BBC Panorama about online dating

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I've always been suspicious of online dating and I decided years ago that I wouldn't bother with it. This documentary confirms my suspicions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el62Xe3x11M

yeah it looked pretty terrible. but it only covered the pay-for sites. i guess there's less incentive for the free ones to try and scam you.

Hint: Bad people exist in real life too. There just seems to be a greater concentration of them on dating sites.

Having said that, if you attract dodgy/abusive people in real life you might want to work on why that is.

wow!

I met my wife on an online dating site.
We've been together more than 9 years, married more than 6 years.
We are both very happy, and due to my then undiagnosed autism (which previously would have been diagnosed as Asperger's before DSM5), and her CP, which means she uses a wheelchair, dating for both of us by other means would have been problematic, and may have not yielded worthwhile results.

There are good and bad online dating sites, just like there are good and bad people online and in real life.
You just have to be careful who you interact with and how both online and offline.
Simple as that.

A blanket statement saying online dating is not safe or is bad oversimplifies the issue.

This doesn't put me off dating sites entirely, but from now on, I'll do a Google image search on potential partners' profile pictures, just to minimise the chances of being conned by a 'pseudo'.

Agree with you.
I use a couple free sites, which have their pros & cons-as would a pay site.
Haven't yet met anyone with whom I click/connect, but it's pretty much my only venue in which to meet anybody.

I seen lots of storeis on Unsolved Mysteries where people met offline in various ways & one person was a con-man/woman or living some kind of double life. Maybe the moral is that you should hire an investigator or get a cop friend to check out any potential partner off as well as online. IThe 3 girlfriends I had I met on forums & they were all who they said they were. I found forums worked better for me than dating sites because I don't have much going for me & my personality shins alot better in some of my posts after awhile.

Someone from this very board ran a criminal background check on me. I think due to curiosity but maybe also as a safety precaution so as not to be meeting up with some sort of criminal.

It's kind of impossible to know in some cases if someone is legit. There are bots that are very convincing, apparent. I recall a story either on Radiolab, or This American Life, where this guy thought he was in love with this girl(odd use of English explained by that not being her first language) but when it came time to meet up in person the messages started to seem really off because there was no response about plans to meet up and he eventually figured it out from that. It struck me as both really cool, and really eerie.