Stop! Before you join that FREE online dating site

Online dating has exploded in popularity over the past few years. Ready for love and willing to look online? Then you might be in luck! A live Internet connection and a computer will get you started with online dating. Then a few mouse clicks, you're on your way. At your fingertips: millions of potential love matches.

Basically, there are two types of dating sites: free sites and paid sites. While the free sites offer the obvious advantage of "no fees", there are many drawbacks that lie beneath their fee-free surface. On the other hand, don't discount the paid sites altogether - they have their strong points: these sites are set up to elevate your user experience and you can also expect some general safety measures to be in place.

Not all dating websites are created equally. So keep this in mind when choosing between paid or free. You'll get what you pay for - or don't pay for, in the case of the freebies. A free site could put you at risk and open you up to potential dangers.

Dating sites, like any other business, need to turn a profit. If that is true, how do the supposedly free ones work? How can they stay around and not charge members for their services? The free sites don't off much in the way of "bells and whistles". They don't exist. You probably won't find free webcam chatting or video hosting capabilities on free sites. But maybe most important - you won't find responsive customer service. And that means no one ready to answer your questions. Consider yourself lucky if your free dating site has a phone number for customer support.

You may be getting less of the traditional features that make the paid sites more complete. But you will get a lot of something else: you'll get plenty of advertising - big, bold annoying banners that pop up and pop-unders every time you log on. Everyone loves those, right? At least once a week, you can also expect to get e-mail advertising. And perhaps worst of all, your personal info can be sold to a large advertising network.

Are you still considering joining a free dating site?

Let's say you join a free dating site and you find someone that interests you. You spend a few weeks e-mailing back and forth. And maybe you get to the next stage - phone conversations with this person. After enjoying his or her virtual company, you decide to meet face-to-face. But since there were no fees to fork over for site membership, who is this person? He or she could be just about anyone. This member might have provided completely false information - the images could be fake and the profile could be phony. This person might have even deliberately created a fake personality in order to convince you to meet in person. Sadly, this isn't unusual and happens all time. The malicious party does not always plan to harm or otherwise hurt the person being deceived, but too often, unfortunately, that is exactly what he or she has in mind.

If you were to meet someone from a free dating site and you were to be robbed or otherwise assaulted, what information about your date can you tell the police? Here's the problem: there's no credit card on file. In fact, there's no official payment information at all. So where do the police start to look?

None of the drawbacks listed above exist on a paid dating site. While these sites will definitely charge you a fee, in exchange your whole experience will be much more pleasant. And you won't be harassed by those paid ads or junk e-mails.

The user interface for paid dating sites lets you do much more, such as performing elaborate search functions. You will also find several additional forms of user communication outside of email, such as instant messaging or possibly webcam chatting.

The paid membership sites offer yet another perk, one that is often overlooked. If you discovered someone from the site that you liked, and you wanted to meet face to face, his or her real personal information is definitely on file with the dating site.