- Iran: Eight Prisoners Hanged on Drug Charges
- Daughter of late Iranian president jailed for ‘spreading lies’ - IRAN: Annual report on the death penalty 2016 - Taheri Facing the Death Penalty Again - Dedicated team seeking return of missing agent in Iran - Iran Arrests 2, Seizes Bibles During Catholic Crackdown
- Trump to welcome Netanyahu as Palestinians fear U.S. shift
- Details of Iran nuclear deal still secret as US-Tehran relations unravel - Will Trump's Next Iran Sanctions Target China's Banks? - Don’t ‘tear up’ the Iran deal. Let it fail on its own. - Iran Has Changed, But For The Worse - Iran nuclear deal ‘on life support,’ Priebus says
- Female Activist Criticizes Rouhani’s Failure to Protect Citizens
- Iran’s 1st female bodybuilder tells her story - Iranian lady becomes a Dollar Millionaire on Valentine’s Day - Two women arrested after being filmed riding motorbike in Iran - 43,000 Cases of Child Marriage in Iran - Woman Investigating Clinton Foundation Child Trafficking KILLED!
- Senior Senators, ex-US officials urge firm policy on Iran
- In backing Syria's Assad, Russia looks to outdo Iran - Six out of 10 People in France ‘Don’t Feel Safe Anywhere’ - The liberal narrative is in denial about Iran - Netanyahu urges Putin to block Iranian power corridor - Iran Poses ‘Greatest Long Term Threat’ To Mid-East Security |
Thursday 24 July 2014Single Iranians skirt cyber police to find dates onlineWith online dating websites prohibited in Iran, singles are discretely frequenting chat rooms, in the hope of finding a date or a mate, according to Al-Monitor. Match-making and dating websites are illegal in Iran, so almost all local websites for meeting people take the form of chat rooms rather than sites designated for match-making. Even the chat rooms require permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. According to the Iranian Cyber Police, or FATA, a branch of the Iranian Disciplinary Force, dating websites are illegal and the ones that do exist and are active, according to FATA's spokesman, “are operated by servers outside Iran and simply rip off users." But single, tech-savvy Iranians have found the Iranian-based chat rooms conducive for dating. According to Neda, a 27-year-old medical student from Shiraz, chat rooms are the only way she can find boyfriends, Al-Monitor writes. Neda indulges in chats and dates without telling her parents who would disapprove. She arranges the dates before or after classes at school "so my mom thinks I'm spending time in the lab or have an extra class of some kind at the university." The chat rooms range from a handful that are endorsed by religious authorities and provide matchmaking services for Iranians seeking marital partners, to more liberal secret ones that cater covertly to straight and gay Iranians. "What we do in Iran is a big service, sometimes including sacrifices, given the risks we occasionally take," the founder of one such site told Al-Monitor. Privacy is not guaranteed since the sites are sometimes monitored by government authorities. Some of the chat rooms openly warn users about the round-the-clock presence of “designated observers” who, at times, may mediate conversations. The few legal websites tend to be on the more conservative side. They sometimes offer advice on finding boyfriends or girlfriends that boils down to clichés like "be handsome and say no to girls" or "expect lavish gifts and say no to boys." Haaretz |