Did they read your message? Are they just busy or are they ignoring you? These are the questions that plague us when we send out a message to someone we like in online dating. We always want to know where we stand and if we should move on or send another message. Thankfully, a lot of online dating sites heard our call and released a feature called read receipts.

What are online dating read receipts?

Read receipts is a term for technology created by online dating sites to allow users to know whether or not their message sent to another single has been read, is still unread, or has been deleted. The technology is not available at all dating sites and is usually a feature that comes as an upgrade. When being used, the sender can check their online dating inbox to see the status of all of their messages. If the message has been read or deleted, it will show a timestamp with the date and time of exactly when the message was read or deleted.

How do I get read receipts?

Read receipts are not going to be available everywhere and are only offered by some dating sites. We do expect that in the future more sites will be offering this functionality, but for now, it is available at about half of the sites out there. In order to get access to read receipts, you’re usually going to have to purchase them as an add-on, or they’ll come with one of the plans.

If you’re not sure if your plan has read receipts, contact customer service and ask them. See if they have them and then also see if they can tell you what you need to do in order to get them activated on your account. If you haven’t joined an online dating site yet and want to see if they have read receipts, check out our online dating site reviews where we break down all of the features available.

Can I block someone from seeing when I read something?

Unfortunately, if you’re on a dating site with read receipts, you can’t hide from the functionality. If you do read a message from someone or delete it and they have read receipts, they will be able to see that you did this and when you did it. If you really don’t want someone to know that you read or deleted or even saw a message they sent, you’ll just have to leave it in your inbox and not open it. We’re not really sure why this would be the case (maybe if an ex is messaging you), but that’s the only workaround available.

Are online dating read receipts worth the extra cost?

Out of all the features available in online dating, we think this is the best one for those of you that want peace of mind. In reality, you should be able to send off messages and then not worry about whether they are read or not, but we are all human. If we see someone online that we really like, we want to know if they’ve read our message or not. Without read receipts, you’re kind of left guessing as to whether your message was received or received and deleted.

In our opinion, read receipts in online dating are totally worth especially because they’re usually only a few bucks more as an add-on or an upgraded membership. If you truly don’t ever worry whether your message was received or not after you sent it, then there’s no need to get read receipts. But, if you want to know where you stand and whether you should send a second message or not, you might want to look into getting this feature for your online dating account.

Are online dating read receipts always accurate?

This is a question that we get a lot, and we’d like to give you the best answer that we can. As far as we know, read receipts are 100% accurate because they are done through an automatic process. As soon as the message is read or deleted, a note is made in the system. When you log into your online dating account to see the status of your message, it grabs that time and date directly from that note in the system. It’s not a process that is handled by humans where there is a chance for human error.

That being said, we can’t see their processes so we can’t tell you they are 100% accurate without a shadow of a doubt. But, for all intents and purposes, they are 100% accurate, and you should have no reason to ever suspect that the information you are getting from online dating read receipts is incorrect.

We can say that there are zero ways for an individual to manipulate the read receipts and read your message without you know or delete your message without you knowing.