Establishing Online Dating Relationships: Safety First

Online dating can be fun. But don’t neglect safety and common sense when you try to hook up with a mate. At minimum, take caution in the following areas.

Protect Your Computer

Take care of your equipment and systems before you head out into the Internet realm. You need to have a firewall and anti-virus protection for your email and for when you search websites and interact online. At the bare minimum, you may want these two solutions that are offered at no charge to home computer users (i.e. not for commercial use):

Free Firewall Download: ZoneAlarm www.zonelabs.com

Free Anti-Virus Download: AVG Anti-Virus www.grisoft.com

Protect Yourself

Take care of yourself, too, by choosing appropriate dating sites. Seek and choose a reputable online dating service. How? Begin by asking around with friends, neighbors, co-workers and others you may know who have tried online dating, and see which places they recommend. In addition, search “online dating services” and keep a notebook of their URLs or website links, the fees, rules and regulations, complete contact information of each and any other useful information that spikes your interest. Then compare each place. Try only those places where you feel safe. Avoid the others.

So take care. Arm your computer – and yourself- with the correct tools and knowledge!

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Where to Go on Your First Date

That is an age-old question. Cave men had it made. They firmly believed in kidnapping and taking their date to a filthy cave out in the middle of nowhere. Those were what was known as the good old days. Now days first date destinations and plans are a little trickier. First let’s cover where NOT to go on a first date.

The old standby of dinner and a movie is a really poor choice for a first date. How will you get to know the lady if you are sitting in a darkened theater with a movie being shown? If you choose the movie, there is probably going to be a lot of frantic car chases and a lot of blood involved. Neither are conducive to creating a memorable evening.

Also, don’t take your date to your parent’s house! She will know right away that you are a mama’s boy and you will never see her again.

Don’t take your date to a sleazy bar with a motel out back. You will scare the poor woman to death. She will jump out of the car and hitchhike back to town believing that she would be safer with a burly truck driver than with you.

Now, some good first date ideas are:

Begin with a simple lunch or coffee date. You want to keep the date casual so suggesting meeting up for lunch or coffee can be a good start. This way, if the date didn’t go so well, you can end the date there but if you enjoy each other company, you have the rest of the day to spend getting to know each other better.

Here are some ideas of where to go if the lunch or coffee date tells you’re there is some good chemistry happening:

If it is the season, an amusement park or a theme park is a good first date idea. It doesn’t matter how old you are, we can all be big kids at heart. There’re so much you can do at amusement parks and theme parks that most likely you will forget about the dating pressure and just have fun.

Most well populated areas have an array of museums covering many different subjects. Visiting one that is dedicated to something that you have in common with the woman is another good first date idea.