100 percent free online dating sites have both pros and cons. Everyone has heard of these dating sites by now, and how they can benefit those who seek a friend, a companion, a short term sexual encounter or a long term romance and marriage. Some 100 percent free online dating sites don’t do enough, however, to screen out the predators, and often welcome or turn their back on their knowledge that there are married people and other undesirables posing as singles looking for dates. Some 100 percent free online dating sites are specifically designed with cheating spouses in mind.

Online dating, whether 100 percent free dating sites or not, can offer the shy, the busy, the newly unattached, and those who can’t easily travel to public gathering places the opportunity to meet potential partners in a less threatening and more focused environment. Those are the pros. The cons are that online dating, especially the 100 percent free dating sites, give predators and undesirables the opportunity to disguise their identities and their less than honest intentions behind the anonymous wall of the Internet.

100 percent free online dating sites are much more prevalent than they were five or ten years ago, and as happens with any service or product, once the competition sets in the price goes down and the offer enhances. Many online dating sites, even the 100 percent free ones, now provide not only profiles and photos of others looking for that special someone, but also guide you through defining your personality, your perfect mate, and then bring the two of you together in a regimented format of anonymity, email with identification, phone conversation and then finally face to face meeting, if and when the time seems right.

Geography is no longer an obstacle to romance with online dating sites. Many online daters search for their mates this way because they travel so often and are so seldom in one place. They search for others who are in like situations or able to tolerate such frequently long distance partnerships.

Paying is not necessarily bad – depending on the cost, of course. In some ways the fact that an online dating site is 100 percent free can actually be a con rather than a pro. While free can increase the volume, it also increases the likelihood of dishonest predators and married people hiding their marital status. It also increases the likelihood that business people will join only for the opportunity to sell you their book on dating, or their sexy lingerie and so forth.

Like anything else, if it’s free it will attract more unsavoury folks than similar products for which there is a charge.