For about a year I have been asking people, mostly women in their late twenties through forties, what they actually do to feel safe before meeting someone from an app. I started after two close friends both had rough first dates in the same few months, and the routines turned out way more involved than anything I had seen written down.
The shape was almost always the same. A quick social media pass on instagram and linkedin, a reverse image search on one app photo, a google of the first name plus city, and a text to a friend with the plan. The one step almost nobody did was the public records side. The sites that cover that, like BeenVerified or Spokeo or TruthFinder, are built for HR or genealogy, and nobody wanted a thirty dollar monthly plan to look someone up once.
What stuck with me was when people skipped steps. The whole routine got cut to five minutes right when someone was most excited about a match, which is when a bit more checking would have helped. So I am curious what this sub does. Is that quick pass roughly your routine, and has it grown or shrunk over time? For full transparency, I am building something in this area, so the answers actually shape what I work on next. I am not pitching anything here. The question is the part I care about.
