To google men I meet on Tinder?

[GetOutOfMYGarden]

I was discussing this with a friend today. I met my current boyfriend on Tinder. Before I met up with him for the first time, I googled him and had a good look through his facebook, to check that he wasn't someone who'd been in the local news for something awful and to make sure I wasn't being catfished. I wasn't trying to find out anything weird, just a basic background check.

DF finds this very creepy and doesn't understand why you'd look it up at all. My boyfriend isn't arsed that I googled him and he googled me as well before meeting me in person.

Would you have looked them up before meeting in person for the first time?

I think a quick check is fine to protect yourself.

Years ago I did OLD before it was very popular. Got chatting to a nice guy who told me he worked in finance. Didn’t have a huge amount in common, but I was planning to meet him to see if there was chemistry.

A quick google brought up his local paper’s website. He’d recently been in jail. He was a struck-off financial advisor who’d scammed his previous in-laws out of hundreds of thousands. By the sounds of it, his wife had stood by him, so there was a chance he was still married too.

So I think a quick google is fine, but stalking social media is probably killing the romance.

But what if you can't find their Facebook page? Most people I know have their privacy settings so they can't be searched. That's just common sense to me. Actually I'd probably be put off someone that hadn't done that!

I'm not doing old now but on the back of this thread I've just googled myself. Apart from a few things related to my hobby I have no online presence, even if you do a really specific search with my full (and unusual) name, area I live in and my job title. My fb is very private and doesn't come up on public searches and if you were to find me on fb itself then it looks as though I've only been on there 5 minutes - I recently changed my profile and cover pic and make a point of making previous ones visible to friends only, I don't have any other public photos and my friends list is only visible to me (apart from friends of friends). I have no other social media accounts. I am, however, a genuine person.

What I'm getting at is that, whilst a quick google is probably sensible and adviseable, a lack of an online presence doesn't necessarily mean that person isn't who they claim to be. Also, don't forget that some people have popular and common names so it is possible to find information about someone other than the person you're thinking about - one of the results that came up for me was that I'm a spiritualist healer and I'm really not!

@NotSuchASmugMarriedNow1 I don't know anyone that uses a landline now tho (apart from inlaws) so I wouldn't necessarily jump to the 'they're married and cheating' assumption just from that

Not having an online presence wouldnt ring alarm bells for me but i would be disappointed that i couldnt do any snooping pre-date.
I do google/ fb search people too. I dont think it is creepy.
-one guy claimed to be 5 years younger than he was. His linkedin profile gave him away
-one guy who claimed to be single was married - quick fb search

• one who claimed to be childless had a child - also fb
• and there were a few whose fb profile was just really offputting.. loads of derogatory words, misogynist language etc

I got catfished a couple of times so started googling people. I started seeing it as a challenge to find as much as I could about them.

One person was on the sex offenders register - turns out I'd also worked with his ex wife at one point

One guy had had two short jail sentences for beating previous girlfriends up

A fair few have actually been in relationships

I've now been with my current boyfriend for nearly 6 months. We met via OLD. He was quite hard to find things on as doesn't use actively use social media (which seems to be more common).
In the end I gave him my surname to get his in return but he was being coy with his. Turns out there are news reports of someone with the same name in the same area that was bust for drugs and he didn't want me to get the wrong idea.

He's actually the most honest person I've ever met now (too honest for his own good, ie he'll tell me when my bum looks big)

There are A LOT of dicks on OLD but there is an odd gem too. I've been using it for years and met a few good guys. They just haven't worked out for whatever reason

Yes - always!

Met current boyfriend on Tinder. I googled him and looked him up on our staff directory as he said he worked for a branch of my organisation.