I want you to have lots of fun on your dating journey, but there’s some really serious stuff you should know about before you dive headfirst into one of the many internet dating apps and websites there are out there. Online dating and personal details do not mix, and I’m spilling the beans on what you should share, what you shouldn’t, and what might happen if you accidentally overshare too much.
Grab yourself a coffee and get comfortable, folks. Things are about to get damn scary around here. (Sorry.)
- Online Dating and Personal Details
- What You *SHOULDN’T* Share
- 1: Full Name
- 2: Address
- 3: Date of Birth
- 4: Place of Employment
- 5: Family & Friend Details
- 6: Daily Routine
- 7: Regular Hotspots
- 8: Your Kids
- 9: Financial Situation
- 10: High-Cost Purchases
- 11: Social Media Details
- 12: Vulnerabilities and Traumas
- Online Dating and Personal Details: The Conclusion
Online Dating and Personal Details
In the first throes of a new potential love interest, it’s easy to overshare about pretty much every aspect of your life. It makes sense; you’re trying to get to know them, and they’re trying to get to know you. Here’s the thing, though: the more information you share with someone online (or offline,) the more ammunition you’re giving them to well n’ truly screw you over. That’s the long and short of it.
Those people on the dating apps and websites? They’re complete strangers to you. By handing over your personal details, you are, quite literally, handing over the tools to ruin your life to complete strangers.
When you say it like that, it’s damn scary, right?
Thankfully, I’ve been dating for too long, have seen too much, and know the things that make me vulnerable – and it’s time for me to share everything I know about the online dating and personal details combo with you.
What You *SHOULDN’T* Share
Your date does not and should not know the following things, until you have met them and are assured as much as possible that they are not a mad stalker/petty criminal/much worse:
1: Full Name
Sometimes, online dating and personal details must mix – and that’s definitely the case when it comes to names. I mean, it just makes sense that you introduce yourself to one another with names, right? There is something that you can do to keep yourself safe, though: don’t give out your full name. On Tinder, for example, last names are shortened to a simple letter. So, John Smith would therefore become John S. It’s much safer, at least to begin with.
Your date can find you on social media with your full name. How much of your profile is locked down? What if it was a bad date, then your date became a stalker after you decided that you didn’t want to date them anymore? How easy would you have made it for them?
Yes, hiding your name is excessive… but the dating world is messy now. Dangerous, too. Not only is stalking a potential problem, but fraud and scams are major issues now too, even here in the UK, and even amongst some of the smartest members of society. It’s not just the ‘usual suspects’ falling for these elaborate and sometimes really convincing schemes.
2: Address
I’m not saying that you should go into every potential romance with the most cynical eye in the world… but you actually should do that, too. Giving out your home address, for example, might not seem like a big step when you hope that they’re going to come to your house at some point in the future anyway…
But what happens if it all goes wrong before it gets to that point?
If you give a complete stranger (which is what they are) your home address, local neighbourhood, or local building information, that complete stranger has everything they need to stalk, scam, or defraud you.
It’s not just scammers and frauders that you need to worry about, either. Robbery and theft, racial offences, threatning communications, stalking and/or harassment, and sex-related crimes are all on the increase with internet dating meets.
Don’t be so quick to give away personal information that could potentially make you a target for crime.
3: Date of Birth
With your name, date of birth, and general location, a complete stranger on the internet has basically everything they need to steal your identity and, in turn, absolutely wreck your life.
In a press release from this year (2026,) City of London Police announced that romance fraud (including identity theft) had cost the people of the UK more than £100,000,000. That’s one hundred million pounds.
2025 saw 10,784 reports of romance-based fraud, and the romance fraud industry is said to cost Brits almost £300,000 every single day.
The first questions that a scammer or fraudster will ask you, in order to steal your identity, are:
- Full name
- Address
- Date of birth
The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (UK) had 9,449 reports of romance scams, and that was just in 2024 to 2025. On average, each victim lost more than £11,000.
The more information you give a fraudster, the less they need to go hunting for themselves. The whole aim of a romance fraudster’s game is to get as much information – or money – from you as possible, before you have the chance to realise what’s going on and then report them to the police.
4: Place of Employment
If you tell a potential partner or date your place of employment, you are opening yourself up to a world of pain… and possibly poverty, too.
Have you ever seen the Netflix show, Dirty John? I highly recommend watching it if you haven’t already, because it will open your eyes to just how dangerous things are out in there in the dating world these days. Without giving away too many spoilers, Dirty John left terrible reviews at his victim’s business, essentially destroying her business reputation. He also sent personal photographs to her business associates and contractors and even went as far as to destroy his victim’s daughters professional life, too.
The whole is based on a true story, which is even worse than the Netflix version, if you can even believe it.
Your date could get you fired if you part ways on bad terms.
They could turn up at your place of employment, which one ex-lover did to me. Another sent unwanted (and embarrassing) gifts to my place of work. Thankfully, I was on fairly good terms with both of those men, but imagine how much worse things could’ve been if we weren’t?
Again: Dirty John is a true story. Please, I beg of you, give it a watch, then take a long, hard look at how safe and secure you might not be, afterwards.
5: Family & Friend Details
Spilling the beans about your family and friends is just offering a potential criminal posing as an online date an alternative route to find you. The way that social media platforms are set up now, is to make it as easy as possible to find someone. On places such as Facebook, vague details can be searched to find really specific people, especially if profiles aren’t as locked down as they should be. If your mum has a really open Facebook page, for example, and a fraudster knows their name or other personal details, she is easily findable… and, in turn, so are you.
You can’t rely on other people to safety-proof their profiles, so you need to make sure that you’re protecting yourself and them, in a way. Try to keep the details as short and sweet as possible about the people around you, too.
6: Daily Routine
Do you go to a certain gym at set times throughout the week, or visit coffee shops with certain people at set times of the month? If so, don’t share them with potential dates online.
In 2017, 23 year old Molly McLaren was killed at Dockside shopping centre in Chatham, Kent. I was uncomfortably local to that shopping centre on that day, and it has stuck in my mind ever since. Two of my friends were in that car park when it happened.
Molly was killed by her ex-boyfriend, who used social media to physically stalk her. He even went as far as to befriend some of Molly’s friends when she had blocked him, to find her location in real time.
They had been together for seven months, so he also knew her routine, and he used all of that information to his advantage when she broke up with him. He went to the gym, two weeks after the split, where he knew she would be, harassed Molly while she tried to workout, and then followed her back to her car when she tried to leave. He then stabbed her in her car, in front of horrified onlookers, in the middle of the day, more than seventy-five times, according to news reports.
That is the reality now. The next person you say, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to, on a dating app, could use the information you have given them, to murder you.
There is a reason that I’m telling you what not to share when it comes to online dating and personal details. The more you protect yourself, the less of a chance you have of becoming a victim to these kinds of crimes. It really is that serious.
7: Regular Hotspots
In the same way that a fraudster (or murderer) could use your regular routine as a way to stalk you (or worse,) they can also use your regular hotspots to find you, too. If they know that you have a lot of love for a certain pub or club in the local area, for example, they might hang out there until they see you there – at which point, they might confess, or gaslight you into thinking it’s just a regular ol’ coincidence.
It’s the smallest and most mundane details that land you in trouble when you’re in online spaces, and they’re the kind of details that anyone could accidentally slip out during a conversations.
“Oh, that bar? Yes, I go there all the time. I love it!”
And there you have it: you’ve just announced to a complete stranger (but still, a potential date) that they can probably find you in that one specific spot, just in case they fancy stalking, confronting, or murdering you.
8: Your Kids
It’s a mean, terrifying, horrific world out there now. Perhaps it has always been that way, but we sure hear about it a lot now, don’t we? You never know who is talking to you online, especially before you meet them. Even after meeting them, you can never really be sure who a person is.
Sharing details about your kids to a stranger online, whether you intend to date them or not, should be an automatic no-no. By all means tell people that you have kids, but those people don’t need to know how old they are, what their names are, what school they go to, or what they look like.
Your kids shouldn’t be anywhere near your dating profile.
Putting photos of your children on a dating profile, or sending them to people that you barely know, is a serious breach of those kids’ privacy and safety. It’s also a bad parenting move. That kind of online dating and personal details mix is a recipe for disaster.
9: Financial Situation
Listen, I know that money is a touchy subject for some folks, but there is absolutely no need whatsoever for anyone to talk about money within the first few chats. Why does that stranger need to know how much money you have in the bank, or if you own your home, or what kind of car you drive?
Those types of questions are red flags, particularly if they’re done quickly, early on in the chit-chats – and a sign that you’re probably about to get scammed or defrauded. It’s one of the things that all websites tell you to look for; if they talk about money quickly, report it and run.
The financial chat is important to some, sure… but why is it important before the two of you have even met?
10: High-Cost Purchases
Gloating about expensive spends, such as a new MacBook, home, car, or big-ass diamonds to strangers online is a surefire way to get yourself robbed and/or mugged, whether you plan to go to dinner with them or not.
Yes, you should be able to talk about those things with someone you enjoy the company of… but we don’t live in a perfect world.
Be smart about what you’re talking about, to whom. You wouldn’t flash a diamond in an ‘undesirable’ part of town, so don’t flash your wares on a potentially ‘undesirable’ online platform.
11: Social Media Details
If you have your friends, family, kids, work colleagues, and acquaintances as friends on social media platforms like Facebook, why on EARTH would you then invite a randomer from an online dating app or website there, too?
Church and state, people. Church and state.
Your private and personal social media pages should not be available to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that so much as blinks at you, whether you call yourself an influencer or not.
If you start talking to some chap from Tinder, decide you don’t actually like him, then decide to dump him, he could do anything, say anything, to anyone. He’ll know who your mum is and the layout of her living room; who your dad is and what kind of car he drives; who your best friends are and the regular Friday-night photos of you in the same ol’ bars…
You see?
12: Vulnerabilities and Traumas
It might make sense to tell a potential date about your ‘hangups’ in the early stages of a courtship, but those little snippets of information are what make you vulnerable. In turn, you will be preyed upon by bad characters like narcissists, gaslighters, love bombers, womanisers, and general assholes.
Predators expertly hunt potential victims. They seek out people who have vulnerabilities and past traumas, so they can use and exploit them. It’s why people who have been abused or mistreated in some way, often end up with new abusers afterwards. Predators are predators, and they are often very, very good at what they do.
Telling a bad apple about your trauma is like a baby zebra telling a lion all about its broken leg. Bad idea, folks. Very bad.
Online Dating and Personal Details: The Conclusion
The more information you give to a stranger online, the more ammunition they have to use against you, and they’ll do it in the most nefarious ways. Scammers and fraudsters don’t care that you have a family to feed, or a broken heart; they just want your money, or as much money as possible to get to your money.
It works the same for predators, too; the more you give them, the more they will use.
Try to keep personal details off the table for as long as possible. Trust me, when you inevitably part ways with that one crazy chattee, you’ll thank yourself for it!
Thanks so much for reading my blog today! 🖤
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You can read all about my disastrous dating history, right from the beginning, right here: Table of Dating Contents.