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Online Dating Safety Tips
Online, we are mostly dealing with two kinds of
safety: personal safety and PC safety. We want to avoid psychos, and also
avoid viruses and spam (junk e-mail). We'll start with avoiding psychos
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Online Safety From Loonies
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The simplest way to avoid lunatics is by using
common sense. Do not give out personal info -- your last name, phone number,
credit card numbers, and so on. If you do decide to let someone know
personal information, wait until you really get to know them or have a really
good feel of them.
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It's almost always a good idea to chat on the phone a few times before meeting
someone. And except for rare instances, I typically talk to a person online
for 2-8 weeks before I entertain the idea of talking to them on the phone.
I then like to have a few good phone chats before I entertain the idea of
meeting them in person.
Am I overly cautious? I hope so. There are a lot of nuts out there,
and I don't want psychos knowing my last name or my home address. When I
finally do decide to meet someone, I do it in a well-populated public
place. A restaurant or coffee shop in a mall or shopping center is always
good.
It's unfortunate that one has to be so cautious. But these days, better
safe than sorry. On top of all that, I always use a separate email address
for online dating stuff. This way, people don't know my real email address
and if things go wrong, I simply create another pseudo email address. As far as computer safety ...
Online Computer Safety
There are a few things I want to avoid when meeting
people on dating services: spam, viruses, and liars. The junk email and
the liars tend to go hand-in-hand. And after a short period, it's pretty
easy to spot the liars. Here's an example ...
You'll see a personal ad. The woman is gorgeous. In her ad, she says
she's new in town and looking for a casual fling. This already sounds
shady, but it gets even better. She also states that she has no preference
on a guy's age, height, looks, or income. How often does a gorgeous woman
seek a guy with any income, any height, any nationality, any distance away from
her, and aged 21-99? Hmm ... never.
What's the story? The story is, it's a scam. This is a person trying
to collect email addresses so they can bombard you with email advertisements.
This type of thing happens all the time. I've even seen identical personal
ads on dating services where the only thing that changed was the headline and
the picture. How do you avoid
this? Follow the simple rule of thumb: if it sounds too good to be true,
it probably is.
As far as protecting your PC from viruses, it's a good idea to have a firewall
(something that protects your ports) and an anti-virus program. And both
should be updated regularly.
I can throw out
the big names like Norton. But being a big name doesn't necessarily mean the product is the
best, it often means it's simply the most expensive.
Rather than blindly throw out names, I deeply investigated anti-virus and
firewall software. And I was not surprised to
find that the top recommended software was not Norton or McAfee. As usual,
being the big name does not mean being the best. So what was the best
anti-virus software?
According to numerous sources, including PC World, Microsoft, and Computer User Magazine,
the best anti-virus software is Panda Antivirus Platinum .
Now, until I looked into this I had never heard of Panda Antivirus.
If you're in the same boat as I was, click
here to see reviews of the software.
Of course, no matter what, you can't go wrong by avoiding sketchy web
sites. Also, don't open email from anyone you don't know. Ever.
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