Guides
Choosing a platform, behaving in a chat, spotting a scam, coping with silence: the practical pages of online dating.
Dating sites and apps
An honest map of the main platforms: what each one actually does, who it is for, and how to choose without spending more than you meant to.
How to behave in a chat room
Courtesy, safety and common sense in a chat room: what to do, what not to do, and why.
Romance scams
Spot the fraud, react in the right order, and know exactly where to report it.
Ghosting: disappearing without a word
Why people disappear without a word, what it does, how to react, and how to end things differently.
Your rights when you meet online
Meeting online puts very concrete rights in play: what the platform does with your data, what you may publish of a photograph, what you risk by writing, what you buy by subscribing. Each has its own page, with a page for every country.
Image rights
Taking a picture and publishing it are two separate legal acts. Almost every dispute turns on that distinction.
Identity theft
The first few hours decide most of it. What you do before reporting matters more than the procedure that follows.
Data protection
Access, correction, erasure: the rights look similar the world over. What differs is whether anyone enforces them.
Privacy
Almost every country recognises a right to privacy. What it covers, who it binds and how you enforce it differ completely.
Speech and online harassment
One distinction decides nearly every case: whether the statement was an opinion or an assertion of fact.
Copyright
Protection arises without any formality and lasts for decades. It is the exceptions, not the rights, that change from country to country.
Online shopping
Whether you can send something back has little to do with the seller and everything to do with which legal system you bought in.
Two halves of the same thing
Online dating splits into two unrelated skills. The first is social: choosing a platform that matches what you are looking for, writing a profile that sounds like a person, holding a conversation that leads to a date rather than to three months of messages.
The second is legal, and it is the one people overlook: an advert is a publication. What you write about someone can be defamation, the photograph you send is still protected by image rights, the profile someone builds with your pictures is identity theft, and the subscription you take out is governed by consumer law. The pages below give the principle, then the detail country by country.
The rule that covers the rest
Nothing published online escapes the law because it happens on a dating site. A social network, a forum and a personal advert follow the same rules: it is not the medium that decides, it is the content.
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