I want to talk about online dating safety

Let's talk about online dating safety. There was an article in Mother Jones recently that I read that was quite horrifying about the number of women and men, frankly, who have both been abused and worse through people that they've met online dating, especially on the first date. And one thing that I would say to you is Just be sensible when you are meeting somebody for the first time. Always meet them in a public place. If you're not comfortable, there's no requirement to go home with somebody. And also, it's fine in my view if they don't give you all their details like their, you know, name, full address, and all the other stuff that would identify them. Don't take it on trust that any of these dating sites are doing their due diligence. Lots of people that I know will find somebody on a social media site, on Facebook. If you're in the UK, you can look them up on Companies House. You can check whether the age that they say they are is actually their real age. And I'm a bit of a super sleuth when it comes to checking out the people that I hang out with, because if I'm going to be intimate with them, I want to know who they actually are. And I think that's fair enough to do that, because I don't want to end up in a case where somebody takes advantage of me and I haven't clue how to go about finding them.