by Cherryl Floyd-Miller

Created on: February 13, 2008   Last Updated: July 16, 2008

While the abundance of online dating has increased over the last few years, the dangers involved in cyber romance have increased, too.

You are no longer opening yourself to the girl or the guy next door. You are leaving yourself vulnerable to every personality type in the world. Forty percent of American adults are single, and 40 percent of that single pool (about 40 million people) use online dating services.

Though the online dating scene seems to be thriving, it is still a social hub that requires you to stay a bit guarded. Dating services, chat rooms and other online forum, there are things you should be careful about.

1. Beware that an online persona is not always the person you will meet in person. This moves far beyond putting up old pictures that no longer look like the person you are dating - or worse, having them post a picture of someone else as themselves. Meeting in the cyber medium encourages quite a bit of fantasy. You are not face-to-face and cannot gauge whether an online date is telling you the truth. Perhaps you have fallen in love with the fantasy. Be prepared for many things to be different than you imagined when you finally meet your date in person.

2. Be careful not to give too much information and endanger yourself. The number one thing that you sacrifice when you date online is safety, especially if you decide to meet in person. You have been slowly giving another person information about yourself that can be used to your own disadvantage. Don't always be so willing to give up all of your secrets. You don't want to be in a circumstance where you are stalked, assaulted, robbed or overpowered because you didn't take the necessary precautions. Use your sixth sense and stay smart about how much you tell, though whatever you tell, make it the truth.

3. Prepare for the chemistry to be toned down. Part of the intrigue of online dating is the mystery of not truly knowing how real your connection is. Mostly, you are connected based on what you both believe about each other. Sometimes, the connection crashes when you meet in person. You realize what you have had has been a heightened romantic fantasy based solely on your own wants or needs. You believe in what you have been building with our online date because you've been able to dream it all up.

There is also the possibility that the person you've been getting to know online may not be as skilled a communicator as he's been in his emails or chat messages. Don't assume he's being dishonest. The in-person

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