Death Follows For a First Time Meet In Person Date
Sonia Varaschin was killed because she just wanted to meet someone special online.
This tragedy near Orangeville Canada highlights the risks and dangers of meeting someone online. Even though the killer left a trail of information on Sonia's computer, it was difficult for police to delve through. This is mainly do to the anonymous nature of dating sites, and the ability of stalkers to totally hide on totally free dating sites. In any event, none of this was any help to Sonia herself.
When someone chooses a site like plentyoffish, they are actually seriously increasing their risk of exposure to predators. Let me clarify that comment.
Although this particular tragedy was centered on plentyoffish, they are not the only risky site on the internet. In fact there are many other free dating sites like OK Cupid.com, and many, many more who are financed primarily by advertising revenue. I will not try to list them all. Many sites walk the fine edge of maximum danger without actually realizing it.
The real concern here is that there is no traceability to individual people in a free dating model which inherently increases risk for all members. Here is why.
There are lots of weirdos out there. These range from simple nerds to sociopaths. There is a very real chance that someone who appears to be nice in a chat room is not so wonderful in real life, and the most dangerous ones are very clever at hiding their anti-social behavior. The most dangerous of course are homicidal stalkers. They may think nothing of taking your life.
So why am I singling out the free communication dating sites? Well actually I am not!
This range of sites also includes facebook.com. Accepting friend requests from someone you do not know who is a friend of a friend is a very dangerous practice. If you friend is as sloppy as you are, you may find that you just befriended a stalker.
If you are communicating on any site that requires payment of some sort to enable the communication, then you are inherently safer from the get-go. Sexual predators stay clear of pay sites because the money is too easy to trace back to them. It only takes them a small amount of time to set up a string of phony email account on yahoo ,then set up a fake email account on gmail ,then delete the yahoo account. At that point you can now go into the gmail account and point the base email account to some fictitious email account on aol, and you have pretty much left a tough trail for police to track. Smart stalkers use a trail for free emails spanning several countries and corporate entities, thus becoming more invisible. With a fist full of untraceable email accounts your typical sexual predator can join free social networking sites to their heart's content. If they couple this with a disposable cell phone, you are now fully communicating with someone who looks legit, but is untraceable by anyone. They are free to do what they please with you..
So what can be done about it?
Your best bet is to stay off of totally free dating sites. They are very risky.
These next tips are just common sense details:
1) Spend a lot of time online communicating before agreeing to meet in real life. Make sure that you use the anonymity features that most dating sites give you and do not let out any contact details to the person – such as where you work, live, or your external email address.
2) At some point use a disposable phone yourself, or else take advantage of an anonymous phone service, like MyPrivateLine.com, which offers a disposable number that lets you talk to strangers without revealing your phone number.
3) Before you commit your heart, make sure you are doing due diligence on this person. Be careful with what you say, and listen carefully to what is said. Consider recording the call so you can take notes after. Look for irregularities in their stories. Circle back and re-ask questions that they have answered in the past to see if the story changes somewhat a couple of weeks later. Be careful if the answers are not the same. He just might be stalking you. Stalkers usually have more than one potential victim that they are stringing along, and will often confuse details in what they tell each mark.
4) Get a recent picture of them, preferably at an event with signs in the background so you can verify the date. If nothing else, have them hold up a recent newspaper in the photo. If they are interested, they will put up with the apparent paranoia.
5) Tell them that you are being careful right off the get-go. If they are honest and aboveboard, then they will not take offense and will comply. You should be prepared to do the same for them. If you are not willing to give up your home town, then use a public library and use a paper from another city in your photo.
6) Meet at a cafe rather than a bar, meet in the day time, and keep it short. For added security tell your friends where you are and make sure that your date knows this as soon as they arrive.
7) Take a picture with your camera phone and send it to some friends while you are still on the date. If they do not like that, then to bad. But now get out right away!
Keep your wits about you before you let yourself lose your heart and you will keep your head.
Now for a good resource to find sites where men have to pay to contact you, check out the following link:
Online Dating Sites
http://www.top100datingpersonals.com/onlinedating.php
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