So you're online at match.com, or eHarmony or one of the many fine, active online dating sites and you pick your age group and geographic area. It's kind of like hunting for humans, in a way. Or maybe lake-trolling for love.

So you load up all of the elligible people using your criteria and you hit enter'

Pages upon pages of bland, and sometimes not so bland mugshots, most unrecognizable without reading glasses, glaring back at you from a screen as flat as their faces.

"Oh, but this one is cute. Nice eyes, oh look he's a pilot, or she's a stewardess" Good enough for Federal Air Marshalls, good enough for you right?

Not so fast.

No one is doing criminal background checks. No one is helping you weed through the massive volumes of seemingly identical likes and dislikes and turn offs and must be's and can't becomes.

No one is telling you that their photo is from 1969 and that is not a tatoo, it's an age-spot. No one is advising you on what they're really like, I mean really like as in do they secretly hate the opposite sex and just can't break their addiction to mother?

And it would be rude, offensive, and against all social mores to suggest that someone may be lying and has to provide you with some proof of the actual facts.

Who do you call when you need help weeding through the frogs and frogesses ,to find your Prince, or Princess?

I would suggest an online dating attorney!

An online dating attorney would contact the interested, attractive, online dating prospect and be the rude one.

Maybe a dating attorney would say something like:

"As your dating attorney, I advise you to let me call Mr. 'pilotsong08' and do a little 'recon' of my own. See if he has a mother and what his ex-wife says about him. Maybe run a query and see if he has any public records we should know about. Tell him we need the phone number to a couple friends and at least three more, full-body photos"

Then, it's coffee at Starbucks, and maybe a movie if the coffee goes well.

Dating sites are a maze of perception. Those who are articulate, and have a good face and nice body and photos to back it up, do best.

In the best case, move the emails quickly to a secure phone call. That way verbal cues, previously lost with emailing, can be quickly heard and analyzed. A lot of spark can be generated through a simple, polite five minute phone call.

Not too many questions. Be easy to understand and kind and general with questions, at least at first.

If something makes you feel uncomfortable, express it nicely but with conviction. Do not meet anybody, alone.

Do not give money, or your address.

Beware of offshore bots. They want to rush to intimacy by quickly getting your email address and needing money.

The rest of us have to do the best we can, or in my case, run an add for an online dating attorney.

Except, there isn't any such thing.

I wonder if they do online coffee dates, and if that goes poorly; online dating restraining orders?

Until I find an actual online dating attorney, I will just have to remember to be safe and use common sense.(and let others know who I am writing and meeting)

P.S. Pilotsong- You should call me!

Jean ne