Protect your personal location information until you’ve built significant trust with someone. Use general area descriptions like your city or neighborhood, never your street address, apartment number, or specific workplace location. Sharing this too soon can put you at risk of stalking or harassment. Wait until after several in-person meetings before disclosing precise location details.

For any first meeting with someone you met online, always choose a busy, well-lit public location like a coffee shop, restaurant, or park during daylight hours. Never agree to meet at your home, their home, or any isolated location. Public venues provide natural safety through the presence of other people and staff who can assist if needed.

Before every date with someone new, share the full details with a trusted person: who you’re meeting, where you’re going, when you plan to return. Check in with them during and after your date. Consider using a location-sharing app like Find My Friends or Google Maps Live Share so someone always knows your whereabouts.

Request a video call (FaceTime, Zoom, Google Meet) before agreeing to meet in person. This helps verify that the person matches their photos and provides a much stronger sense of their identity than text alone. Be wary of anyone who consistently refuses or makes excuses to avoid video calls — this is a major red flag for catfishing.

Always control your own means of getting to and leaving a date. Drive yourself, use a rideshare service, or use public transportation. Do not accept rides from someone you’ve just met online. This ensures you can leave at any time you choose without being dependent on the other person, and prevents revealing your home address.

Romance scams cost victims billions of dollars annually. Never send money, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or wire transfers to anyone you have not met in person and established a real relationship with. Be extremely skeptical of anyone who quickly professes love and then asks for financial help, even in seemingly legitimate emergencies. This is the classic romance scam pattern.

Before investing time in a connection, save their profile photos and use Google Images reverse search or TinEye to see if those photos appear elsewhere on the internet. Scammers and catfishers frequently steal photos from models, social media influencers, or random people. If their photos show up under different names or on stock photo sites, it is a strong indicator of a fake profile.

Use the built-in messaging system rather than immediately moving to personal phone numbers, WhatsApp, Telegram, or email. Platform conversations provide a layer of anonymity and keep records should you ever need to report inappropriate behavior. Only move to personal contact methods after you are confident in the other person’s authenticity and intentions.

Your gut instincts are a powerful safety tool. If anything about a conversation, person, or situation feels uncomfortable, off, or too good to be true, trust that feeling and disengage. You owe no one a continued conversation. Block and report anyone who makes you feel unsafe, pressured, or uncomfortable. Your comfort and safety always come first.

Create a strong password unique to your FreeLoveNation account — never reuse passwords from other services. Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. Enable two-factor authentication when available. Use a reputable password manager to keep track of unique passwords for all your online accounts.

Review your photos carefully before uploading them. Photos can reveal sensitive information including: your exact home (visible through windows or outside), your vehicle and license plate, your workplace uniform or building, your neighborhood landmarks, and even GPS metadata embedded in image files. Crop or blur any identifying details before sharing photos.

Before agreeing to meet, do basic online research. Search their full name, phone number, and any other details they’ve shared. Look them up on LinkedIn, social media, and public records sites. While not foolproof, significant online presence matching their claims is reassuring. Conversely, a complete absence of any online footprint can be a red flag.

Love bombing refers to overwhelming someone with affection, compliments, and declarations of deep feelings very early in a relationship. While it can feel wonderful, it is often a manipulation tactic used by narcissists, scammers, and abusers to fast-track intimacy and lower your defenses. Healthy relationships develop at a natural pace. Be cautious of anyone who seems too perfect or too intense too quickly.

Be extremely cautious about sharing intimate or revealing photos with anyone you’ve met online. These can be used for extortion (sextortion), revenge porn, or to manipulate you. Once sent, you have no control over where those images go. Many countries have laws against non-consensual sharing of intimate images, but prevention is far better than legal recourse.

While it’s natural to have a drink to ease first-date nerves, ensure you stay sober enough to make clear decisions and recognize warning signs. Never leave your drink unattended, and be aware of symptoms of drug-facilitated assault. Consider non-alcoholic drinks for first meetings. Your ability to assess a situation clearly is one of your most important safety tools.

If you encounter a profile that seems fake, suspicious, or offensive, report it immediately using FreeLoveNation’s reporting tool. Include as much detail as possible. Your reports help our moderation team keep the community safe for everyone. You can also block any user to prevent them from contacting you. Reports are completely anonymous.

Some manipulators gradually escalate conversations toward increasingly intimate or sexual topics to normalize boundary violations. Be aware of conversations that consistently push toward sexual topics before you’re comfortable, requests for increasingly personal information, or pressure to move faster than you want. Healthy partners respect your pace and comfort level at all times.

FreeLoveNation offers ID verification and photo verification for members. Look for the blue verification badge on profiles. While verification provides an additional layer of confidence, it is not a guarantee of safety — always follow all other safety guidelines regardless of verification status. You can also complete your own verification to increase trust with potential matches.

No legitimate person or platform will ask for your banking details, credit card numbers, Social Security number, or other financial information through a dating app conversation. Sharing these details can lead to identity theft and financial fraud. If someone requests this information under any pretext — even seemingly urgent ones — block and report them immediately.

Before every first date, plan how you’ll leave if you feel uncomfortable. Have a cab app ready, know where the exits are, and don’t hesitate to say you have to leave. Some people use a ‘safety call’ where a friend calls 20 minutes into the date — if things are going badly, you have an instant excuse to leave. Remember: you never owe anyone your continued presence.

Before giving someone your social media handles, review your privacy settings. Check what information is publicly visible, including check-ins, location tags, family photos, and your place of work. Consider creating a separate social media account for new connections that doesn’t reveal sensitive personal details until you’ve built sufficient trust.

A common modern scam (sometimes called ‘pig butchering’) involves someone building a romantic connection over weeks or months, then introducing you to a ‘great investment opportunity’ involving cryptocurrency. These are always scams. Any romantic interest who brings up cryptocurrency investments is running a scam, regardless of how genuine the relationship has seemed until that point.

If someone makes you feel threatened, harasses you, or behaves inappropriately, take screenshots of the conversation before blocking them. These records can be valuable if you need to make a formal report to the platform, law enforcement, or other authorities. Store these in a secure location separate from the platform itself.

People often present their best (or a fictional) version of themselves online. Someone can be charming, funny, and thoughtful in messages while being very different in person. Take time to observe how someone behaves in different contexts — how they treat service staff, how they handle disagreement, their behavior when stressed. Actions always speak louder than carefully crafted messages.

Know that help is available if you experience harassment, stalking, or assault from someone you met online. Resources include: RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-HOPE), the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-SAFE), local law enforcement, and cyber crime reporting at ic3.gov. FreeLoveNation’s trust and safety team is also available 24/7. You are never alone.