From the beginning of time men were the protectors of the young and their women. To quote my favorite super hero movie; Superman… “If you’ve got me…who’s got you”? Who is protecting our guys from the barrage of overly aggressive, slightly imbalanced, “I never knew my daddy” and “all men are dogs” women that hang out on the internet? Are we all easy pray for anyone with a mouse, keyboard and an axe to grind?

No matter what your background, race, nationality or gender when it comes to issues of national security we are all in need of protection. It seems that with the advancement of technology it’s become easier for people to assume our identity or in many cases, just mask their own. How do you really know who you are talking to on line? So, you have a web cam, you can see them, how do you know they are in London and not say, oh…next door to you? It seems that my sisters are a lot more cautious with protecting their whereabouts, however, guys, you’re not being as careful.

The experiment…I went on several different dating web sites taking on an (“assumed identity”). In 98% of the cases I was able to get the guys name, city, personal email address and yes, even phone number. Usually this only took me about 2-3 emails to obtain this information. It’s my assumption that most guys just feel non-threatened by a lil ‘ole female like me. Well, for the most part I am pretty safe. However, not every woman is. That is if you’re even dealing with a real female to begin with.

Guys, I’m not trying to scare you, just make you painfully aware of what dangers are there for you as well. Another case in point… I know someone that subscribed to a free internet dating site after a very bad breakup. Immediately she began to get emails from all kinds of guys of every race and nationality. There was one guy that stood out from the rest. The reason he stood out was because from the first email he was coming on strong and fast. Let’s call him Marc. Marc hadn’t even seen a picture of her (face), before he gave up his home phone number, place of employment and personal email address. By the third email she told Marc that he needed to slow it down. That he was moving to fast. Needless to say, Marc took this as a brush off and told her to go (fill in the blank) herself.

Maybe it was just that time of the day. Perhaps she was still not quite over that bad breakup and these words triggered some latent memory and it was a breaking point. I don’t really know how it happened but this is what happened next. With all the information that she had been given by Marc, it didn’t take much to learn his last name, get his address, (he was in a very small town), and proceed to reek chaos in his life. She began with the little things like going to different gay porn websites and posting his picture along with a profile saying that he was looking for well hung and sprung young men. She also included his personal email address and his…you guessed it…home phone number. She signed him up for any and every free internet spam, blog and survey she could find. Including the site dontdatehimgirl.com.

Although she never did anything with his physical home address, she could have. That’s scary. At the most she just inconvenienced him with these school girl pranks. Unfortunately, there are some folks out there that take it a lot further and make it a lot more dangerous physically, emotionally and even financially.

The moral of this story is to protect your self at all cost. It’s so easy to create a free profile any and every where. If you are truly serious about finding the love of your life, isn’t it worth the investment of weeding out the crazy’s? The perpetrators? The “I’m just here to waste a little quality time” people. When you become a subscriber you have greater access to a better quality of other subscribers and the opportunity to validate who you’re really talking to while maintaining your anonymity. You can email and send instant messages with the satisfaction of knowing that your personal information and details are safe and secure. It’s about protecting your time, your investment and yourself. I know that you’re worth it. This is Leticia…maybe??!!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.