Start by asking what the site actually checks
“Verified” means different things on different sites: an email confirmed, a phone confirmed, an identity document seen by a moderator, a live video recorded on the spot. Any site that will not tell you which of these it does has told you something. On AnnaBrides the process is described plainly on the profile verification page: a moderator reviews every new profile and can take it down, some before it appears and the rest once they are live; an identity-document and live-video check covers some profiles and not others; reports are read by people and profiles that ask for money are removed. What is not checked — intentions, background, anything that happens off the site — is listed on the same page.
Whatever the site does, it checks a profile at a point in time. What you want to know is whether the person writing to you today is the person in the profile. That is your job, and it is not hard.
Check 1: the photograph (two minutes)
The FBI and UK police both recommend a reverse image search of the profile photo (FBI; Action Fraud): save the image, put it into an image search engine, and see where else it appears. Three outcomes:
- It appears nowhere else — proves little, but nothing is wrong.
- It appears under a different name, or on a stock-photo site, or in a “romance scammer photos” collection — stop.
Professional quality is not a red flag on its own — a good photographer is not expensive, and plenty of people have had proper photographs taken. Ask for a video call instead of judging the lighting.
How to reverse image search a dating profile photo, step by step
- Save the photograph or copy its address — a long press on a phone offers both.
- Open an image search. UK police name Google image search and TinEye (Action Fraud); Bing and Yandex also accept an uploaded picture. Use two — they index different parts of the web.
- Upload the photo or paste the address, and look at the "pages that include this image" results, not only the visually similar pictures.
- Repeat with a second photograph, ideally a less polished one. Scammers copy the best portrait; they rarely copy the whole album.
- Read what you find. This site's own pages are expected; a stock library, a different name, a different country or a "scammer photos" gallery is a stop.
Check 2: consistency (over two weeks, no effort)
Fraud thrives on stories that change. Pick three ordinary facts — where she works, who she lives with, what her town is like in winter — and ask about each of them naturally, twice, some days apart. A real life comes back the same. Police advice highlights that fraudsters make conversations personal while giving little about themselves that can be checked (Met Police); notice whether your questions get answers or deflections.
Check 3: the live video call (the one that counts)
A live call inside the site puts the person in front of you now. A photograph can be stolen and a video file can be old; a conversation in which she reacts to what you just said cannot be faked by someone who is not there. Suggest a short call after a few good letters, at a time in her time zone, and make it easy: a few minutes, whatever she wants to talk about, and agree beforehand how you will handle the language. Then do it again a week later. Our guide on the video call before any plans covers how to make the first one comfortable.
If a call is always impossible — camera, internet, shyness, for weeks — you have your answer, and it did not cost anything.
Check 4: the request test
Verification is also what someone asks of you. A real person asks about your life. A script asks, sooner or later, for money, for a move to another app, or for your documents. The guide to warning signs in order lays the sequence out.
Should you run a background check on an online date?
Usually you cannot, and the offers to do it for you are the thing to be careful of. Commercial background-check services work from records in the country where they operate; for a woman in Ukraine, or in temporary protection in Poland, a service in Ohio or Manchester has little to search, and its report will say so in small print. This site does not run background checks in either direction and says so on the verification page. What a check would tell you — that she is who she says, lives where she says, and is not writing the same letter to two hundred men — is answered better, and free, by the three checks above. The one "background check" to refuse outright is the one offered to you in a message: a "dating ID" or "verification certificate" for a small fee. No legitimate site or police force sells those by private message, and the FTC's rule covers the fee like any other payment (FTC).
What not to do
- Do not pay a third-party “verification service” or a “background check” offered in a message. That is itself a known scam script.
- Do not send your own documents to prove yourself. Police advice is to protect your privacy and not reveal too much online (Met Police). The site never publishes your email or payment details.
- Do not treat a badge as the end of the question. It is the beginning.
If a check fails
Report the profile to the site — on AnnaBrides, support with the profile address and what you found. You do not need to be sure; a report is looked at by a person and you lose nothing by asking.
These checks are items 3 to 5 of the conversation half of the international dating safety checklist; the site half tells you what to check before you pay anything.
This guide is part of the AnnaBrides dating safety hub. On this site money never changes hands between members — there is no feature for it — so any request for money is, by definition, a request to leave the site.