⚠️ It’s a bad world out there and certified members

If you see the shield icon in the search result for a member or both the icon and Certified Member text in the top-right of their profile, it indicates the member has paid for a subscription. This means you can be more sure they are a genuine person. If you are aware of current events, you will know the importance of finding someone who shares your views on covid vaccines.

STOP PRESS: On 4th July 2025, I deleted two accounts with fake profiles. Both accounts had paid for membership. Members discovered these fake profiles through voice calls. Hopefully the requirement for payment information will put a limit on how many times these people can pull their tricks.

If you are unsure of who you are communicating with, you can ask them to provide a photograph of themselves holding up a copy of a recent local newspaper or even just a piece of paper with an agreed word on it or the current date. It would help if the paper is slightly crumpled as software will have more difficulty in faking this. Every member here has access to a gallery for photographs and paying members have access to a private gallery, where photos are only shown to people approved first. To approve a person, go to the bottom of their profile and click the My Gallery button. It will turn green to show the person has permission. If you are a paying-member the private gallery is below your regular gallery on the Edit My Profile page.

If you are unsure you who are you talking to, feel free to send us a message along with the username of your correspondent.

You can contact us using our contact form available at the bottom of each page. If you have paid for a subscription you can send me a message via my profile here.

I’ve deleted a few accounts in the past few months because I wasn’t sure of them. I apologise for any false positives.

A few people here use throw-away email addresses to register, which expire after a few hours or days. This can be a problem if you don’t log-in here for months and someone contacts you. We don’t spam. Each notification email we send out has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. All emails from this site can be turned off using Meet People->My Account.

Back in 2020, it was always a joy to meet new people who thought the same as myself. This is one of the reasons why this website was created. If you do live in a city with several other members on this website, you should message everyone in your city and see if you can arrange a group meeting. This website does not just have to be for romantic purposes.

A few months ago a man joined our website and paid for a subscription. He stayed here a few months. He told me that he was on a well-known dating site and he got lots of messages from scammers trying to sell crypto currencies. Obviously he said he didn’t like this at all. If these people know of other dating sites, then it is a fair bet they know of this one. They are probably trying to harvest personal email addresses and the like to give to one of their colleagues. A few simple questions should be enough to flush them out. So tell us if you are unsure about anything.

These sorts of people are one reason why we should really turn off smile and “Ask for a contact” buttons for non-paying members of this site. If one of these scammers joins our site, they are stuck without free functionality. They will be isolated and unable to cause trouble unless a paying member contacts them first. Some of them might just give up at the first hurdle. But with free smile and “Ask for a contact” buttons they can make themselves known to lots of people.

When we were a free site, we were told to pay major social media and news sites for advertising. Now we have paid for advertising we are told we are incompetent idiots, because the site can no longer be free. Perhaps it was one of the crypto scammers who said this!

If you are a non-paying user, please use the buttons judiciously. Contacting people half way across the world with a free smile is not sensible. It just annoys them. They complain to us and delete their accounts here. All you are doing is ruining the system for everyone else. One woman asked us why she was sent a smile as it is impossible to reply directly to it with a proper written message.

Please tell us what you think. Should we disable smile and “Ask for a contact” buttons for non-paying members of this website?

Independent websites do cost money to run. This is not a website of static articles. It has more moving parts. Unlike major social media sites and apps we don’t get money from the stock market, university grants and government. For the owners of free social media sites, you are the product. If you notice they tend to say things which are technically true at one level, but you have to think a bit to see all the potential catches. The goal is for the costs of this operation to be shared amongst all those people who want to use it. In addition this site has to be useful. If you cannot afford the current price for an annual subscription, please contact me and I can see if it can be reduced.