Online dating tips 2016

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Article about online dating tips 2016:

The Definitive Guide to Staying Safe Online. When it comes to online safety, particularly when it comes to dating and companionship, we like to think we know what we’re talking about. Stitch is the only companionship site in the world that insists on verification for its members, and we do a lot of things behind the scenes to ensure that Stitch is free of scammers and fraudsters that most dating sites simply don’t do.

 

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Ask any of our members and they’ll tell you this extra focus on safety creates an environment that’s really not like anything they’ve found anywhere else. But it also means we get some extraordinary insights into the sorts of things that scammers, fakes and fraudsters will try to do to get money (or worse) from their intended victims. And given many of these things apply not just to dating sites, but to all sorts of online social networks, we thought we’d pull together some practical tips that everyone should think about when communicating with anyone they don’t know online — and particularly on online dating sites. The danger is real. Before jumping in to the guidance, however, it’s really important to stress that we’re not simply making this stuff up — the danger from scammers online is very real. Not only does one report after another highlight how many people are being duped by scammers every year, but we’ve had many members of Stitch tell us their stories about how they’ve lost money themselves. My favourite story is that of Maria*, one of our members lost close to $10,000 to a scammer from Ghana. She met me for coffee not long after joining Stitch and showed me a 90-page dossier she had prepared for me. She wanted me to truly understand how the scammers worked. You see, after being stung, she was so upset that she went back to night school and trained as a private investigator. Her speciality? You guessed it: cyber-security, with a focus on fighting scammers. This was Maria’s way of getting back at those who had hurt her. She shared dozens of stories of men and women who had lost far more than she had to sophisticated online scams. Some victims had ended up in jail, after being unwittingly duped into committing crimes themselves. Most amazing were the images of scammers boasting about their exploits online, flashing photos of the cash they had stolen and sharing tips with fellow scammers on online forums and Facebook groups. Even if only one person in a thousand falls for their scams, it’s still worth their time. Over 50? You need to be extra careful. Unfortunately, if you are a senior, or even just over 50, then you need to be even more careful. Statistics show that seniors are not only more likely to have fallen for an online scam, they are more likely to be targeted, and when they lose money, they lose more than their younger peers. The good news. If everything above makes you want to avoid going online altogether, then it shouldn’t. The good news is that it’s not hard to stay safe if you follow a few simple common-sense guidelines. In many cases it’s simply enough to remember to behave the same way online as you would in the real world. You’d think twice before getting into a complete stranger’s car, wouldn’t you? I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t give them your bank details either. If you wouldn’t do either of those things in the real world, then you’re going to find it easy to stay safe online, just as long as you understand how “common sense” rules from the real world translate to the world of online dating. The biggest risks. One last word before I launch into our guidance: it’s worth highlighting that there are, broadly speaking, two different types of risks you face when it comes to online dating: Risks you face from a predator online , including being defrauded of your savings, identity theft, etc Risks you face from a predator in person , for example being sexually assaulted by someone who picks you up for a date. While both types of risks are a concern, when it comes to members of Stitch (i.e. people over 50), the greatest risk BY FAR is the online threat. And it’s not even close: by our estimates, a senior’s chances of experiencing abuse in the real world are less than 1/1000th of their chances of being targeted for a scam online. That may sound surprising, but the reasons are quite straightforward: The rewards are high Scammers have been able to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from a single victim. If you’re a poor kid in a country with few viable employment opportunities, that’s a powerful incentive to give scamming a try. The risks are low (for the criminals) Unfortunately arrests of online scammers are few and far between, as the law doesn’t offer much protection in many of the countries they operate in. Online scammers put themselves at very little risk. Someone who meets you in person faces a much greater risk of getting caught. It’s easy to cast a wide net In-person crime doesn’t scale very well, as the criminal can only try to attack one victim at a time. Online crime, however, lets scammers target thousands of victims from the safety of their own homes. That’s really important when it comes to fraud, as a scammer may need to try thousands of potential victims before someone takes the bait. It’s easy to impersonate someone else online The key to most online dating scams is the ability of the scammer to impersonate someone else. Often the scam involves a story about travelling aboard, getting into some kind of trouble, and asking the victim to wire them money. For the most part this is really only feasible online … it’s extremely difficult for a 19-year-old scammer in Ghana to impersonate a 65-year-old account executive in Chicago in person! Older users are far less likely to experience physical assault This is one area where it’s good to be a little older: sexual violence is far less likely to happen to older victims. In fact, you are 23x less likely to experience sexual assault if you are over 65 than if you are under 34. We’re not saying you don’t need to exercise caution when meeting a stranger for a date — you absolutely should — but if you are over 50, statistically speaking the greatest risk you face in the online dating world comes when you are dealing with someone online . With this in mind, we’ve focused our guidance on how to keep yourself safe online when using online dating sites, and most of the tips below relate to online safety. OK, without further ado, here are our top 15 tips for staying safe on online dating sites : 1. Look them up (and embrace your inner stalker) You need to remind yourself that you know absolutely nothing about the person you’ve just met, apart from what they’ve said on their profile. Fortunately there are a number of things you can do to get more information about them, including: Find them on Facebook (but don’t become friends — see below!). Gather as much information you can to reassure yourself that they are who they say they are. Do you have mutual friends? If so, ask your friends about them. How many friends do they have? How authentic are their posts? Are their posts consistent with who they say they are and where they live? Find them on LinkedIn and do the same Do a reverse image search on their profile pictures. If you use Chrome as your browser, this is absurdly easy to do: just right-click on the image and choose “Search Google for Image”.