Savvy Safety Tips

Today we continue addressing the issue of meeting friends and future lovers online. I know that many of you are not going to heed my advice, and still go online and do what you want to do. And I will respect that. What I do encourage you to do is to be safe, safe in every aspect. That means from the point you make first contact, through the process of getting to know each other, and on to the final point of physical contact.

 

Safety issues will be addressed all the way throughout this series on meeting women. Today we have a guest writer, Ruby Trench, who shares with us some tips on staying safe during that initial exchange. She includes the issue of meeting people at clubs or bars, which we will cover tomorrow, but I believe that especially, when you’re meeting strangers online, her tips here, will be extremely useful.

 

 

Safe Dating and Smart Phone Habits:

Handing out your phone number to a potential date could invite trouble. 

But there is a smart solution.

 

by Ruby Trench

 

You meet an intriguing stranger in a shadowy club or bar.  You enjoy some encouraging initial repartee, and decide to make a date.  You scribble down your home and cell numbers on a napkin or a page of your Hello Kitty notepad. “Call me.”

 

Most New York women I know are smart and savvy, so I’m assuming you are too.  But even the savviest of city girls make mistakes.  We give our phone number to someone who “seems O.K.,” only to regret it when they pick their nose at the dinner table and then keep calling with near-psychotic persistence.  (And that’s probably the best of all possible worst case scenarios.)

 

We give out our phone number and keep our fingers crossed that we won’t be plagued, stalked, or otherwise victimized, because we have no choice.  If we want to stay in the dating game, we need a way to get called.  Relinquishing a little slice of privacy is a necessary evil, right?

 

WRONG.  And across the board, contemporary safe dating experts agree.

 

For starters, most experts advocate starting slow; especially in this age of online dating.   An unprecedented number of singles are turning to the Internet to find partners for romance, marriage, sex or socializing.  If someone you meet online asks for your phone number outright, Match.com advises:

 

“Say something like, ‘I’m more comfortable exchanging e-mail for the time being.’” 

 

If a person acts offended by this suggestion, it should serve as a red flag.  If this person were reasonable, they’d have the same safety concerns that you do.  And if they do, they’ll understand where you’re coming from and won’t act irate, lash out or take it personally.  Watch out for that.

 

Being cautious and protective of your phone numbers is good practice for everyone, not just women.  There are no exceptions — the rules apply in straight dating and same-sex dating, including men dating other men.  Ramon Johnson writes for the Gay Life section of About.com, and when it comes to using the phone as a tool for safer dating, he has this advice for men:

 

“There is nothing wrong with having a conversation before meeting blindly.  You can tell a lot about a person by the way they communicate.  You don’t have to be psychic to get a bad feeling after the conversation or to realize that you may not be a good match after all.”

 

But whether dating from inside the Internet or out in the real world, exchanging phone numbers seems inevitable.  But that doesn’t mean it’s safe.  Actually, it’s less safe than it’s ever been.

 

According to Online Dating Magazine, “Someone armed with your home phone number [or cell phone number] can go on-line and easily find out what your home address is!  This can usually be done in less than 20 seconds.  And with your home phone number and home address, a person with the wrong intentions can find out a lot more private information about you online.  This is unfortunate, but part of the society we live in today.” 

 

ChristianCafe.com agrees.  “Never give out your…phone number…a lot of information can be gathered about you by unscrupulous people.  When you are ready to contact the other person…call from a pay phone.”

 

A pay phone?  Well, it does work, but it’s not the most practical solution I’ve heard.  Lavalife has a better suggestion: “Spend time on the phone prior to meeting,” they say, but “Use an anonymous phone service…which offers a disposable number that lets you talk to strangers without revealing your phone number.  Once you feel comfortable, you can exchange personal information.”

 

Until recently, most of these so-called “disposable number” providers only offered voicemail.  You could collect all the messages you wanted, but never really speak to the caller safely unless you took ChristianCafe’s advice and, well – used a pay phone.  That’s changing now with new, tech-savvy services that are surprisingly affordable and provide an impressive menu of enriched features.

 

My personal favorite is Aliasline (www.aliasline.com).  The brilliant techies at Aliasline have figured out a way to issue you a special phone number that looks like any ordinary local number, and rings at any phone you want – your home, office, or cell phone.  In other words, you can give out your “Aliasline” number to strangers and new acquaintances, without revealing your real phone number.  And I love that when I look at the caller ID screen on my phone, I can tell if the caller is dialing my real number, or my Aliasline number.  So if I’m having lunch with Granny and her church ladies, I might decide it’s not the best time to take a call from that hot table dancer I gave my Aliasline number to Saturday night!

 

And as for those enriched features, you can log onto the Aliasline web site any time and change where you want to send your Aliasline calls.  In seconds, you can re-route those calls from your home number to your cell, or to any other number in the local calling area.  And just as easily, you can pull up a detailed record of incoming calls to your Aliasline, including phone numbers, caller ID information, and the time and duration of the calls.   They even offer a free trial period (I checked, the offer’s still going), so you can have fun with the service before you commit.

 

Safe dating is not something to shrug off.  We’ve all heard the horror stories, and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.  And giving out one’s phone number can seem fairly harmless.  But it can lead to unwanted pestering, identity theft, and at worst, the most brutal of sex crimes.

 

Crooks have found ways to exploit modern technology to victimize you.  But on the flip side of that same coin, technology exists that can shield you from those same criminals, and it’s user-friendly, cheap and accessible.  I encourage you to fight fire with fire.

 

Respect yourself by protecting yourself. 

_____________________________

Thanks Ruby!

For more information on AliasLine, go to www.aliasline.com