Dating & meeting safety

How to verify someone you met online before meeting

To verify someone you met online, check that their photos and profile are consistent, see them live on a video call, and for anything that matters, ask them to verify their identity before you meet. Together those checks tell you far more than any one of them.

If you've met someone through a dating app, social media, Marketplace or anywhere else online, a profile can look completely genuine and still tell you very little about the person you're about to meet. Here's how to check who you're meeting.

Still working out whether they exist at all? Start with how to check if someone online is real.

Start with the profile itself

Look at the account as a whole, rather than relying on one photo or a convincing conversation.

Does the account have some history? Do their photos look consistent? Does what they're telling you match what you can actually see?

A new or fairly empty account isn't automatically suspicious. Plenty of real people barely use social media. What matters is whether things start to contradict each other or simply don't add up.

Check their photos

A reverse image search can sometimes tell you whether a profile photo appears elsewhere online.

If the same photo belongs to someone with a different name, appears across unrelated accounts, or has clearly been taken from somewhere else, that's a good reason to stop and ask questions.

It isn't a perfect test. Not finding a photo elsewhere doesn't prove that it's genuine.

Try a reverse image search with Google Lens.

Ask to see them live

A quick video call can be useful because you're seeing the person in real time rather than relying on photos they've chosen to send you.

Repeated excuses for why someone can't appear on camera can be a warning sign, particularly when other things about the profile already seem off.

Video isn't foolproof either. It can tell you that you're speaking to the person you can see on screen, but it doesn't necessarily establish everything else they've told you about themselves.

Phone on a live video call with app tiles for familiar video calling platforms floating around it

How to verify a person's identity online

Photos and video tell you what someone looks like. They don't tell you who that person legally is. For that you need identity verification: a government-issued ID checked against a live face, so the person holding the ID is the person completing the check.

You can't do that properly yourself. Asking a stranger to send a photo of their passport or licence exposes their document to you, and a photo of an ID is easy to fake or steal. Identity checks are best handled by a specialist provider, with only the result shared.

A verified identity is a strong signal that someone is who they say they are. It is not a background check, and it doesn't tell you anything about their history or intentions.

Be careful how much information you give away

Trying to establish who someone else is shouldn't mean handing over a pile of information about yourself.

Be cautious about sharing things like your home address, workplace, full date of birth, financial information or identity documents with somebody you haven't met.

You can check someone without giving them unrestricted access to your own personal information.

Personal information card protected by a padlock beside toggles showing some details shared and others kept private

Ask them to verify themselves before meeting

If you're actually planning to meet, you may want something more direct than searching their photos and scrolling through their social accounts.

That's what a NoStrangers Trust Request is for.

You send the person you've connected with a Trust Request. They complete a live verification before the meeting and choose what verified information they want to share back with you.

You can verify yourself before sending the request too, although you don't have to. Here's how to send someone a verification request.

The idea is simple. Instead of trying to work out who is behind a profile from clues scattered across the internet, you can ask the person directly.

Send a Trust Request before you meet

Photos Verified

Identity Verified

What can a Trust Request tell you?

Depending on the verification method and what the other person chooses to share, a Trust Request can help establish that there is a real person behind the online profile and that the photos being presented belong to the person completing the live check.

NoStrangers also lets people choose what verified information they share with each other.

The underlying checks are handled by established verification providers. NoStrangers is designed so you don't have to send your identity documents or personal information directly to the stranger you're meeting.

See how a Trust Request works or compare plans.

Completed NoStrangers Trust Request showing Photos Verified with a live face check and photo match result

Trust established

Completed NoStrangers Trust Request showing the verified information the other person chose to share

What they chose to share

What doesn't verification tell you?

Verification isn't a guarantee that somebody is safe, trustworthy or someone you'll want to meet.

A real identity doesn't tell you a person's intentions.

Think of verification as one more piece of information you can have before deciding whether you're comfortable meeting someone.

If something feels wrong, you don't owe somebody a meeting just because they've verified themselves.

Should I background check someone I met online?

It depends what you're trying to find out. Identity verification and background checks answer different questions, and they're easy to confuse.

Identity verification helps establish whether someone is who they claim to be. A background check looks into separate historical records, and what it can cover depends on the provider, the country and the law where you live.

NoStrangers is not a background check. It does not check criminal history, credit history, character, qualifications, intentions or future behaviour. For most first meetings, the question people actually have is simpler: is this the person I've been talking to? That's what verifying someone online answers.

If you decide to meet

Knowing who you're meeting is useful, but normal meeting precautions still matter.

For a first meeting, consider meeting somewhere public, letting someone you trust know where you're going, keeping control of your own transport, and being careful about inviting someone directly to your home.

If the situation changes or you're no longer comfortable, you can change your mind.

Stylised city map with pins marking public first-meeting options: a café, a park and a busy plaza

The point isn't to investigate everyone you meet

Most people you meet online are exactly who they say they are.

The problem is that an online profile by itself doesn't give you a reliable way to tell the difference.

You don't need to turn a date or Marketplace pickup into a background investigation. Sometimes you just want a reasonable way to establish that the person you're about to meet is the person you've been talking to.

That's the problem NoStrangers was built to solve.

If something already feels off about the person you're talking to, you can also read How to tell if you're being catfished.

If you've already arranged to meet, see Meeting someone from a dating app for the first time.