Safety on dating sites

I troll a few large dating sites, 'scambaiting', and occasionally helping real people with 'scammer problems".
I bumped into a nice lady the other day on a large, free, dating site. Her tactic to avoid scammers, was to restrict contact to the methods available within that dating site....embedded chat, and email.
I tried to explain to her that this was a mistake. You can't really determine who are what you are in contact with if you only use 'internal' methods for that site, whether it's a dating site, or facebook.
Why?
When you use 'internal' site contact methods, you lose the ability to check many things...google an email address, and check the IP in an email header that person may send you.
Much of the same goes for people you only know via 'Messenger' type chat, or Skype.

Many scammers know that they can be detected by email, and confine contact to chat, where it is not easy to see an IP of where they are at.
How can you sniff out a scammer, or tell something is very wrong?
You want to be able to check an IP, via an email they send you, to see if they are where they claim to be.
Many West African scammers will claim to be somewhere they are not. In many situations, checking the email headers, will show they are not where they claim to be.
So? You are thinking, 'why does he tell me this? I'm never going to send money or fall in love with a fake person!'
Millions of internet scam victims have thought the same thing!
The longer you maintain contact, even casual contact, with a scammer, the more likely it is you will believe or accept the story they tell, and the identity they claim. You begin to accept....
Make sure you see a live face on cam
Avoid people who will not email you, but only want to 'chat'
Use a disposable email account for contact with unknown people, and be prepared to abandon it
Never give out personal details to strangers, your home phone, address, where you work...
Never send money to somebody you only know from phone calls, or the internet!
Learn to be careful online, and protect yourself. Most social networks and dating sites don't really care about you, or do much to protect you. You must do it. Reverse Email Lookup