The heart-breaking story of a young woman, murdered on the verge of marriage, has moved many people.

As a mother, I empathise with Miss Elsie Lie's mum.

Losing your child is a parent's worst nightmare.

As a woman, I feel even more for Miss Lie.

We are both big-sized.

We even went to the same junior college, although I left Jurong JC about a decade before her.

And most of all, I feel for her because we both went online to search for love, starting from as early as our late teens.

A report in The New Paper on Tuesday said some of Miss Lie's online profiles under the name "lovelyelsielie" have existed since October 2006.

For myself, and I guess Miss Lie, meeting people online was our best bet at finding a boyfriend.

I remember (with reluctance) those years of wanting to be noticed by guys yet was completely ignored because I was obese.

It didn't help that I was terribly shy and didn't know how to talk to boys.

Imagine going out with a pretty friend and being stopped by guys who ask you for her number.

I've even had guys pretend to be my friend just to get closer to her.

It did things to my self-esteem.

So I went online.

In my naive rose-tinted perception, I thought I could get guys to like me for me, not for my blah-looks, through the Internet.

For six long years from 1998, I met shallow guys who cancelled our first dates after I told them my weight.

Then there were the idiots, like the one who couldn't stop talking about his sexual prowess, or the salesman who sold me a pair of tongs on our first date.

But nothing beats the man who I believe, to put it simply, was a criminal.

Nevertheless, these days, when friends tell me they can't find Mr or Miss Right, I still suggest they go online.

"But you'll have to sieve through a lot of rubbish before you find a gem," I always say.

The reason for my faith? I met my husband on a match-making website in 2004.

We got married the next year, got an HDB flat and a dog and we now have a beautiful four-year-old boy.

If people like us, and other couples I'm sure, can find each other online, who's to say it's wrong to look for love there?

But as with many things in life, it's prudent to have a dose of caution and common sense when making and meeting friends on the Internet.

Never think you have to give in to their demands in order to be liked or loved.

And now, with our reliance on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, doesn't it seem so natural that dating has gone to cyberspace?

This article was first published in The New Paper.