The information you post on these accounts can reveal a lot about you. When you add in public records like addresses, phone numbers, birth and marriage certificates, driving violations, and court cases, anyone who searches your name online will find a fairly comprehensive overview of you.

People run online searches on others all the time, and it’s important to occasionally search yourself, both on Google and a more thorough search tool like BeenVerified, so you know what they’re finding. You don’t want an embarrassing or questionable old post to come back and haunt you.

What is it about the holidays that seem to ignite the spark for uncoupled people? Some say the combination of cold weather and the holidays creates a need for cuddles, also known as “cuffing season." With all the single ladies and men jumping online to find a date for the festive season, it also brings out the scammers, or catfishers.

Whether you’re hopping onto Match.com, Zoosk, or other online dating app, you’re likely to see a fresh crop of daters joining the scene, especially right after the first of the year. Catfishers know this, too. In fact, catfishers, or people who pose as someone else looking for love, have managed to scam nearly $1 billion out of those longing for love since 2015 in the United States and Canada. The catfish scam is only getting worse, and you’re likely to encounter one regardless of which dating site you use.

And if catfish weren’t deceiving enough, interactions with one who’s after your heart might seem more genuine, and therefore even more deceiving.

Online dater, Emma Perrier discovered this the hard way.

After investing her heart and exchanging “I love you’s,” she found out that her male model love interest, “Ronnie Scicluna” was actually someone else entirely.