Internet dating lie detector

by Mary White

Have you ever felt like running your email messages through a lie detector? Well, you might be able to do just that in the future.

But for now, there are five basic giveaways that indicate a person is lying.

• More words than necessary are used to cover up lies
• Writing in the third person, such as "they" and "he" to disassociate themselves from a lie
• Using negative emotional terms such as "sad", "angry", "unhappy" and "stressed out" because they feel uncomfortable when lying
• Too many "sense terms" such as "see", "feel" and "touch" to create a far fetched account of something that didn’t happen
• Minimal number of "casual phrases" to avoid getting caught out. For instance a person who has a double life will simply apologise for arriving late but not go into detail

Researchers at Cornell University in New York State have analysed thousands of email messages to track patterns for lying and telling the truth. Software is coming out next year to catch out liars by detecting the obvious tell tale signs. This will be good news for many employers and law enforcement agencies wanting to trap fraudsters.

As for internet daters, you have to apply some common sense and proceed with caution until the software becomes affordable.