People browse dating sites for a variety of reasons, from trying to find someone to date to looking for proof of their partner’s infidelity. Personal reasons aside, modern technologies have made it much easier to locate people online, even if they are not particularly interested in being found.

If you wish to find out if someone has a profile on a dating site, this is the perfect place to start your search and discover all the tracking options at your disposal.

Can You Find People On Dating Sites For Free?

The short answer would be yes, but it comes with a huge caveat.

Nothing is ever that simple, is it?

If you do not mind doing A LOT of grunt work, there are methods that will allow you to gather enough information about any given person and try your luck at identifying their potential presence on popular dating sites. This tends to go much smoother if we are talking about your partner with a shady alibi or children you are trying to protect from, well, the Internet. In these cases, you have all the information right there in your home – you know their name, address, zip code, age, email, you name it.

On the other hand, if we are talking about a love interest that just strolled into your life out of nowhere, things can get a bit tricky, but you may get lucky if you have some basic info about your potential date.

Whether you are trying to learn more about a potential or new partner, protect your children from online predators or monitor your spouse’s online presence, there are some direct search methods you can try.

First of all, you will need a basic informational foundation to start your search. This includes the person’s name and email address at the very minimum. This is quite easy to obtain for your spouse or children, but love interests you know nothing about tend to be more of a challenge. Once you have the required information, you can simply track their social media presence for more data and check if any particular email address has been used to create an account on some of the popular dating sites.

Direct search methods can rarely be effective since reputable platforms do not air email addresses publicly in order to protect the privacy of their clients. In these cases, you have to use info like zip codes and age, which are pretty unreliable at best. On top of that, very few people use their actual names on their dating profiles, so you will have to rely on other types of data.

On the other hand, if you have access to your partner’s computer, you can always use the forgotten password option on any given site and see what happens. If their email is recognized by the platform, they have an account there and you have just caught them red-handed. Of course, you should always be aware of the legal frame in your country and never attempt anything that can get you in trouble with the law. On the flip side, people do not really tend to delete their old accounts on random dating sites, so you might get a false positive from time to time, unless the platform has a tracker that informs you of the member’s last login.

Jealous lovers also have the option of catfishing with a fake profile. Simply create an account on the suspected site and perform a basic search to see if your partner has a profile there. When it comes to the legality of this endeavor, it is somewhere in the gray area. After a quick search, simply delete (not deactivate) your account and move on.

Bottom line, short of stealing someone’s phone or computer, your list of options is quite limited – and most often, ineffective.

Background Check Companies

Companies like BeenVerified and Spokeo provide you with effective and budget-friendly alternatives to time-consuming manual searches that yield mediocre results more often than not.

By entering the person’s name, you will be able to inspect tens of thousands of data points revealing information you would never be able to find on your own. Apart from performing reverse email checks, these providers can identify one’s social media presence, criminal and tax records, and much more. If the person of interest connected their phone number to a certain dating platform, a simple phone reverse lookup will provide you with actionable data in a matter of seconds.

Apart from locating people on dating websites, these services will also help you avoid the most common dating scams. If you so choose, you can check yourself as well and discover what people can learn about you through a simple search.