Love bytes

Unlike Sarah, Caroline, also from London, became a dab hand at online dating. She quickly learned to spot the warning signs, and top of the bill were dodgy nicknames. 'Anyone who calls himself BigDick69 is not to be trusted,' she laughs.

But no matter how finely tuned your dating antennae are, technology can trip the best of us up.

'It's good to exchange pictures, as people often exaggerate their good features and forget their second head,' says Caroline. 'You can't gauge chemistry from a picture, but it does reveal how someone likes to present themselves. A man draped over a huge red Porsche has potential, money-wise, but he may be a poseur. It's also worth scrutinising the photo to check he's not leaning on someone else's motor in a car park.'

Caroline had a picture of herself saved as a file named 'me', sitting on her desktop, ready to send if a fellow dater pressed the right buttons.

'Over time, I had been sent various pictures of guys, which were all floating around on my desktop. One day I was chatting to some promising sounding men, but each time I sent my picture, they all said, "er, no thanks" or logged off immediately.'

Caroline checked the picture she had been sending out. 'To my horror, I realised that there were two 'me' files on my PC - my own pic and one that had been sent to me. I double clicked on it and a photo of a big naked hairy bloke, reclining on a bed appeared. I was mortified,' she says.