It's very simple and - even better - it's FREE! Just register in the "Join Now for FREE" box and fill out a very quick profile. As soon as you have done that, you will be able to carry out unlimited searches for muddy matches in your area, or throughout the UK and Ireland.

Click here to Join Now for FREE

No - everything on Muddy Matches is FREE until you decide that you want to contact another member, read / reply to another member's message or post / respond to a message on the Muddy Matters notice board. At that point you must pay to become a subscriber for either 1 month or 3 months.

Our introductory prices are:

• 1 month: £10
• 3 months: £25 (£8.33 per month)
• 6 months: £45 (£7.50 per month)

* Muddy Matches is a "no nonsense" website; what we say is what you pay so these prices include VAT.

Yes. Whenever you meet a stranger for the first time, you will naturally be aware that you need to be mindful of your own safety. Meeting people through Muddy Matches is no different but, unlike meeting people in a pub or nightclub, this gives you the opportunity to anonymously talk to people before meeting them, ask any questions you might have and plan a safe place to meet up.

Our messaging system is an anonymous and safe place to chat; no-one will know your real email address or personal details as long as you have ensured that they do not feature in your profile and that you do not publish them in a message to someone. We, in turn, take measures to try and protect you such as vetting all profile material before it is published to check that our members have not accidentally entered any of their personal details. Likewise, photos will not be published until a member of our admin team has approved them.

Ultimately, you are responsible for your own safety but this will not be a problem if you follow these simple rules:

1. Never give your home address or telephone number to a stranger
2. Always arrange to meet in a very public place (such as a café or pub) and never invite a stranger to your home
3. Always tell a trusted friend where you are going and roughly what time you expect to be back
4. Under no circumstances send money to someone you have never met
5. Use your instincts; if it doesn't feel right, don't do it!

For more information, please read our safety advice and, if you are at all suspicious of another member, please do not hesitate to contact us. You can write to us at abuse@muddymatches.co.uk or report a concern about another member by clicking on the ‘Report a concern' link in the member's profile or in a message that they have sent you.

You can report a concern about another member by clicking on the ‘Report a concern' link in either their profile or a message that they have sent you, or you can write to us directly at abuse@muddymatches.co.uk.

As a Member everything on the site is FREE until you decide that you want to contact another member, read/reply to another member's message or post/respond to a message on the Muddy Matters notice board. At this point you will be asked to pay a small fee to become a Subscriber.

To cancel your membership, please email us at customercare@muddymatches.co.uk quoting your member ID and full name.

To help us improve our service, please include the reason for your cancellation.

If you decide to cancel your membership, your profile will be removed from our website and we will keep your personal information on our records for a period of five years to enable us to respond to any queries or complaints you might have. After five years, we will delete all of your personal information from our records, apart from any information - such as your billing information - that we are legally required to keep.

As a free Member, you will automatically be invited to subscribe if you try to send a message. However, you can also become a Subscriber by going to ‘My Account', clicking on ‘Upgrade my account' and following the steps.

Our introductory prices are:

• 1 month: £10
• 3 months: £25 (£8.33 per month)
• 6 months: £45 (£7.50 per month)

If you pay by card, your account will be upgraded immediately. If you pay by cheque, bankers draft or postal order, you will have to wait until we have received the payment and it has cleared at our bank before we can upgrade you.

Yes - your payment details are taken through a secure server. We don't authorise your payment details, this is done via a secure connection by way of PROTX to Barclays Bank using the latest encryption technology available. We do not hold or store your card information and the only data our admin team have access to relating to your payment is what type of user you are and the date you subscribed.

No - we think that's very cheeky and hate it when people do it to us! We will send you an email warning you that your subscription is about to expire and giving you the opportunity re-subscribe.

We don't authorise your payment details; this is done via a secure connection by way of PROTX to Barclays Bank. If your card is refused, it is quite possible that you have entered the card details incorrectly. Try again checking your details are correct, and if you are still declined we suggest that you contact your card issuer.

You can also pay by cheque, postal order, or bankers draft.

The correct address can be found on the payment page after you have clicked on the appropriate payment method.

If you sign in and go to ‘My Account', it will tell you your ‘membership type'.

You are able to try the site for free before deciding to subscribe. We cannot, therefore, offer refunds on part-used subscriptions.

When filling out your profile, you are required to write something "About You and What You're Looking For" in the "Your Introduction" section. This is a great opportunity for you to tell our other Members a bit about yourself and the kind of person/people you would like to meet but, for those that find they get writer's block, help is at hand if you click on the "Get a little inspiration" link.

You are also given a chance to write something about your interests, dislikes, education, employment and appearance. These boxes are optional but we highly recommend that you do say something as it is the perfect opportunity to give our other Members a real insight into what you are like.

We will try to approve any new profiles (or amendments) within 24 hours. This might take slightly longer over weekends and bank holidays but will always be within 72 hours. Anything that has been approved by us will immediately go live on the site.

If you follow our guidelines when filling out your profile, it should be approved without a problem. However, if your profile is rejected, we will send you an email explaining why and you will need to sign in again, edit what you have written and re-submit it.

You can edit your profile at any time by signing in with your Member ID and password and clicking on the "My Profile" page. All edited profiles must be re-approved by a member of the Muddy Matches team, so remember to click on the "Send for Approval" button if you are happy with the changes you have made.

If, for any reason, you do not wish your profile to be visible to other Members, you can ‘hide' it by going to ‘My Account' and then clicking on ‘Change my profile visibility settings'.

You cannot see your own profile when carrying out a search if you are signed in. To see your profile, either go to your ‘My Home' page and click on ‘View my published profile' or sign out and carry out a new search.

Quite simply, your profile will be a lot more noticeable if you have a photo.

In terms of dating, we guarantee you will get a lot more attention and potentially meet many more people if you do decide to post a picture. Bear in mind that a lot of people won't even consider a profile that doesn't have one.

However, we also think it's really important to add one even if you're just here for friendship/shared interests. A photo - especially an Additional Photo - can tell other Members a lot about your personality and will automatically make you seem a lot more approachable.

You can add one Main Photo and eight Additional Photos. Your Additional Photos will not be displayed in your profile until we have approved a Main Photo for you.

Your Main Photo is the larger photo that will be instantly seen in your profile and should ideally be a head-and-shoulders shot of just you. A smaller, or "thumbnail", version will also show up when other Members carry out a search.

Once your Main Photo has been approved and we already have an idea of what you look like, you may add up to eight more Additional Photos. These can be of anything you want (within reason) and allow you to have more fun and express yourself.

The following Dos and Don'ts will help you choose your Main Photo:

Do:

• Make sure it is just you in the photo
• Make sure it looks like you
• Use a good head or head and shoulders shot
• Use a recent photo (all 1980s haircuts will be treated with suspicion!)
• Smile!

Don't:

• Let your face be covered by anything (a hat, sunglasses, a huge mop of hair...)
• Use a dark or blurry photo
• Make scary red-eyes at us - either edit them out or choose another pic
• Don't let the background steal all the attention
• Show too much skin or make lewd gestures - if it's too rude it won't get posted!

Here are a couple of ideas to help you choose your Additional Photos:

• Have more fun and express yourself
• Show your different sides (evening you as opposed to outdoors you, perhaps?)
• Include other people in your shots (better get their permission first!)
• Post a full body shot (nothing rude, thanks)
• Show us your dress sense
• Show us your pets, favourite things and places etc.

But remember not to send dark or blurry photos, show too much skin or make lewd gestures. If it's too rude, it won't get posted! We also recommend that you only submit pictures of your children if there is an adult in the picture as well.

Easy! Sign in and go to the "My Photos" page and you are given three options: uploading it via the site, emailing it to us or posting it to us.

First, make sure that you have saved your photo in JPEG format and then check that it is the right size. We ask that the JPEG file does not exceed 5MB but that the image size is at least 250x250 pixels. If you have your photos on your computer, you will probably have the software installed to edit/resize them.

If you are still having problems, you can email the photo to us by attaching your chosen photo, telling us your first name, last name, Member ID number and date of birth, and sending it to photos@muddymatches.co.uk.

We try to approve your photo within 48 hours, but this might take slightly longer over weekends and bank holidays. If you have emailed your photo to us, or have sent it by post, this may take up to 10 days.

If you follow the relevant guidelines for adding your photos, they should be approved without a problem. However, if a photo is rejected, we will send you an email explaining why.

No photo will be posted on the website without first being approved by a member of the Muddy Matches team. There are clear guidelines explaining what kind of Main and Additional photos are acceptable and if, for any reason, we cannot approve the photo(s) you have submitted, we will send you an email explaining why.

Anyone can carry out a ‘Basic Search' using the blue box on right-hand side of the homepage.

Once you register and have signed into the site, you can still do a ‘Basic Search' (which will now include a postcode search facility), but you will also be able to carry out a more detailed search by clicking on the ‘Search' tab. This allows you to search according to additional criteria such as how ‘muddy' a person is, whether they have children or not, what their relationship status is etc.

In order to ensure that the members who use the site most frequently are kept near the top of the listings, all search results are ordered according to the date that members last logged into the site.

If you find you are regularly searching according to the same criteria, you may save that search and label it what you wish. When you return to the ‘Search' page, you can click on that saved search and the search fields will automatically be populated with the information you have saved. Click on ‘MATCH!' at the bottom of the page and it will bring up the results of that search.

The postcode search is available to all our UK members and is based on the distance between the postcode you entered in your profile and the postcodes of our other members. This will enable you to search within a certain mileage radius of where you live but please bear in mind that this is an approximate calculation only. You can also be assured that your actual postcode will be kept private at all times and will never be revealed to other members.

All UK addresses have a postcode and, if you are not sure what yours is, you can check it at www.royalmail.com.

Members from the Republic of Ireland will not have postcodes and will therefore have to search by county/country instead.

Simple - just go to ‘My Profile', edit the details in the ‘General Information' section and send your updated profile for approval.

You must be a paying Subscriber to send and receive messages so you must first upgrade your account on the ‘My Account' page.

You can tell whether your message has been opened by looking in your ‘Sent Messages' folder and checking the column labelled ‘Opened?'.

By default, you will also automatically receive an email telling you when someone has opened a message you have sent. If you no longer want to receive these alerts, you can stop them by going to ‘My Account' and then ‘Change my email settings'.

All messages will be sent via the site, giving only your first name, age, county and nearest town.

Your messages will be kept indefinitely (20 per page) and it is up to you to delete the messages that you no longer want.

Unfortunately, once you have deleted a message there is no way that you can then retrieve it. We do allow you to keep your messages indefinitely, so there is no need to delete a message unless you are absolutely sure that you will not want to read it again.

In order to protect our website and your computer from viruses we do not allow attachments to be sent through our messaging system.

If, for any reason, you no longer wish to receive messages from another member you can ‘block' them by clicking on ‘Block sender' in a message they have sent you or clicking on ‘Block this person' at the bottom of their profile.

When you block a person, you will no longer appear in each other's searches and they will not be able to message you. If they were previously in your ‘friends' or ‘favourites' list, they will be removed. The person you have blocked will only be notified if they try to send you another message. Should you wish to ‘unblock' a member, you can do this by going to ‘My Account' and then ‘Manage user blocking'.

This is a great way of letting people know that you might be interested in talking to them or, if you are a bit pressed for time, to keep track of the people who you might want to send a message in the future. Their profile will then appear in the ‘People I Like' section of your ‘My Favourites' folder.

Yes - they will receive an email saying that you have added them to your favourites (provided their email settings are set to receive this type of alert) and your profile will appear in the ‘People Who Like Me' section of their ‘My Favourites' folder.

If you wish to remove someone from your ‘favourites', locate their profile in the ‘People I Like' section of your ‘My Favourites' folder and click on ‘Remove from favourites'.

Please note that it is not possible to remove members who have added you to their ‘favourites'.

If you add someone to your ‘favourites' and subsequently ‘block' them, their profile will be removed from the ‘People I Like' section of your ‘My Favourites' folder. Members will also disappear if they have chosen to cancel their membership.

This allows you to link your profile to those of people you know on the site. They might be people you knew before, or people you met through Muddy Matches, but if you consider them to be a friend you can add them to your ‘friends' list by clicking on the link in their profile. They will then be sent an email asking them to accept your friendship request if the feeling is mutual.

Other members will be able to see how many friends you have on the site and can click on a link to see a list of your friends' profiles. Only members who have accepted your friendship request will appear in this list.

If, for any reason, you decide that a person on your friends list is no longer your friend, you can remove them by going into your ‘My Friends' list and clicking on ‘Remove from friends', on which they will receive an email saying that they have been removed from your list.

If you add someone to your ‘friends' and subsequently ‘block' them, their profile will be removed from your ‘friends' list. Members will also disappear if they have chosen to cancel their membership.

You can add another member to your ignore list by clicking on ‘Ignore profile' on their profile page.

If you choose to ignore another member's profile, this means that it will not come up in your future searches. This is designed to save you from looking at a profile that you already know you are not interested in.

Your profile will still come up in the ignored member's searches and they will still be able to contact you. If you do not wish this to happen, it would be better to use the ‘block' function.

No. If you add another member to your ignore list, they will not know and this will not stop your profile coming up in their searches.

Your profile will still come up in the ignored member's searches and they will still be able to contact you. If you do not wish this to happen, it would be better to use the ‘block' function.

Should you wish to remove a member from your ignore list, you can do this by going to ‘My Account' and then clicking on ‘Manage my ignore list'.

You can ‘block' another member by clicking on ‘Block sender' in a message they have sent you or clicking on ‘Block this person' at the bottom of their profile.

You can choose to ‘block' a member if you no longer wish to receive messages from them. You will then stop appearing in each others' searches and, if you were in each others' ‘friends' or ‘favourites' lists, you will be removed.

If you decide to block someone because you are unhappy with some of their message content, please remember to let us know by using the ‘Report a Concern' facility on all messages and profiles.

The other person will only be notified that you have chosen to block them if they try to send you another message.

Should you wish to remove a member from your ‘block' list, you can do this by going to ‘My Account' and then ‘Manage user blocking'.

Go to the Muddy Matches homepage, click on "forgotten details?" at the bottom of the Sign-In box and follow the instructions.

The login details can only be sent to your registered email address. Check that you have entered the right address and that our email has not been recognised as junk mail by your email provider.

Check that your Member ID number and password have been typed in correctly (try cutting and pasting them from your Registration Confirmation email to make doubly sure) and, if you have ever changed your password, make sure that you are not accidentally using the old one.

It is important that you sign out when you have finished using MuddyMatches.co.uk in order to securely lock your account and prevent unauthorised use by others. To protect your privacy, you will be automatically signed out when you close your browser.

Go to the Muddy Matches homepage, click on "forgotten details?" at the bottom of the Sign-In box and follow the instructions.

Check that your password has been typed in correctly (try cutting and pasting it from your Registration Confirmation email to make doubly sure) and, if you have ever changed your password, make sure that you are not accidentally using the old one.

Sign in, go to "My Account" and click on "Update my personal details". Change your password in both boxes and then click on the "Save Changes" button.

Sign in, go to "My Account" and click on "Update my personal details". Change your email address in both boxes and then click on the "Save Changes" button.

The most likely reason that you have not received our emails is that they are accidentally being treated as spam by your email provider. To make sure that our emails are not filtered into your ‘junk' or ‘bulk' folder, please add Muddy Matches to your list of trusted senders by following these instructions:

Hotmail - Access your Safe List by clicking on ‘Options' in the right-hand corner, then ‘Junk E-Mail Protection' and then ‘Safe List'. Add the domain name muddymatches.co.uk in the box provided.

AOL - Add the domain name muddymatches.co.uk to your address book.

Yahoo! Mail - Look for any of our messages in your ‘bulk' folder, open the message and click on the ‘this is not spam' link next to the ‘From' field.

Other Providers - Try adding the domain name muddymatches.co.uk to your address book or contact list. If this option is not available, try moving the message to your Inbox or forwarding the message to yourself.

If subsequent messages continue to be filtered, contact your e-mail provider's technical support and explain the problem.

You will receive these messages by default but can easily stop them by signing in, going to ‘My Account' and clicking on ‘Change my email settings'.

Your personal details are stored on our secure database and will remain confidential. Unlike many other sites, we will Not pass on your email address to anyone else.

For further details, please see our Privacy Policy.

Absolutely not! We hate spam too, so you will only ever hear from us.

For further details about your privacy, please see our Privacy Policy.

If you think that someone might have got hold of your Member ID number and password, we strongly suggest that you change your password immediately by signing in, going to "My Account" and clicking on "Update my personal details". You should then change your password in both boxes and click on the "Save Changes" button.

Cookies are small files that are sent from our web server to your computer and are used to keep track of things such as your chosen set up of the website, your login or registration identification, you login time and any of your preferences as a user. Your browser saves the cookie information, and sends it back to our web server whenever your browser returns to our website. Browsers may be configured to alert you when a cookie is being sent, so you can choose to refuse or accept cookies. In order to be able to use Muddy Matches correctly, you must accept our cookies as well as making sure that you have not set your computer to refuse all cookies.

Please be assured that no personal information is contained in any cookies Muddy Matches use and that your computer is not in any viral danger when accepting cookies from our site.

To enable cookies, please follow the instructions below for the browser version you are using.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+

• Select "Internet Options" from the Tools menu
• Click on the "Privacy" tab
• Click the "Default" button (or manually slide the bar down to "Medium") under "Settings"
• Click "OK"

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x

• Select "Internet Options" from the Tools menu
• Click on the "Security" tab
• Click the "Custom Level" button
• Scroll down to the "Cookies" section
• To enable:
• Set "Allow cookies that are stored on your computer" to "Enable"
• Set "Allow per-session cookies" to "Enable"
• Click "OK"

Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x

• Select "Internet Options" from the View menu
• Click on the "Advanced" tab
• Scroll down to find "Cookies" within the "Security" section
• To enable:
• Select "Always accept cookies"
• Click "OK"

Mozilla Firefox (1.0 final release and earlier)

• Go to the "Tools" menu
• Select "Options"
• Select the "Privacy" icon in the left panel
• Check the box corresponding to "Allow sites to set cookies"
• Click "OK" to save changes

Netscape 7.1/Mozilla 5.0

• Select "Preferences" from the Edit menu
• Click on the arrow next to "Privacy & Security" in the scrolling window to expand
• Under "Privacy & Security", select "Cookies"
• Select "Enable all cookies"
• Click "OK"

Netscape Communicator 4.x

• Select "Preferences" from the Edit menu
• Find the "Cookies" section in the "Advanced" category
• To enable:
• Select "Accept all cookies" (or "Enable all cookies")
• Click "OK"