If you’ve read Safety 101, you already know many of the tricks necessary to protect your identity (and sanity!) when you try online dating. So this page already assumes you know that you need to create a brand-new email account that does not use your real name! (First names are okay if you want to use them, but I recommend registering something that’s totally anonymous in every way.)
Here are some instructions on how to go about that process, and some more advanced tips to make the tech aspects of online dating even easier. All my email-related tips are for Gmail, as I believe it is the most efficient, user-friendly, and robust tool for the job. (It lets you do a lot of stuff that’s specifically useful to online daters, which is not possible with other free Webmail services like Yahoo! or Hotmail. So Gmail it is! Even if your main email address isn’t with Gmail, you can still make your online one via Gmail so you can make use of these tips.)
1) Go to the URL http://gmail.com.
2) Click the ‘Create an Account’ button.
3) Fill out all the info, using an alias instead of your real name whenever required. You can use two words to substitute for your first and last name. (This is so that your real name doesn’t display in the contact information that is automatically associated with your new email address.)
4) Click ‘I accept. Create my account.’ Et voilà! Use this safe and anonymous email address for all of your online dating correspondence. See below for more detailed tips on how to manage your new account.
From your main Gmail page, select the tiny ‘Create a filter’ link next to the ‘Search Web’ button at the top center-ish of the page. (Underneath the ‘Show search options’ link.)
Add in the domain name of the service in question, but pay attention to the actual parameters of the service you’re trying to filter. For example, sometimes Match.com sends emails from an address other than Match.com, such as ’sales@e_marketing.match.com’ or something. So take note of that info. For Craigslist, you may want to use the ‘Has the words’ field instead of the ‘From’ field.
On the ‘Choose action’ page, click the appropriate boxes — I personally like to choose ‘Skip the Inbox’ and then ‘Apply the label’, and I select a lable like ‘Online Dating’ to filter all my dating site emails into one easy-to-browse place OTHER than my main Inbox. If you want to also filter emails you received prior to creating this filter, click the ‘Also apply filter to X conversations below’ box next to the ‘Create Filter’ button.
Click ‘Create Filter’, and there you go! You can always modify these parameters later by going to the ‘Settings’ link near the top right corner of the screen, and then choosing the ‘Filters’ tab and selecting ‘edit’ or ‘delete’. Good hunting!
1) Click on ‘Settings’ at top right corner of page.
2) Select the ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP’ tab.
3) Forwarding: Check the ‘Forward a copy of incoming mail to ______ (insert email address) and _________ (choose what to do with Gmail’s copy).
4) Click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the menu.
1) Click on ‘Settings’ at top right corner of page.
2) Select the ‘Accounts’ tab.
3) Click ‘Add another email address you own’.
4) Follow the instructions regarding sending verifications, etc.
5) Check your other email account and retrieve the code.
6) Plug in the code and click ‘Verify’.
I like to keep the option selected that says ‘Reply from the same address the message was sent to’ so you will automatically respond messages sent to your anonymous account with that same anonymous address.
Now you have another email account set up! You can now send email FROM this account, while still being able to see what messages come in via your normal Gmail account’s interface.
1) Go to Craigslist.org and make sure to select the appropriate city if it doesn’t automatically default to your location.
2) Under the ‘personals’ heading on the leftish part of the page, select the right section (i.e. ‘men seeking women’, etc.). Click through to confirm your legal age, and proceed to the section.
3) Take a second to look at all the crappy subject lines of these posts. YOURS is going to BLOW these out of the water, right? Yours will be snappy and witty and definitive and awesome, or at least unique compared to all the boring posts. RIGHT? Right! Okay, back on track…
4) Click ‘post’ in the upper right corner of the screen.
5) Select the appropriate category, which should be ‘dating, romance, long term relationship (ltr)’ for my clients. (The other stuff is great, too, but that’s probably not what you’re paying me for!)
6) THIS PART IS VERY IMPORTANT. It is absolutely necessary that you select the appropriate category on this page, so please read your options carefully. Select whether you are a man seeking a woman, etc. and please don’t post in the wrong category: it is a Terms of Service violation, and it will just make you look dumb, and we don’t want that.
7) Now select your neighborhood, if applicable (some cities aren’t sub-divided by neighborhood or region, but most are). It’s fine to put a different range than where you actually live if you have a good reason — say you spend most of your hours in Seattle even though you currently live in Redmond, and you’re planning on moving within the next few months. Just be reasonable. :)
8) Okay, now the meat and potatoes! The subject line, the email address, and the actual content are required fields. The age and neighborhood are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED (by me!). Don’t be shy, folks! Be honest and real and you will get that same genuine, truthful spirit back in the responses to the ad you post. Chin up!
9) Insert your witty, well-constructed subject line into the ‘Posting Title’ field. Fill in your age, and perhaps your ‘hood, and your SPELL-CHECKED personal ad text into the Posting Description field.
10) Now fill in your ANONYMOUS, PERSONALS-ONLY email address that you already created per the instructions above, into the email address field. Type it again to confirm.
11) If you’re posting with no pics, click ‘Continue’ at the bottom, and skip to Step 14. If you want to add a pic, click ‘Add/Edit Images’ and follow all these steps.
12) Click ‘Browse’ to locate the files you want, and wait until the green circle appears to inform you that your image has been uploaded. Gigantic images are not allowed, so you will need to resize your images if they are too large. Luckily, this is very easy to do with free software that you probably already have on your computer — Google ‘resize image’ or just give me a call and I’ll help ya if you need it. :)
13) Click ‘Continue’ at the bottom of the page once you’ve uploaded all the images you wanted to.
14) Now you get to preview your ad. This is how it will appear on the site, so take a second to make sure everything looks fine and dandy! If it doesn’t, click ‘Edit’ and change whatever you need. If it looks good, click ‘Continue’. If you’re not sure, look in the mirror and remind yourself how awesome you are, and how much you deserve to find the happiness you’re seeking, and then return to your computer and click ‘Continue’.
15) Click ‘ACCEPT the terms of use’ after reading them or ignoring them as you see fit. (Not a bad idea to give them a read, if this is your first time.)
16) Enter the spam-catcher letters as they appear, and keep in mind that you can reload to a different image if it’s too wonky. Once you’ve got it, click ‘Continue’.
17) Now you should be on a page that says you will be receiving an email shortly. Yes, you will! Check your anonymous, safe, secure online dating email address that you created specifically for this purpose; Craig’s emails rarely take more than an hour at WORST. It’s usually there by the time your Gmail interface loads up.
18) Go to your email, and put a little star/flag next to this baby. You may need it in the future. Then click the link in the email from Craigslist.
19) Here you should see a preview of your ad underneath a brown box with buttons to ‘Publish’, ‘Edit’ or ‘Delete’. Pretty self-explanatory — give it one laaaast look to make sure it’s pristine, and then click ‘Publish’. (It’s okay if you get cold feet, but c’mon — you’ve made it this far!)
20) The box should turn to light green, and provide you with a link to the ad plus options to edit or delete. Congrats — you now have a Craigslist ad up! Please note that your ad WILL expire in 7 days. But don’t worry, the section below will tell you how to re-post!
Easy as pie! The hardest part of this process is locating your original Craigslist email. Thusly,
1) Locate your original Craigslist email. The subject line should be in the following (example) format: ‘POST/EDIT/DELETE : (women seeking men) Do you like piña coladas?’ (Replace with whatever category and subject line you came up with). The sender should be noreply@craigslist.org. If you’re having trouble finding it, think back to when you first posted the ad and do a search within that approximate time frame.
2) Once you’ve located that email, click on the link it contains.
3) This should take you to a text-happy page with a pink box at the top, stating your posting has expired. Under the box should be the long, non-word-wrapped text-only version of your ad.
4) Copy all of the text of your ad, and your subject line too if you desire. Don’t bother copying the location or other bullet points at the bottom of the page.
5) Follow the steps above to re-post this info as a new ad, making any edits you like along the way. Voilà!
