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Meet Senior People Online Safely

As a senior it is especially important to be careful about yourself to prevent anyone from harming you in any manner. This becomes especially important if you decide to meet people online for social or dating purposes. This is not in any manner to discourage you from using these online services to meet people as the service these provide is excellent for someone who is lonely and is looking for companionship. But one just needs to be careful as there may be a few anti social elements also lurking on such websites.

Being safe online can be broadly categorized into 3 categories, physical safety, financial safety and emotional safely. Let’s look at each of these in detail.

Physical safety: Firstly it is important that you don’t just jump into meeting someone either at your home or theirs without first getting to know the person quite well, this would mean that you have spoken to the person several times and are quite comfortable with them before you invite them to meet you. Also it is critical that this meeting be at a public place rather than at their home or yours. Even if you are looking to meet them at a public place be sure it is a place that you know your way around. It is even fine to invite someone along when meeting someone for the first time or let someone know that you are going to meet this person at this place. If you decide to go with that person to some other place be sure to take your car. These tips may sound like being too cautious but better safe than sorry.

Financial Safety: It is critical that when meeting people online, you never give out a lot of your personal information such as address, phone number, financially information, etc. It is extremely simple for someone to be posing as someone else online to get that information from you. Also if you have given out your email address to them, be careful about the emails they send you, an email can potentially contain a computer virus or worm which can harm your computer or worse send personal information to a hacker. Again online dating should be a lot a fun and 99% of the people on such websites are genuine people looking to date but you still need to be careful about that 1% of the people who are there to create mischief.

Emotional Safety: One can get involved emotionally with another person at any age. But somehow the need to be loved and cared for increases in old age and it is just easier for someone to take advantage of this need. Rejection can be extremely painful at any age and it can take a serious toll on the person’s health. So seniors need to be extra careful to avoid getting emotionally attached to someone too soon who might be able to take advantage of them emotionally.

Meeting people online is great; one just needs to be careful when doing so. There are a number of great websites online which actually does some background check for all their members to verify their authenticity, this provides an extra layer of security but finally the responsibility of one’s safety lies with the person himself.