to lie or not to lie online

it seems that people tend to lie when looking for a partner.  But it appears that people like more online.  The crazy thing is that this defeats the mission to find a good match in a partner.  The only way you  will find someone that is a good match is if you are authentic & honest.  As a double bonus, it also promotes trust if the relationship continues.

“It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.” Robert Armstrong

I read an interesting post titled Do People Lie More Online, here are some of the main points:

“Most people believe that given the opportunity, everything else equal, people will lie more online than they would face-to-face,” said Jeff Hancock, an associate professor of communications at Cornell University who specializes in information technology and deception.
Hancock calls this the “cues heuristic,” which means the fewer deception-detecting signals at our disposal, the less we’ll trust someone.
At the same time, research indicates that technology, which allows us craft picture-perfect social networking profiles or e-mail in sick when we’re lounging on the beach, isn’t tempting us to lie any more than we normally do.
“Every time a technology is new, it elicits great fears. Many people are fearful about what it’s going to do,” Toma said. “So I think fears about deception stem from this general fear of technology and certain features of technologies that make it easy to lie.”
However, we can rest easier since people don’t always take advantage of these tech-facilitated opportunities to lie. Just like face-to-face lying, there’s a cost-benefits evaluation involved in online deception.

“Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death. I can work out a good character much faster than anyone can lie me out of it” Lyman Beecher

For example, Hancock and Toma’s research on deception in online dating has found that around 80 percent of people pepper their profiles with “very, very small” lies, such as a man saying he’s 6 feet tall, when he’s really 5 feet 10 inches.
Fudging one’s height is a minor cost with a major self-presentation benefit of looking more appealing to potential partners.
On the flip side, Hancock’s recent study comparing deception in traditional resumes (the average American drops in three fibs) versus digital resumes posted on LinkedIn found fewer flagrant lies online.
In that case, misrepresenting a point, such as your tenure at a company, is easy to verify  in an online network perhaps populated by other coworkers and employers — and therefore too great of a risk.
Fingering a lie online – and in-person – also relies less on spotting specific factual slip-ups than noticing overall inconsistencies in how people present themselves.
“It’s really important to know that there is no single cue that always predicts deception, and a lot of people will tell you differently,” Hancock said. “And even more importantly, we’re not very good as humans at judging deception. So, if someone’s trying to lie to us, they have a leg up.”

“Nobody speaks the truth when there’s something they must have.” Elizabeth Bowen

In fact, Hancock’s advice for detecting deception online is a solid rule of thumb for pinpointing Pinocchios in the real world.
“One of my friends is a prison guard, and he and I were talking about some of our research, and he told me there’s a saying among the guards that if something doesn’t feel right, it’s not,” Hancock said. “The idea (with spotting online deception) is to pay attention to how you’re feeling about things, and that if something doesn’t feel quite right or is too good to be true, it probably is.”

Another post gives some possible  reasons why people lie, Why People Lie in their Online Dating Profiles

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