The Best STD Dating Sites

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 1 in 5 people in the United States has a sexually transmitted disease (STD). The CDC’s Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report reveals:1

• Around 18.6 million Americans have HSV-2, the typical cause of genital herpes outbreaks.
• 984,000 people have human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
• 42.5 million people have been diagnosed with human papillomavirus (HPV).

If you’re someone who has been diagnosed with an STD, you’re far from alone. However, dating and finding love while living with an STD can still be challenging. Having an STD carries an unfortunate stigma, and people face discrimination because of misinformation or stereotypes.2

Luckily, there are online spaces — like STD dating sites — meant to help correct this issue. These sites cater to adults living with STDs and help them match with other singles living with the same diagnosis. This removes some stigma and reduces the risk of potentially infecting a partner.

But do these sites work? Can you really find romance? How do these sites stack up against each other? What’s the cost? This guide will answer all of those questions and more, helping you find the best dating site for your needs. Read on for all the details, but here are our top recommendations for those in a hurry.

Our 2024 recommendations for best STD dating sites

• Best overall: Positive Singles
• Best for private chat and calls: Meet Positives
• Best for HIV news and networking: POZ Personals
• Best budget pick for HSV daters: Meet People With Herpes
• Best for herpes community support: H-Werks

At Innerbody Research, we thoroughly evaluate every product and service we review, including STD dating sites. Our testing team has created profiles on all the top sites and used them to scrutinize interface design, dating pool quality, and more.

Through the course of our investigations, we also perused various scientific journals to read up on the nuances, symptoms, and treatments for various STDs, as well as the ways attitudes are shifting around STD status, stigma, and dating life. Additionally, like all health-related content on this website, this guide is thoroughly vetted by one or more members of our Medical Review Board for accuracy.

Over the past two decades, we have helped tens of millions of readers make more informed decisions about staying healthy and living healthier lifestyles.

It can be exceptionally hard to evaluate dating sites of any kind without creating a profile and spending time interacting with a site’s community. When we did this with the top STD dating sites, it revealed several criteria that are top-of-mind for most users, and we used those criteria to pit the sites against one another.

Specifically, we focused on privacy, dating pool, cost, and site features (free and paid) to determine which site is your best bet for an investment of time or money.

Privacy

Winner: Positive Singles

Your STD status is your business. You should decide who to share that information with. Because of this, STD dating sites keep your privacy a top priority. Some use encryption services and other measures to protect your personal information. Many offer discreet billing and secure payments. To keep the community safe, many sites also allow you to report or block members you suspect are not living with an STD.

The best combination of privacy options we’ve seen comes from Positive Singles, where you can delete your profile and expect the data to be gone for good from the company server within six months. Some competitors, like Meet Positives, actually charge you a fee if you want to delete your profile, which we do not appreciate from a privacy standpoint. Positive Singles also lets you set who gets to see your profile and photos (e.g., certain matches or people you’ve reached out to). However, this is a paid feature that some other services offer for free.

Dating pool

Winner: Positive Singles

The more members a site has, the better your chances of making a match. Many sites offer location-based searching, so you can find out how many people in your area are available to meet. In this guide, we prioritized sites with the most members, particularly sites where members are active, and success stories abound.

Positive Singles has the market cornered when it comes to dating pool size with more than 2 million active members. With a number that big, the company understandably advertises it. Others bury their user information, which forces us to calculate by various match searches and results comparisons to come up with reliable pool size estimates. The site with the next largest pool we found was Meet People With Herpes, an HSV-specific dating site whose parent company also owns Positive Singles.

Cost

Winner: Positive Singles

Most STD dating sites allow you to try out the service for free or at a low cost. But, to take advantage of the site's full functionality, you must pay a membership fee. These range in price from $10-$50 per month, depending on the site and billing frequency you choose.

Here’s a quick look at how these companies charge based on billing cycles. Note that the herpes dating site HWerks was not included, as it uses a one-time lifetime subscription fee of $56.

As you can see, among generalized sites, Positive Singles has some of the best prices, while specialized sites for herpes or HIV tend to be slightly less expensive overall.

Site features

Winner: Positive Singles

STD dating sites have standard features that you find on any other dating site, like matching, searching, and messaging. Some also have additional features that help you hone your searches, organize your matches, and personalize your profile. Some even feature video calls and live chat to help you further connect with potential mates.

Positive Singles has some of the most in-depth features you could ask for from its free side, with a Tinder-like application called FLAME and the ability to message other members freely as long as they message you first. In order to send that first message, you have to be a paid member. However, the site offers additional ways to make your interest known, from matching through FLAME to sending a notification akin to a wink or a like that lands in the other person's mailbox.

One specialized feature set found on the Meet Positives site that earns them a runner-up consideration here is an anonymous call and text feature powered by Safe Connect. You end up being able to use your phone with a masked number to chat with other users. Unfortunately, this feature is only available at the highest subscription tier. Positive Singles has an app that features a similar system, but the app has its own membership fees. Still, if you plan to use the app and not use the site, that Positive Singles feature could be very useful.

An STD dating site is just like any other dating site, with the exception that all members of the dating pool are living with one or more STDs. These sites model themselves after many of the most successful general dating sites, and they boast features you'd likely expect from the experience, like profile construction, matching algorithms, and the means to communicate with other users.

Who should use an STD dating site?

If you’ve tested positive for an incurable STD or have a chronic or latent infection, you may want to use an STD dating site to find a partner who will accept your situation without judgment.3 But even if you aren't sure that joining such a site with a paying membership would be worth it, creating a minimal profile is still useful for anyone seeking a concentrated repository of STD resources. Many of these sites have blogs, educational materials, and even databases of nearby locations for treatment and support.

You also don’t have to be looking for love to join an STD dating site. Living with herpes or HIV can be isolating, and joining a community of people who understand your experience can mitigate that loneliness.4 Many sites have aspects dedicated to community building, regardless of romantic aspirations.

Who might want to look elsewhere for dating services?

Obviously, if you don’t have an STD, you should avoid using STD dating sites. This isn’t a question of your health — your bodily autonomy is your own, and we’re not here to judge — but rather a question of ethics. The people who rely on these sites use them with an expectation of privacy, which is predicated on the assumption that everyone else in the community is in the same boat as them.

When someone violates that trust, it undermines the sanctity of the system. So, if you are STD-negative, you should look elsewhere for dating services.

You also might want to consider alternatives if your STD is treatable and you’re undergoing treatment. The medical community generally advises against sexual contact with other positive individuals while undergoing treatment, even if you have the same infection.5 Variables ranging from the efficacy of certain treatments to infection timetables and individual metabolism will affect the rate at which a given treatment works, and if you and a partner are at different stages of treatment, even by as little as a day, you could pass that infection back and forth to one another. Antibiotics and similar drugs aren’t intended to be used as prophylactics.

There are benefits and drawbacks to using an STD dating site. But this is true of using almost any dating site — you have to take the good with the bad. It’s up to you to create a beneficial experience, but you can also keep these issues in mind:

Pros

• Avoiding “the talk.” When you meet and date someone who isn’t living with an STD, there always comes a time when you have to disclose your STD status. This talk can be a dealbreaker for some people. With an STD dating site, the talk doesn’t go away completely, but it is much different because you’re talking to someone in the same situation as you.
• No risk of transmission. If you both have the same STD, you don’t have to worry about potentially infecting your partner. It’s still essential to have a conversation about safe sex practices — just as with any sexual relationship — but you don’t have to worry about the STD you share in common.
• Support. Unlike other dating sites, most STD dating sites provide community support resources that can help you manage and treat your STD. Some sites have message boards, chatrooms, local support groups, and lists of clinics to help you take care of yourself — mind and body.

Cons

• Limits dating pool. Of course, an STD-specific dating site will have fewer users than general dating sites. So, expect fewer profiles than you might see on Tinder or Bumble. Remember that the dating pool might be smaller, especially if you live in a remote area.
• May feed into STD stigma. Some argue that STD dating sites actually feed into STD stigma. By relegating those with STDs to these sites, dating companies imply that those with STDs shouldn’t date people without STDs. Of course, you can use any dating site you please. The millions of people using these dating sites certainly don’t feel they’re contributing to stigma. Instead, they are using these sites as a tool to react against stigma and date successfully.

Using an STD dating site is nearly identical to using any other dating site. You’ll fill out some basic information about yourself to get started, but instead of just putting things like a username and a location, you’ll also include your STD status.

After that initial signup to create your base profile, you’ll utilize the same features and have the same experiences you would elsewhere, including:

Best overall

Positive Singles is the most robust STD dating site, with more than 2 million registered users. It has over 60,000 member-written success stories with more than 2.5 million member conversations each month. The site offers many amenities in addition to matching with a potential partner, including:

• Live support: help with technical issues
• Live dating advisor: advice about matching and meeting up
• Successful dating advice: user-produced suggestions for first dates and more
• Treatment stories: where users share info on STD treatments
• Care locations: a user-generated listing of STD-friendly clinics and doctors around the country
• STD Q&A: members ask STD-related questions, and the community responds
• Blogs: each user receives their own blog space to self-publish and view over 20,000 monthly blog posts from other members

Unlike some dating sites that cater to a specific STD, Positive Singles allows you to choose which STD you live with from a list. This information appears on user profiles and is searchable when matching with potential mates. The list of STDs includes:

• Herpes (HSV-1 cold sore & genital, HSV-2 cold sore & genital, unsure which type)
• HPV
• HIV
• Hepatitis B
• Hepatitis C
• Chlamydia
• Thrush
• Syphilis
• Gonorrhea
• Other STD

On the profile side, Positive Singles offers a significant amount of nuance, with free-form sections where you can write about yourself or your ideal match and more curated sections where you can answer specific questions that help empower the company’s algorithm to find you a match. Meet Positives has the next best profile interface, but it’s still short of what Positive Singles has to offer.

Standard vs. premium accounts with Positive Singles

You can try out the service for free, but a free account has some limitations. You can:

• Create a profile
• Add public and private photos
• Search for partners by country or state
• Create a list of favorite profiles
• Send unlimited winks — a quick way to let someone know you’re interested that doesn’t include a personalized message
• See if users favorite you, wink at you, or send you a message
• Respond to messages from premium (paid) members

This may sound like a lot of functionality for a standard account, but it does limit your ability to search for partners via preferences like age, location (more specific than state), gender, STD, relationship status, and others. And only being able to search by state can be tough if you live in a place like North Dakota, though it would be less tough for residents of a state closer to Rhode Island in size.

You also can’t respond to a message unless it’s from a premium member. Fortunately, premium status is displayed in profiles, so you can target premium users with winks in the hopes they’ll reach out. Once they do reach out, you can communicate freely.

Here’s a quick breakdown of Positive Singles’ pricing.

These prices apply to either the website or the smartphone app, but these services are separate charges. If you purchase a membership in the app, it won’t grant you access to the site, and vice versa.

Once you become a premium member, you’re able to participate in the full functionality of the site, including:

• Initiating and responding to all messages
• Using the 24-hour chatroom
• Enabling photo and profile security and privacy options
• Viewing reverse matches (people who are looking for your stats)
• Seeing when a member last logged in
• Using enhanced search features

Setting up a Positive Singles account

If you’ve used other dating apps like Tinder or Hinge, setting up a profile on Positive Singles will be familiar. It only requires a few simple steps to set up, and you can edit your profile later.

1. Select your gender, age, height, ethnicity, relationship status, country, state, STD, and the gender of your potential matches. Then, enter your email address.
2. Create a profile headline. This short sentence or phrase sums up your profile or intentions on the site.
3. Write the About Me and About My Match sections. These are longer, paragraph-length sections that require at least 50 characters. Here, you tell potential matches about yourself and what you’re looking for in a mate.
4. Upload a profile photo. This is the picture that potential matches will see first.
5. Verify your mobile number and email address. The site texts and emails you a code.

In some cases, Positive Singles will ask for additional verification, typically in the form of an uploaded ID photo. These images are very well-protected, so you should feel confident providing the picture. This step is there to ensure that bots, scammers, and other unsavory characters can’t infiltrate the community.

Positive Singles account features

Once you’ve created your account, you can begin exploring its many features. Most of these features are available to free and paid users alike but with limited functionality for free users. Your main profile page includes:

• Quick search allows you to select the gender, age, country, and state of a potential match
• The latest activities section offers a timeline of other members’ activities like status updates, new photos, etc. (similar to the wall on Facebook)
• A list of other new members and people you might like

You can navigate further by using the site’s drop-down menus, which lead to various feature pages, including:

Privacy and security

Because your STD status is private and can still carry a stigma, Positive Singles takes many extra steps to ensure that your information is secure. They use a privacy safeguarder that protects users from litigation if disputes arise. Positive Singles doesn’t provide, sell, or rent personal information to any third-party organization. All information you provide is kept confidential.

Your profile privacy settings let you personalize your privacy so that you feel comfortable. You can choose to show or hide your profile from certain members. Premium members can browse profiles anonymously and hide their online status from other members. In this section, you can also view and edit your subscription and notifications.

Positive Singles allows members to report any profile they suspect violates community terms of use and encourages all members to verify their identities within 48 hours of creating a profile. A member can confirm their identity by uploading a copy of a photo ID. Other members can see if a profile is verified, leading to higher credibility on the site and more matches.

Purchases using a debit or credit card will show on your statement as SuccessfulMatch. Some other companies, like HWerks, do a poor job of concealing their identity on bank statements, so we appreciate this level of discretion.

The Positive Singles app

Positive Singles also offers an app for Android and iOS. It is highly rated and includes most of the same features as the website, with some differences. The app does not include the STD Q&A, live dating advisor, or list of STD care locations – you’ll need to consult the website for those.

However, the app does have a few features that are absent from the website:

• Voice chat: like a chatroom but using voice instead of text
• Video calls: a private video chat between two members
• Drift bottle: a place to send and receive anonymous messages

A premium membership on the Positive Singles app costs the same as what you’d pay on the website. You can download and try the app for free with limited functionality.

Best budget pick for HSV daters

Meet People With Herpes (MPWH) is owned by SuccessfulMatch, the same parent company that runs Positive Singles. In fact, we ranked Positive Singles above MPWH in our guide to the best herpes dating sites, simply due to its much larger dating pool and track record. But MPWH is still a valuable option and a top budget pick for daters with HSV, for reasons you’ll see in the cost charts below.

All of the features and design elements of Positive Singles are present on the MPWH site and the MPWH app. The one notable exception is the range of options for STD status and STD search filters.

Compared to Positive Singles, MPWH has a much smaller dating pool of about 400,000 members. (There are over 2 million members on Positive Singles.) However, since the dating pool is exclusive to those living with a herpes infection, the odds of you matching with someone who shares your STD status are still high.

But the most important difference for many living with herpes and seeking a match is price. MPWH is less expensive than Positive Singles at every billing frequency. Like Positive Singles, MPWH has an app, the membership to which is a separate charge from the website membership. But the MPWH app is less expensive than the website, which you can’t say about Positive Singles, where the prices are the same.

Here’s how the pricing for MPWH shakes out:

App membership is even less expensive:

At these rates, you stand to save up to $250 if you choose the app and select biannual billing.

Best for private chat and calls

Meet Positives is similar to Positive Singles in many ways, but it doesn’t quite measure up to Positive Singles with community resources and dating guidance. However, it does offer some unique features — live private chat, text, and call — and it has decent functionality for free members.

When creating an account, choose from the following list of conditions:

• Herpes (HSV-1 cold sore & genital, HSV-2 cold sore & genital, unsure which type)
• HPV
• HIV
• Hepatitis B
• Hepatitis C
• Chlamydia
• Thrush
• Syphilis
• Gonorrhea
• Other STD

Members can enjoy private voice calls, text messages, and video calls using mobile phones. The site uses Safe Connect to provide you with an anonymous phone number to connect with other members discreetly. This means that you can communicate with matches via video, phone, or text, and your real contact info is kept confidential until you choose to share it. However, this feature is only available at the highest subscription tier.

The site states that it includes member blog posts, a community forum for insights about living with an STD, and STD dating and long-term relationship advice written by members and experts. However, our testers could not locate any of this information after setting up an account. The community forum page was empty. And while they could access the page to create their own blog post, there was no link to access other members' blog posts. Some of this information is available on the Meet Positives homepage, but the resources are limited.

Although Meet Positives references the functionality of its app on its website, the app is still in “early release.” This status allows the app to be downloaded and used, but not to be subjected to user ratings or comments. And if you click the site’s link to download the app, you’ll find a page that says, “coming soon.”

Meet Positives free account vs. paid account

A free account allows you to request friendship, wink, ask a question, add to favorites, and request a meeting. But if you want to email, text, chat, or video message with a member, you have to pay for a subscription. Meet Positives offers two subscription tiers with different features.

The Basic Connect plan allows you to message other members, see who viewed your profile, and do local searches. It costs:

The Safe Connect plan includes all of the Basic Connect features plus private video chat, call, and text.

Signing up for Meet Positives

To sign up, you’ll provide some basic information and then create an account. Provide:

• Your gender
• The gender of your preferred matches (men, women, or couples)
• Your first name, which won’t be revealed in your profile
• Username
• Email address
• Password
• Birthdate
• STD status
• Location
• Mobile number — the site will text you a verification code

Profile creation includes the following five sections:

1. My Intent: Profile picture, the type of relationship you’re looking for (friendship, long-term, dating, marriage, or casual), about my match (which kinds of STDs you’ll accept in a mate — you can choose more than one)
2. My Appearance: Eye color, hair color, and body type
3. Who I Am: Ethnicity, religion, and politics
4. My Lifestyle: Occupation, income, pets, children, and drinking and smoking habits
5. About Me: Your opportunity to tell your matches more about yourself. You must enter something here when you create your profile, and you can return to edit later.

Meet Positives account features

Once you’ve completed your profile, you can begin exploring the site and other members’ profiles. From your profile homepage, you can:

• Quick search to find a match based on your gender, their gender, age range, and whether or not their profile includes a photo.
• Advanced search with preferences including height, relationship status, ethnicity, body type, religion, education, and keyword (advanced searches are for paid members).
• Perform a “living with” search to find a match based solely on STD status.
• Search by location to find matches nearby or in any location you prefer.

Your profile homepage also shows a list of other members who have viewed your profile and a listing of your blog posts. You can “add friends” on Meet Positives — similar to Facebook — so your homepage also shows a listing of your friends.

The site used to have something called a Meet Me function, which was similar to the Positive Singles FLAME application, but that is no longer an option.

One feature that you’ll see at the bottom of every page you visit is a quick exit button. This is an important element of Meet Positives because it allows users to protect their privacy. If you’re on the site and need to hide it quickly, click this button, which takes you to a Google search page.

Meet Positives privacy considerations

Meet Positives takes several precautions to ensure your information is kept private and confidential. Firstly, the company doesn't sell or rent your personal info to third parties or affiliate sites. It may use anonymized information for data aggregation, meaning that only information that doesn’t identify you may be used for these purposes.

Meet Positives encrypts any personal information collected from you. It is hidden from search engines and can only be seen by members logged in to the site. It uses Stripe, a well-regarded payment service used by companies like Google and Amazon, to collect online payments.

You can also specify which members can and can’t see certain aspects of your profile, including photos. This flexibility is available to free members, whereas Positive Singles only provides it for paid members.

In the Accounts & Settings tab of your profile, you can change your personal information at any time, including your email address and password, or permanently delete your account. Unfortunately, Meet Positives charges you a fee if you want to delete your account. This is egregious, in our estimation. It’s the only site we’ve encountered to charge for deletion, and given the sensitive nature of these sites, we expect a greater degree of respect for users’ privacy needs.

Best for HIV news and networking

POZ Personals is part of POZ, a website and print magazine dedicated to providing resources for those living with HIV and AIDS. The publication has been around since 1994, and it provides blogs, news, videos, and other community-building resources that reach close to 70% of all people in the U.S. who know they have HIV or AIDS.

The site includes access to the current issue of POZ magazine, news stories about scientific discoveries and HIV advocacy, blog posts about hot topics, and testimonials from those living with HIV. POZ also includes a well-connected social network that users can join.

POZ Personals is one facet of the publication and currently has over 150,000 members. It offers a way for HIV-positive people to connect for friendships, community, and romance.

POZ free vs. premium account

POZ Personals offers both a basic membership that is free to use and a premium membership that is inexpensive compared to other similar sites. Basic members can:

• Create an account
• Add up to five photos
• Search for and message other members
• Create lists of members they’re interested in

With a premium account, members can:

• Save search results and preferences
• Receive alerts when new members join
• See each member that has visited their profile
• Use search blocker to control if your profile appears in search results
• Send unlimited messages and flirts
• Upload an unlimited number of both public and private photos

If you choose a premium account, you have several options for the duration of your subscription. Each option is set to auto-renew until you cancel your membership.

• 1 month: $9.99
• 3 months: $19.99
• 6 months: $29.99
• 12 months: $49.99

Signing up for POZ

To set up an account, you’ll be asked to provide some basic information about yourself:

• Username and password
• Ad title — this is similar to your profile headline that other members read when they first see your profile
• Your gender and the gender of potential matches
• Relationship type
• Sexual orientation
• How long you've been positive
• Location
• About me — this is up to 600 characters that give members further insight into who you are and what you’re looking for
• Two security questions with answers
• Notification preferences

As with most sites, you’ll have to verify your account via email before you can log in.

POZ account features

Your profile homepage is called your dashboard, and it provides you with important info about other users as well as an opportunity to improve your profile and explore member profiles. The dashboard design leaves a lot to be desired. It’s hard to take in much information at a glance; you have to do a little work to find what you’re looking for.

One thing you’ll see somewhat prominently when you log in is this info:

• How many times your profile has been viewed
• How many members are currently online
• How many members have logged on in the last few hours

When our testers last logged in, 14 members were currently online, and 469 members had logged in recently.

If you navigate away from your dashboard, there’s only one way to get back, and it’s counterintuitive. You could go to the main site menu and select “Home,” but that won’t get you there, and no other choices appear viable. It’s then that you might notice a thin banner at the top of the screen that gives you a link back to your dashboard.

Here it is:

You can perform a quick search using gender, age, sexual orientation, location, and distance preferences. You can also opt to see only profiles with photos or only those online recently.

Advanced searches add criteria like HIV status, relationship type, ethnicity, religion, body art, astrological sign, and interests, among others. Only premium members can save search results and preferences.

The list menu on your dashboard provides several ways to group members you’ve interacted with.

• Hotlist: a list of member profiles you like and want to contact again
• Block list: a list of member profiles you’ve blocked from viewing your profile
• Private photos list: which members you’ve shared your private photos with
• Footprints: who has viewed your profile and whose profiles you’ve viewed

From your dashboard, you can also manage your profile by adding information. The more robust your profile, the more likely you are to find sufficient matches. This includes photos, personal details, and search blockers.

POZ privacy

POZ takes privacy considerations seriously and takes many steps to protect you. Your personal information is not shared with third parties without your consent. The company may provide aggregated data to third parties, but it will not include any personally identifiable information.

When you make a payment to POZ, you are protected by Authorize.Net and PayPal. Both companies provide safe and secure online payments.

Best for herpes community support

Started in 2007, HWerks is a dating site for those living with herpes or HPV. But, HWerks goes beyond focusing on just dating and offers positive people a community feel with various amenities:

• Chatrooms
• Forums
• Secret Facebook groups
• Local support groups

HWerks emphasizes that romance is just one facet of living with herpes and HPV, and its goal is to provide care beyond dating.

HWerks membership

To preserve member privacy, HWerks does not allow people to join without paying for a membership. It offers a lifetime membership for a one-time fee of $56. The site states that this weeds out people who aren’t serious about taking advantage of their services and protects members from “lurkers.”

Signing up

To sign up for an account, you’ll provide personal info like your name, email address, and birthdate. The site will prompt you to create a username and password. It will also ask you to provide your:

• Gender
• Relationship status
• Type of relationship you’re interested in
• Age
• Location
• Smoking status
• Relocation ability
• H type (HSV-1, HSV-2, HPV, not sure)
• Sexual orientation
• Kids status

You’ll also fill out a Describe Yourself box where you can provide other details you’d like potential matches to know. Next, you’ll pay the one-time membership fee to continue to your profile.

HWerks site features

Honestly, when we finally got through the paywall, we were a little disappointed by what we found. Our testers had built up some expectations around this lifetime membership-only system with no free features whatsoever. But the site design was mediocre, with too many photo-less profiles and too few features overall.

The features that are present are thoughtful, though. In addition to searching member profiles and finding potential mates, HWerks offers a variety of features that members use for friendship, networking, and advice.

• The member chatroom includes discussions and Q&A sessions. HWerks organizes a weekly, members-only meet and greet.
• On the forums, members can ask questions and share stories. This is especially helpful for people with a new diagnosis.
• HWerks operates a secret Facebook group that is open to all members. Because it’s a secret group, other Facebook users can’t see that you belong to it.
• The site includes a list of local groups in the U.S. and Canada. Select your state or province to see any herpes or HPV support groups or secret Facebook groups in your area.
• Informational sections like the Herpes FAQ, a list of national events, and the HWerks newsletter help inform and connect site visitors.

Privacy

HWerks does not share your personal information with third parties and uses reasonable methods to keep your info safe. Your payment is collected using PayPal or Stripe, two well-known, secure companies for online transactions.

However, when you purchase a membership, it shows on your statement as HW Erks & Co. Anyone with internet access can quickly figure out what that is. We'd like to see the company reconfigure its presence on bank statements to protect users' privacy further.

In addition to our top picks, many other STD dating sites are available. These options did not make our recommendation list because they didn’t compete with the top choices across our fundamental criteria. But they do have their own unique features that may appeal to some daters, like inexpensive premium trials, a broad international reach, or low overall rates. We want you to have the full picture of what’s available to you in the landscape of STD dating.

There is still debate over the term sexually transmitted disease (STD) versus sexually transmitted infection (STI). These terms are often used interchangeably, but they have different meanings.

Generally, having an STI can cause an STD.6 Something is considered a “disease” when it presents symptoms, which not all STIs do. And the word “disease” has negative connotations that contribute to stigma. For these reasons, some people prefer the term STI. We use the term STD in this guide because many sites we review also use that term.

======= Generally, having an STI can cause an STD. Something is considered a “disease” when it presents symptoms, which not all STIs do. And the word “disease” has negative connotations that contribute to stigma. For these reasons, some people prefer the term STI. We use the term STD in this guide because many sites we review also use that term.