For many, the Internet has replaced the singles bar these days as a place to meet. But with so many people swarming into cyberspace, meeting online and then meeting in person, there is lots of little white lies and stretching of the truth.
And potentially the results of these Internet meetings can be "deadly." Recently a Vista woman was violently attacked and robbed allegedly by an online "chat" pal that she invited to her home.
There is a new Web site that specializes in doing background checks on these virtual strangers. The site's name says it all: www.WhoisHe.Com or www.WhoisShe.Com -- an online investigative Web site run by a Vista attorney, who, for a $75 charge, will check out to see if he or she is really who they purport to be. Are they married? How old are they? Have they ever used an alias? Do they own property? Do they have any bankruptcies, liens or judgments against them?
This is the kind of report you get, sent back to you by both e-mail and regular mail, all gathered from public information sources --all legal, all aimed at verifying that the cyber date is what they appear.
In addition to the public record check, a criminal background check is available.
Linda Alexander, the attorney who runs the site, says about 60 percent of the people she's asked to check out are not who or what they claim to be. She has found con artists, stalkers and even incarcerated prison inmates posing as available singles. The site's motto is: "when in doubt, check them out."
The Web site includes a guide to playing it safe online, offering common sense guidelines on how to make sure the cyber penpal you may be communicating with isn't taking you for a ride.
Alexander says she provides the most updated public record information available, usually within 24 hours, that would take an extraordinary amount of research for an individual to do on his own.