Chloe Walters had some bad experiences dating online, before meeting her husband Rick. Photo/John Borren
Thousands of Bay people are turning to the internet to meet partners as online dating becomes more mainstream.
Dating website Trade Me-owned FindSomeone has released figures to the Bay of Plenty Times that show the site has about 5000 active Bay of Plenty members.
Manager Rick Davies said online dating had taken off in the past two to three years and was now considered a regular way to meet people.
"It's a global thing, it's rising in popularity everywhere and becoming a common way for single people to meet. FindSomeone has had its busiest two to three years in its 12-year history."
Mr Davies said success stories were coming in regularly and it was rare to hear of anything going wrong.
"People are informing us when they find people on our site and it seems to be far more frequent that it used to be.
"Our site is very much there for finding serious relationships. Most people these days know of a couple who have met online, it's become far more socially acceptable."
Mr Davies said he thought online dating's popularity was in part due to its convenience.
For Bronwyn Lewer, online dating was a matter of sifting through the crude requests and insincere messages until she came across a genuine man she liked and wanted to get to know further.
Miss Lewer was a member of a dating site for a number of months and said she had been contacted by about 100 men, most of whom were looking for a casual encounter.
After wading through the messages, she met two men, one of whom is now her close friend and the other who has been her partner for five months.
"I had some bad experiences but I'm really lucky to have met two really good guys. My partner is in Rotorua, he's a single dad and it's working really well."
The connection was immediate and the couple began talking for hours on the phone every night soon after their first message exchange. When they first met, Miss Lewer said she arranged to meet in a public place so she would be safe, and made sure she had a friend nearby.
Chloe Walters met her partner when she was 16 and spent a few months talking to him over the internet and the phone before finally meeting in person.
"The next time I saw him I moved down to Tauranga with him and the next year I was pregnant with our first child. About 10 years later we now have our fourth on the way and we finally got married last year."
Ms Lewer and Ms Walters are not the only ones to be successful finding love online. A number of people who responded to a question on the Bay of Plenty Times Facebook page said they were either in a long-term relationship with, or had married, someone they met online.
Netsafe executive director Martin Cocker said there were obvious risks associated with meeting people who represent themselves online, but he thought most people grasped that quickly.
"Most people know they should meet people in a public place in case the person misrepresented themselves. What we tend to see is online dating which is scam or crime related. Scammers create a relationship online they can exploit by asking for money. We only get a few of those reports, most people just cut their losses when they realise they've been scammed. It's fairly common."
Mr Cocker said these scammers invested a lot of time into creating these relationships, to the level where most people would consider they knew the person well.
"I think internet dating is probably as safe as any other form of dating in terms of meeting strangers - if managed well it could even be safer than traditional ways."
Statistics from dating website www.findsomeone.co.nz
There are about 5000 FindSomeone members from the Bay of Plenty.
About 49 per cent of Bay users are female and 51 per cent are male
Average age of male site users - 40.
Average age of female site users - 42
Internet dating safely
Do not believe everything you read online.
Personal information that would let someone find you offline should never be shared online, such as your full name, where you work, where you live, your phone number.
Take your time to try to get to know the person online first.
Let the relationship develop online until you are comfortable with each other.
Honesty is the best policy.
Start with a phone call. The safest way is by using a public phone.
When you do meet, do it with a friend and in a public place.
Report any attacks or threats to law enforcement.
Use a reputable online dating service or chat.
- www.wiredsafety.org