Step 2: A senior dating services agency should be honest and straight forward.
Beware of senior dating services that are not straight forward. Some of them will let you think that here is a free registration process accessible to you as soon as you get on the web site. And in most cases, it's not true. What is really free is for you to browse the pool of members with no access to members' accounts as discussed above (besides a very brief and basic description of each browsed member).
The "free registration process" will ask you to fill a dozen of fields of personal information on yourself (address, names, passwords and user ID) and a brief description of yourself and what you are looking for in a mate. They won't ask you for your credit information... not yet!
Completing the process will still not give you access to members' profiles. As soon as you try to click on the profile of another member, they will ask you for your credit card numbers to allow you to go further and complete a full membership registration process. At this point it's not to late for you retract and leave the web site.
This is the kind of half truth you need to be aware of will browsing senior dating services on the web.
Senior dating services should be professional.
One way to find out about a senior dating services site professionalism is by completing the basic registration process often requested from you, which include disclosure of some personal information, to become a member of the senior dating services site. Most of the senior dating services sites on the web will ask you to complete a portion of this self identification process (a least partly at the beginning) in order for you to access freely the pool of members and search through it.
Besides some basic information about you, like your name and location (remember that there is no need at this point for the senior dating services site to know about your exact and complete address), they will ask you to create a username. Choose your username carefully since it will stay with you after, if you ever decide to fully register with the senior dating services agency and get in touch with other senior members. Most senior dating services sites will offer you the possibility to modify your username if you wish to. If you do choose to modify your username later for any reason, remember that this serves you as your name for other members. They recognize and know you by your username. Some members may lose track of you if you change it. You could be missing out on great opportunities! At least make sure to inform those you already chat with if you decide to go for a change of username.
To complete your temporary free registration process, the senior dating services sites request that you create a password to go with your username. This is of course done in order to restrict access to your account. You and only you should know your password. Most of the senior dating services won't mention to you how to create a good password (which means hard to guess for others). First never use personal information to create the password that others may know or that could be find out easily if they wish to (birth date, pet names, kids names, etc). Instead create a random combination of letters and numbers bearing no logical links to one another. For example: L-T-U-2-8-5-Y-6. It's harder to remember for you but it's practically impossible to break for anyone else. Using existing words like HOUSE, MACHINE or DATING is also not a good idea. It makes it relatively easy for someone to use software built to break passwords. These types of software are available on the internet for anyone to use. If you find senior dating services helping you go through all these rather simple steps to ensure you a secured environment, it should be a good indication that the agency cares about you and not only your money!
Senior dating services should not bother you with lengthy registration form.
Most of the senior dating services websites will ask you to tell them what you are looking for in a senior mate at this stage of the registration process. If the length of this process goes above half a dozen questions or ask you for a large description of yourself (some senior dating services websites will even put a restriction on the minimum of words you can use in your description before you can get to next stage), beware!
Remember that this is only the free registration process to get you started. This is just to allow you to browse through the pool of members to get you the chance to see if this is the right senior dating services environment for you. The senior dating sites that ask you to spend 20 to 30 minutes of your time filling up these preliminary forms describing you or describing what you are looking for in a senior mate probably have a reason to do so that they don't tell you about. They want you to spend enough time on this that you will probably end up thinking that you are better off completing the full process of registering (including the payment) even if this might or might not be the right senior dating services for you. They expect that you won't feel like starting all this all over again on other sites. These kind of senior dating services do not deserve that you spent more than a couple of minutes on them and they certainly do not deserve that you give them any money.