A dreadful lesson in the danger of online dating

WHEN Grace Millane’s parents said goodbye as she set off on her gap year, never in their worst nightmares could they have imagined the last time they would see her would be on videos shown during her murder trial in New Zealand.

Grace, 21, was strangled, her body dumped in a shallow grave in scrubland thousands of miles from home.

CCTV showed her meeting a man she’d found on Tinder, being hugged by him on their first encounter. They go drinking and kiss and cuddle before they leave for his hotel room.

And that’s the last anyone saw of her. It’s too tragic for words.

So many people — particularly those uninitiated in the world of dating apps like Tinder — must be asking why a bright university graduate like Grace, from a loving family, ever put her trust in internet dating.

How her poor parents must wish Tinder had never been invented.

Yet millions of people — young and old — now use dating apps all the time. Almost four million singletons are registered on Tinder alone, while countless others use Happn, Bumble and others. It’s how people meet.

However, there is a brutal truth about dating apps. You have no idea who you are actually meeting.

Anyone can pretend to be anything. The more glamorous the picture online, the glossier the profile, the more likely you are to be ‘liked’. Swipe right for ‘yes please’, swipe up for ‘super yes please’. It’s that simple.

I have friends who found the right person through dating apps — and lasting happiness. Others have been duped and deceived. One met a ‘divorcee’ who still lived with his wife, mother-in-law, two kids and a dog.

Through a dating app, I once met a man purporting to be a Wall Street banker and entrepreneur. His Wall Street days never existed, and his ‘food empire’ was a shabby cafe in a south London suburb.

Grace, a gentle and trusting girl on the eve of her 22nd birthday, was simply doing what so many others do. But on this occasion Tinder reminded us in the cruellest way of the perils of internet dating.

There are rules — easily found online — on safe web dating. Always meet in a public place. Don’t go home with him, or to his hotel room. Don’t overdo the booze.

Love may be blind, but in the search for it on dating apps, it’s vital every woman has her eyes wide open.