If you somehow access the wrong content then you will be at potential risks. One of the potential risks of the internet is talking with strangers online. To ensure your safety on the internet, here are some tips that will help you to Stay Safe When Talking With Strangers Online:
1. Don't Give Away Your Personal Information
If you want to be safe when you are chatting with someone online then the first thing that you have to do is not give away your personal information. That includes your address, phone number, or add sensitive information that could create problems for you later on.
If you are chatting with someone for the first time and they straight on ask for your picture or personal information then never share your personal information or photos. You don’t even know the person and he/she is asking for your personal information then you know that something is fishy.
2. Check Out Their Profile and Friend List
One of the easiest ways to find out if someone that you are talking to is genuine or not is just to check out their profile and their friend list. If someone has only a few friends or no photos posted on his/her profile, or he/she just made the account then of course you are gonna have your suspicions. Such profiles are usually fake and it is better you better not share anything personal with such profiles.
3. Check Out Their Photos
If you want to find out if someone is real and not a fake then you need to make sure that you check out their profile and their photos. Genuine profiles are filled with photos of that person and also photos that other people have tagged them in. Whenever you need to make sure that if someone is genuine and not fake then you need to check out their profile and also their friends' profiles and see if they are adding up or not.
If you have close friends then they will probably post photos online that will have you in them and often those photos are embarrassing. If both the profile of the person that you are talking to and their friends’ profile seem to add up then it is probably a real person who is contacting you from his/her real account.
4. Ask Them For a Video Chat
If you have been talking to someone for a while then to confirm that he/she is really the person that he/she is pretending to be, ask them to come on a video chat with you. If the person refuses to use a webcam then it could be a sign that he/she doesn’t want you to see them because they are not the person that they are pretending to be.
5. Google Image Search
If the person that you are talking to has his/her photos on the profile then you can easily find out if those pictures are real or are from the internet. To find out, just open Google Images and drag & drop the photo of the person that you are talking to in the image search box. It will search on the internet and show all the results where that image has been used. If the picture is real then it won’t show up in the search results whereas if the picture is not real and from the internet then it will show up in the search results.
You can also do this to find out if the person that you are talking to on different online platforms such as Omegle and Chatroulette is real or not just by their picture. Google Image Search is one of the best ways to find out if someone is genuine. You can also search for your own pictures in this way and see if your pictures are used elsewhere on the internet or not.
6. Safety For Meetup
If both you and the person that you are talking to online have decided to meet up then always make sure that you have set a public place as a destination for your meet-up. When you are meeting a stranger from the internet in real life then the best possible place is any public place, a public restaurant or hotel where people are incoming and outgoing every minute and also take a friend along with you so that no mishap might happen.
Setting a public place for a meet-up and taking a friend along with yourself is just to double-check your safety and nothing goes wrong.
7. Trust Your Instincts
Talking with someone online isn’t that much different than talking to someone in real life and remember what you would do in person and act like that online. You just have to think logically and trust your instinct.
The thing that matters the most whether it is real life or on the internet is your safety and just as you would do things to prioritize your safety in real life, do the same to prioritize your safety on the internet too.
Remember that there are all sorts of people on the internet and you cannot really know who is who just by looking at their profile or screen name. So, always be cautious and trust your instincts.
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