3 Step Guide to Successfully Stalking your Dating App Suitor (For Safety Purposes, Duh)
Ok so you get on your app of choice (Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, The League…) and you start swiping away. Match, Match, Match! Obviously — you’re a regulation hottie. You start chatting, things are going quite smoothly (you’re soooo witty), you exchange phone numbers, and now he asks you on a date. Nailed it! How do you make sure you’re not being catfished?
This is a step-by-step guide for the averagely tech savvy lady, on how to make sure someone is real and get a better glimpse into their character (Who are they voting for? Do they love their mother? Have they ever been married? Do they have a rap sheet? What’s their favorite band? When’s their birthday?) without paying for one of those services. [FOR USE FOR GOOD, NOT EVIL]
Step 1: How to figure out dude’s last name
STEP 1A — KNOW YOUR FACTS!
Each app provides a varying level of personal information. Hinge lets you know their last name initial and which friends you have in common (in addition to workplace and places of education). Bumble doesn’t provide the last name initial. Use 2–3 of the following facts along with their first name to figure out their entire last name:
- Last initial
- Phone number! (If he provided that)
- School (preferably college)
- Place of Employment
- Job Title
- Instagram handle
- Location
- Age
- Sports they’ve played (possibly in college or recreationally) or any accomplishments they’ve listed/had pictures of (like a race of some kind)
STEP 1B — SEARCH
Perform searches in the following platforms with combinations of the aforementioned facts to find the last name:
FACEBOOK— if you know a friend in common, start a search in their friend list. If you don’t have a friend in common, start in Google.
GOOGLE SEARCH— Long story short, try out a bunch of combos and see if anything sticks.
If you have their first name and their phone number, it’s likely you can find their last name (and possibly the name of at least one of their parents) in one of those ‘Who’s number is this?’ forums.
If you have their first name, last initial, and anything else, put that into a search and see what results come up (it’s easiest to start with images).
If…you have first name and job information, type in their first name, job title, place of work. Generally one of the first results that will come up will be ‘Top 20 [Job Title] Profiles at [Company]| LinkedIn.’ Similar results will show up for first name, college, and either job title or place of work. If this is the case, click on that LinkedIn result but DO NOT CLICK ON ANY OF THE PROFILES (OR HE WILL KNOW! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED).
LINKEDIN— If you did a Google search or went into the platform and performed your own search, you’ll get a series of results that fit the criteria you searched. Open a second window, open google image search, then search each name to get a bigger version of their profile picture that you can examine for commonality with their dating app pictures.
INSTAGRAM — if you have first name, last initial you can try to plug that into search and see if you get any matching pictures/results. It’s a shot in the dark. But if you have their Instagram handle they probably don’t have a private profile, and your way in is through there! I tend to use Instagram as a reference for after I’ve figured out the last name, so I can do further recon (obviously this will be repeated on all social media platforms).
If you think you found his last name, put it through some of the platforms and see if you can verify with consistency. I found that this works for 8 out of 10 people. So…let’s assume you found the last name…now what?
STEP 2: Gathering Further Intel
Ok so you have a last name. Whatever. Now it’s time to see what dirt shows up. I’m telling you, if you do this, there’s no turning back, there’s no telling anyone that you did this, especially your date, and, it’s a very necessary step in order to make sure you don’t accidentally fall for a convicted felon who is homeless and who may or may not have been involved in his last girlfriend’s death (overdose)…hypothetically of course.
STEP 2A — WHAT QUESTIONS DO YOU HAVE?
In this step, you mimic the previous step, but you are looking for additional facts about the person, such as:
What were some of their previous jobs?
What kind of social media presence do they have?
What kind of music do they listen to?
Do they have any siblings?
When is their birthday?
Are they currently in a relationship?
Who was their last relationship with?
Where on the spectrum are their politics?
Have they ever made a sex tape?
Is that kid in their second picture really their niece?
Miscellaneous information/accomplishments — maybe they’ve published some stuff, gotten a few patents, achieved something in their life…the usual.
STEP 2B — DISCOVERY!
FACEBOOK — If you have access to their Facebook page, even if it’s limited, you can still find out some interesting stuff. Look in their ‘About’ section to see if you can find anything about their job history, birthday etc. See if you can determine which events they RSVPed to, or pages they’ve liked. You might catch something interesting (one time I canceled on a guy because he followed Trump and had a picture with Bush and RSVPed to a bunch of raves). Look at their profile pictures and see who has commented with the same last name (usually it’s a mom or some relative who is 50+…hold onto that info for further FB recon). Often, at some point, someone will have had a birthday picture up and you can tell when their birthday is based on the post date.
Figure out who is related to this person and visit their page. Often mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sometimes dads or younger siblings, have less privacy on their Facebook pages.
GOOGLE SEARCH — If you have a full name now, and job, you can do a good old fashioned google search. Often a person’s amalgam of social media profiles will show up in the results. Visit all of those pages…Youtube, Twitter, Vine, IG, Foursquare/Swarm, Yelp, G+, Tumblr, Medium, etc.
Don’t stop after seeing the first page of results; keep going at least 5–7 pages in because MORE shows up. Read everything! I will often perform searches such as ‘John Smith 30 years old wedding’ or ‘John Smith 30 years old san francisco arrest record’ or anything like that. It’s like panning for gold…today. Very few nuggets but you’ll find some stuff. This may or may not have been how I figured out that a person I met once was arrested in Florida for possession.
INSTAGRAM — When you have the full name, you can often find someone on instagram by visiting all of the results for that name. If you can see their pics, you can see what they take pics of, where they go, who they were with, who comments most often, etc.
TWITTER — If the person you’re looking up is active on twitter, it’s the jackpot. People post things that are most true to their actual life/inner workings on twitter. One time, I found a guy who had like 10k tweets and like 100 followers. Who the f*ck was he tweeting to? No one. It’s embarrassing. NEXT!
STEP 3: DENY, DENY, DENY
DO:
Use what you found to store that person’s phone number in your phone.
To possibly start/continue conversation.
To make sure you’re going out with a real person.
DO NOT:
Tell the person that you know they’re a pisces or that they were at a concert last week.
Call them by their full name.
Fake having things in common.
This should be unsaid but, DO NOT Follow them or like ANYTHING they’ve posted.
CONCLUSION — So these are all of the things I do before I meet a Bumble date (it’s my app of choice). It’s probably not too healthy. I guess I could like…not do it. And just text my family a picture of the person and let them know the place I’m meeting them but that seems too easy.
Got further suggestions? Let me know! Happy Hunting!!
