Love In The Age Of Google

Mini-Background Checks Via Internet Are Now Part Of Dating Game

(AP)  With a little creativity and Internet savvy, a person can find anything from blog postings to news stories that might include personal details, and whether people are telling the truth about their age and where they've lived.

It helps to know some basic details upfront, such as an e-mail address that could help turn up an online nickname; some go as far as paying for an online background check.

Often, though, information is almost too easy to find.

MaryBeth Moore discovered that after she got a call from a guy her mother's hairdresser suggested as a good match. At first, Moore was game. But then she checked out his MySpace page and found photos showing him naked in a bathtub.

"Don't worry, I canceled the date," says Moore, who's 24 and lives in West Palm Beach, Fla.

There's also the problem of mistaken identity.

Lisa Phillips, a 31-year-old San Franciscan, was not pleased, for instance, when a search of online images turned up photos of a porn star who shares her name. She can laugh about it now.

"But it's definitely not the first impression I want to make with my dates," she says. "Very embarrassing."

It's a big reason people should take the information they find online "with a grain of salt," says Dr. Paul Dobransky, a Chicago-based psychiatrist and author of "The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love."

He says there's nothing wrong with doing a little online homework, but he thinks the focus should remain on face-to-face interaction to make a final judgment.

"Our minds are more made for in person, slow contact in getting to know one another," Dobransky says.

In the end, Danielle Martinetti says online research really only helps to a point, anyway. "The crazy stuff usually becomes apparent on the actual date," the 30-year-old New Yorker says. "No amount of online searching is going to tell you that a person has issues with his mother, loves to be described as a George Clooney look-alike, has an overzealous obsession with hand sanitizer, or that he prefers to sit facing the door in a restaurant 'just in case.'"

[rf35]

I just googled myself. It seems I'm a professor of some sort and the Chairman of the ASME Gas Turbine Institute Education Committee. In addition, I have completed tenure as Chair of the ASME Region IV ME Department Heads.

Shouldn't I be making more money?

I really think that this is a bunch of BS... I have used google to look someone up in the past and have never found anything out about anyone that would incriminate them in any way just to see. And if you are so sure that the person you are going to date has been in trouble, perhaps its a good idea not to even before doing the search. Nuff Said!!!

Oh and by the way google is over rated, you can do the same thing with yahoo, after all yahoo used to use google as their search engine and now is even better