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Police in UK Warn About Dating Apps After Serial Killer Conviction (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson, writing for BetaNews: Police are warning people who use dating sites and dating apps to take extra precautions to ensure their safety. The advice comes after serial killer Stephen Port who contacted his victims through apps such as Grindr and Gaydar. While people making use of dating services have always been warned to take safety precautions, police are concerned that sexual predators are increasingly using such sites and apps as a way of finding potential victims. The UK's National Crime Agency has noticed an alarming increase in the number of people reporting cases of rape after meeting someone through a dating site or app. In 2009 the number was just 33, while in 2014 it had jumped to 184. Clearly things such changes to the reporting of sexual assault need to be factored in, as do considerations such as whether the number of reported incidents represents an increase in actual incidents in real terms.
Pretty much anyplace you meet someone (online or offline) has the potential of the other person being a creep or a criminal. This is why you never meet the person alone and in a private area for the first time. My wife and I met online (Yahoo Chat Rooms). We spoke for a month before meeting in person, but even then, my wife and I took precautions. We met in a very public place (a busy shopping area half way between where we each lived) and we each brought people with us to help "rescue" us if the other person wasn't who they said they were online. Thankfully, it all worked out nicely that day. (Except for having to leave each other at the end of the day. We clicked so well that we didn't want to separate.) Had it turned sour, though, we would have had precautions in place to ensure our safety.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I think that's kinda the point. They're not giving the warning based on the premise that Internet meetings are more dangerous than other types of meetings. They're just warning people that meetings arranged over the Internet are just as dangerous as other meetings. There's a tendency for people to feel safer about meeting someone over the Internet because the initial correspondence is not direct. The nervousness and anxiety which primes your fight or flight mechanisms is missing or isn't as strong. And a lot of the subconscious body language cues which help you notice that something is "off" about this guy are completely absent. This may lull people into a false sense of safety about meeting someone IRL that they "know" from the Internet.