we will chase him down and thoroughly “teach him he is not EVER to kick at us” and in the end, if he refuses to be compliant and nothing we do will make him compliant to our will entirely, then we send him off to be processed into dog food.
I also am realizing now that I passed on to my good-hearted son some of my enabling behavior—he met on the internet and married a woman from NY. She had a son in a wheel chair, and because my son had been brought up around people in wheel chairs he was “off-put” by this, in fact, I think his “caregiver” nature kicked in. Of course this was a big detriment to this woman finding a man who would “take care of her and support her and her son” as well as her out-of-control teenaged daughter.
She married my son and they moved her to the community here near us, but she had convinced my son that I was “trying to break up the romance” so he married her without really getting to know her—and she isolated him from us as much as she could. I knew from the beginning that the woman was “deceptive” but that was about all I could “intuit” because she was always “overly polite” to me, but my gut feeling was that she was deceptive.
My son, who was also taught that when you get married you are committed to that person, you don’t go behind their back and complain to others about how unhappy you are, you deal with the person you are unhappy with.
I knew something was “wrong” with my son, that he was depressed and unhappy (and cranky) but didn’t know what it all was, now that she is gone (after trying to kill him) he is opening up somewhat about how unhappy he was and why.
She had had multiple marriages with domestic violence and one ex in jail for a long term affair with her teenaged daughter. either of her kids had any manners and were quite rude, the daughter was a thief and had stolen things from my house, and made very inappropriate sexual advances to my adopted son which her mother was not willing to acknowledge or deal with…now I am finding out that this woman was violent toward my son, throwiing things pushing etc. and trying to percipitate a physically violent “fight” with him. He would not do that however, and would put his coat on and leave the house when she started this.
The Ex-convict that she had the affair with took pictures of her “in bondage” etc. which is apparently what she wanted, and he had a known history of sexual offenses, which she knew about but refused to acknowledge that they were with an 8, 11, and 14 yr old because he said that the girl was 17 and appeared older. She is out on probation, with a no contact order now, but still in contact with her BF who is in prison for some time yet…and still trying to manipulate, very carefully on the “line of being legal” to take financial advantage of my elderly mother.
Not only did I follow in my enabling mother’s footsteps, but I inadvertently taught my son to do so as well. I DO believe if you have trouble with your spouse you should work it out with your spouse and not “triangulate” everyone in the family into the “fight” or disagreement, but that like any good thing can be taken to extremes and allow your spouse to perpetrate horrible abuses upon you.
Fortunately, her trying to kill him was what crossed the RED LINE with my son…because even after he had discovered the affair, he was willing to go to counseling with her and try to salvage the marriage. I am just thankful to God that she showed her TRUE COLORS and that the law stepped in and arrested her and her BF. The nearly 7 months that she spent in jail and the 5 days afterwards while she was in a domestic violence shelter (during which time she decided that SHE was the victim of violence and abuse because my son kept a gun in their house) Of course the fact that she bought a gun for herself and her ex-convict boy friend was only for her “protection” and didn’t make her abusive. Boy can they put the spin on it.
She went into my mom’s lock box and tore up the loan agreement where my mom had loaned her BF the money to purchase a vehicle with, and since SHE tore it up, (which of course she denies) therefore the truck is “not owed on” and so she is trying to get possession of the vehicle as her BF’s Power of Attorney—fortunately we weren’t born last night and have filed a lien against the vehicle for 8 months of storage and a small claims case for the money my mom loaned her BF so they will NOT be able to get the truck, but it isn’t because they didn’t try. That is to say nothing of the $2800 of the $24,000 that they stole from my mom that mom didn’t get back because they had spent it.
Geesh! They just don’t learn, they just don’t change their spots. But in a way I am glad that she is pulling this crap because I think it is making it easier for my son to accept the fact that there is NOTHING HE COULD HAVE DONE to have changed her from what she is—a parasite who picked him as a “meal ticket” for her and her children, and a personality disordered person who has used and will continue to use him and anyone else for her own purposes.
8 years ago when they first married I bet my best freind a $100 dinner that withiin 3 months of the death of her son (expected at some point) that she would be gone. He had only been dead about 6 weeks when she tried to kill my son, and had been having the affair as her son was dying.
She also uses “being depressed over the death of her son” as her reasons for the affiar, etc. yet, while he son was dying, my son took off from work to be there and hold his hand, while SHE was off screwing her boy friend, doing drugs and drinking like a fish—yea, like the typical psychopath, she “loved ” her son, but thought it was more important to be with her boyfriend than with her son as he was dying.