{"id":155,"date":"2024-11-12T14:23:15","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T19:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/?p=155"},"modified":"2024-11-12T14:23:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T19:23:15","slug":"grad-research-online-dating-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/2024\/grad-research-online-dating-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"Grad Research \u2013 Online Dating Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever considered using a dating site to find \u201cthe one\u201d? Have you had concerns about your safety on those sites?<\/p>\n

As part of a class project, Borke Obada, a master\u2019s student in Computer Science<\/a>, decided to research security precautions carried out by users when using dating sites.<\/p>\n

She wanted to find out how people using these sites figured out if the people they chose to interact with were legitimate and how they protected their personal information.<\/p>\n

Obada notes that little research has been done in this field and says that it was important to carry out this research due to the growing popularity of dating sites and social media hook-up applications. She shared that, as of 2015, Canada was ranked the 7th country most susceptible to dating site scamming.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile scamming is present on almost any online platform, studying the scamming carried out on dating sites is much more important as the sole purpose of dating sites is to meet strangers,\u201d shares the graduate student. \u201cThis then makes the scamming attacks that occur on this platform much more delicate and quite tricky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obada interviewed 10 people. \u201cAll the participants who were interviewed narrated how they had to continuously deal with supposed scammers. Though participants claim scammers were reduced on the paid platforms of the dating sites, they were never completely devoid of them.<\/p>\n

Through her study, she found out that many users don\u2019t employ sufficient security measures. Her participants told her that the basic precautions they followed were meeting up with the person in a public place and checking out the potential date on social media to be sure they were who they claimed to be. One participant did say that she always takes a picture of the license plate of her potential date and sends it to all her friends so they know who she\u2019s with.<\/p>\n

When asked if there are specific ways of detecting scammers, the participants listed a few such as:<\/p>\n