Online Dating: Match.com to start screening members for sex offenders

Let's be real: Dating can be a little scary. With online dating becoming ever more commonplace, the waters are only getting murkier when it comes to who your date really is. While online dating can be fun, and many people have found plenty of success with it, there have been problems too. Some states, like New York, are working on laws that will require dating sites to state clearly whether they conduct criminal background checks on their members before allowing them to sign up.

Convicted sex offenders are required to alert their neighborhoods and workplaces of their status, but in most states and with most social networking services, they don't have to 'fess up on their online profiles. Such criminals have been using dating sites to scout for their next victims.

Match.com has decided that it will begin screening its users against the national sex offender registry. Fewer creeps will slip through the cracks, but this doesn't mean that you should let your guard down. To stay safe in the dating world, whether online or off-, you need to follow a few precautions: Meet in a public place where people will be around, always listen to your gut feelings, and don't give out your address or credit card information.

These are all great tips, but you can take it a step further: Check out your date with a background check service. Once you get your date's first and last name, plus city and state (this is a must!), sign up for a highly recommended service like Intelius to get the pertinent details. A basic people search is only $1.95, and it shows you full name, date of birth, address, home phone number, home value, known relatives, and income. Not enough information? Their Background Report starts at $49.95 per name and adds a statewide criminal check, alias names, home value, sex offender status, marriages and divorces, and more (where available). Intelius's mobile app, DateCheck, allows you to find out important dating-specific information: birth date and astrological sign, living situation, criminal record, etc, from your iPhone. While none of these services can necessarily guarantee that your date is not a creep—they can't catch everything—they can help narrow the odds. Additionally, you can also run a search on the National Sex Offender Public Website.

We don't think this should scare you from trying an online dating site, but it always helps to be more aware.

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