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The Times NewsFeed: Does Your Online Date Have a
Dirty Past? New Services Will
Find Out


Nothing kills romance like
discovering you've been flirting with a felon, or even worse,
ahem, a married man/woman online. But now, New York state and New Jersey are passing laws to
regulate the billion-dollar internet dating industry, reports the New York Times.

And there's also plenty of
websites and apps to boot. For a fee of less than $10, now you can run a background
investigation on that special
someone to ensure they're really the Romeo or Juliet who they say they are. And with more than 20 million Americans signing up to
1,500 online dating sites across the country, the industry is no stranger to a crime scene or two.
Remember serial rapist Jeffrey
Marsalis who met his victims on Match.com?

So what sites are popping up on NewsFeed's radar?
MyMatchChecker.com has quite a catchy slogan that says "know your date, know your fate." DateCheck runs a free mobile app that
encourages you to look up
before you hook up. And then
there's always ValiMate, the
creator of the Instant National
Criminal Search app, which allows users to send the results of the check to a friend for added safety.

State officials are also pushing for safer Internet dating. For
instance, a law that takes effect this month in New York State, the Internet Dating Safety Act,requires sites like EHarmony and Match.com to post common-sense safety tips, like “meet in a public place.”

And you thought it was just your friends and auntie worrying about your
matchmaking future.