Puppet on a no-strings attached.

Just before I went away on holiday, I had a blast through Tinder. I do this every now and again because I'm still interested in meeting people and it's less annoying than an online dating site like Match or PoF. And I knew I was going to be busy on it while I was on holiday for my experiment.

And I matched with a cute blonde girl. Seemed to have a good figure, if her photos were in any way accurate. So, having learned the lesson of waiting too long to message and losing the opportunity, (CC's friend, amongst others), I fired off a quick "hello".

And so the conversation started. She was foreign. She was recently new to the city, but had been in the UK for a few years. She had a grown up child and was divorced.

The child thing is a bother to me, but the rest of it seemed sound.

However, after a few swapped messages, something didn't feel right. I couldn't put my finger on it. Was it the fact that she kept using my name in that way that seems off? Was it the fact that she didn't really answer a question? Or that the conversation seemed stilted?

Then the last few exchanges really made no sense - I asked her how she was settling in to the city, she said she'd be out of town for a few days, going back to her previous place (I assumed to get some of her things/tidy up loose ends), but maybe we could meet when she got back? I replied, saying that I'd like to meet and almost immediately got a reply saying that she had returned! She wanted to clarify something before we met... could I check out a profile on a website?

This all seemed very suspicious. If it wasn't a bot (which seem to be more and more frequent on dating sites and apps), then it was surely a fake profile. Ordinary people do not ask you to cross reference another web site for "intimate preferences". However, while it seemed suspicious, I checked it out (I've been told I'm a sucker for a pretty face) and it led to Adult Friend Finder - a site I'd never used, but knew about. It was the original hookup site, before Tinder came along and evolved into a dating app. Unlike Tinder, it's not free to use.

So, lovely Erin, the fake foreign beauty, I had to report your profile to Tinder. Sorry. Doubly sorry if you're actually real and just wanted a good, no-strings seeing to.

But you're not.