Internet Dating (Part Two)

Following on from my previous article "Internet Dating - Spotting a Fake Profile," I thought I would share my insights into staying safe when meeting someone you have met online.

I’ve met a few people in “real” life who I met firstly either in an internet chat room or through an online dating website and I can honestly say that they all turned out to be exactly who they had said they were, perhaps I was just lucky that they told the truth about who they were or was there more to it?

Who is behind the mask?

Okay, so you have just met a person online and seem to have hit it off, after exchanging messages for a short while you then move on to phoning one another and/or chatting through Facebook, Skype, or one of the many phone apps available.

They send you pictures of “themselves” and you find them very appealing but how do you know that the person in the photographs is really the person behind the keyboard or telephone?

It is much easier than you may think to become someone else on the internet. Alternate personas are born and nurtured like infants until what began as a small deception becomes, in some cases, a criminal act.

I once knew a fellow writer who, in the name of research for her book, created an alternate ego in an internet chatroom; she kept up this pretence for a long time and even had me convinced along with everyone else in the chatroom that she was a man until she confessed to me.

It was only by pure chance that she did confess. I will not go into detail but we were talking in the chatroom and I was feeling a little low. Using her internet disguise she invited me to chat on webcam. I was a very apprehensive at first 'til I was assured there was nothing sinister or x rated going on.

As the webcams connected I was confronted by a very attractive woman who introduced herself using her real name (which I will keep to myself) and explained to me that she had been using the male profile to gather research for a book she was writing, the subject of which was internet relationships.

Throughout the years, I frequented this particular chatroom on which she had kept up this pretend persona and I discovered she was not the only “fake” profile.

I have met a few people offline and those who I drew closer to that I didn’t meet in person were for one reason alone tossed out of my life: they were not who they said they were.

I have already explained in my article "Internet dating - Spotting a Fake Profile" some of the approaches you can take when determining if someone’s photograph is fake or not but there are also other steps you can take to make sure you stay safe when meeting people online.

Always attempt to talk on a webcam.

Invest in a webcam and microphone and make sure you talk to the person on this before you agree to meet them. I can recall one girl many years ago who sent me a lot of photographs, the reverse image search wasn’t a feature back then, and for a while we conversed through the old MSN messenger.

I had requested we talk on webcam as we were talking on a regular basis but she refused saying her camera was broken. I accepted this as a possibility but as time went on and I heard excuse after excuse as to why she hadn’t purchased one (they weren’t expensive), I grew suspicious that she was hiding something.

Noticing the webcam icon appearing in our chat window one day (if there was no camera it wouldn’t have appeared), I clicked on it and invited her to chat. To my surprise she accepted but my surprise turned to shock when the woman sat behind the monitor was nothing like the person in the photographs.

I dealt with the situation calmly and that was the end of that.

If the person has no qualms about talking to you on webcam you can be assured they are more than likely have nothing to hide.

Staying Safe

If you travel to meet someone, be sure to tell a friend or relative where you are going and give them details of the person you are meeting for example their name and their address if you are visiting a person’s home. Leave the following information with a trusted friend or family member: the person's email, their Facebook page link, and their telephone number if you have these yourself. If you don’t, then ask yourself why are you meeting this person and are they who they say they are?

Meet in a public place if it is dark. Make sure you are meeting in a well-lit busy location — a pub or restaurant is a good location to meet as is a train or bus station. These places usually have CCTV as well which is useful if things go wrong.

Watch your drink.

If you are planning on drinking alcohol, drink sensibly, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT leave your drink unattended. I would suggest drinking from a bottle and if you need to visit the bathroom take your drink with you. A bottle is also easier for you to place your thumb over the opening, thus deterring any attempt to spike your drink.

When catching public transport, especially a train, get an open ticket, as this will ensure you can catch a train at any time after arrival. It is always a good idea to keep enough cash on you too, in case you need to get home and lose your ticket.

As I mentioned earlier, the people I have met from the internet have all been who they said they were because I am a cautious person and took steps to insure that I wasn’t being deceived. I invited them to chat on camera and I did an internet search finding results such as Facebook, Twitter accounts and other social media websites where I could view their profiles and posts (in most cases).

I have taken chances like many of us and I have ignored some of my own advice in the past only to be deceived in other ways, but such is life and we must take some kind of chance when it comes to relationships as being overly cautious can lead to complacency and a bleak future but if we take precautions we can at least limit the possibilities of dating someone who wears a mask.