Intimate O(pi)nions

When people talk about online dating, it always comes up that it’s very dangerous. I disagree. While everyone knows that there are dangers involved, we also know that going to your favourite night club and getting pissed out of your brain is not exactly safe either. It’s not like these predators were born with the dawn of online dating, they existed well before the Internet. In the “real life” when we go out, we are used to following certain safety rules, like we don’t leave our drinks unattended so someone can spike them, we don’t hitch hike for a ride with strangers… Well, some people do, but we all know that’s not very wise, but we certainly don’t take walking short cuts through the ghettos, right? In the real life, even after you’ve made all precautions possible, you will be in trouble before you know it, and you can disappear without a trace.

And that is where the biggest difference comes with the Internet. EVERYTHING you do is logged. It doesn’t take much effort for the police to track down the site you used to get the date, with whom and from there move on to what else has your latest date been up to and with whom. That’s not much of a consolation if you have already been killed, but the fact is that the predators know this as well as the rest of us. Even though they could cover their own tracks online, they can’t cover yours. Unfortunately, they too can give false information on the site, and hide who was using it. Therefore, the most important thing for you to remember is NEVER to go on a date without seeing your date’s photo, and if your date doesn’t look like the one you thought you’re going to date, get out. It’s not being shallow, it’s being safe (and don’t get greedy if he/she turns out looking better than the photo, as in not the same person -better). And a good precautionary measure to take is to print out the profile and leave a copy of it by your desk with a date and place written on top if you don’t want to tell your friends. (Nobody needs to know you do that, right?)

The thing that people consider dangerous online, is that you can pretend to be anything you want, and that it’s completely anonymous. What they don’t seem to get, is that the same is true for everyone. You too can be completely anonymous, and only tell things that you want to tell. To go further, you can also lie to people face to face. People who are comfortable writing lies are most likely comfortable telling lies to your face as well. If they’re not, then you’re going to find it out on your first date, no harm done, right? The fact is, that you won’t get in trouble online, you can only get in trouble when online date turns into an offline date. The dangers online is not the anonymity of it, but the fact that there’s a lot more unknowns involved, but the same unknowns that make it dangerous narrow down the amount of offenders who are skilled enough to abuse those unknowns, as you need to be quite the hacker to actually sneak your way into your life without you enabling them. It’s a lot easier to do offline anyway, but if you want to do it online, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t do it on Facebook. Facebook reveals a lot more information about you than most dating sites ever will. You’re surrounded by your friends, but how many times have you accepted a friend request from a person you don’t exactly know, simply because you didn’t want to be rude?

In the “real life”, if someone attacks you, they are not very likely to do that where people can see them. And obviously, it could be any number of people. The attacker has to do a lot of attacks before they can narrow down the possible offenders without any eye witnesses. Online, it only takes one well prepared date to go wrong and the police will at least know what their suspect looks like.

Again, while IRL you can get into trouble before you see a hint of danger, online you can talk to the person for months before actually meeting them. You can keep your antennas up and see if what the person is telling you adds up. You can have webcam conversations that confirm that the profile matches the person. If the person has a violent volatile personality, you will know it sooner rather than later by the things he says to you and how he says them. If you had met this person offline, you probably would be at his apartment by then, but online, you’re still in your own, safe and sound.

The thing is; you can only get in trouble in the real life. Online, the worst they can do to you is absolutely destroy your reputation by lies or hurl abuse at you, but there’s nothing stopping people from doing that offline as well. But that is where it stops online, unless you have revealed information you shouldn’t have. Online people can only hurt you by the things you tell them. You control your mouth, not your friends, not your blabbering mother, not some random by-passer that sees you going into your house. You take the risks online, they are not taken for you like they often are offline. Offline you can be pressured into going to an after-party or to take a ride with a bunch of guys, and even though you have a feeling it’s not a good idea, your friend is insisting on going and you simply have to go with her to make sure she’s okay. Online, things like that simply don’t happen. It’s just about you and what you want to tell people. In that way, you are in complete control.

So, the safe steps in order of execution:

1. Don’t reveal personal information

2. Check that your photos don’t reveal where you are

3. Demand a photo

4. Have a web cam conversation

5. Have a voice conversation over the phone or preferably on Skype.

6. Print out the profile and put in the date time and the place and any other relevant information you have. (What kind of a car he/she drives. Cars are hard to hide.)

7. Go on a date on a well lit public place during day time or early evening. If the photo doesn’t match the face, get out.

8. If your gut instinct warns you, get out.

9. Keep your phone with you.

10. That’s it. Most likely all your precautionary measures have been wasted and you had fabulous time.

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