How To Split An Atom

Craigslist is being implicated in helping a cyber-villain find and then kill a young woman in Minneapolis. Katherine Olson was murdered while responding to a babysitting job on Craigslist. A 19 year old suspect is currently in custody for the crime.

How should we deal with this? It is time for all of us to recognize that safety online should be no different than safety in the real world. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself before committing yourself to real world contact.

Craigslist Murder

Does the opportunity make sense? Does the job, person, relationship seem too good to be true? If so, it likely is.

Have you done your homework? If you are using a classified board or social network to find someone, be sure to do some primary research before meeting in person. Use Google to search for the person’s name, check with other people who they have worked with, find their profile on other sites. If there is no information available — there might be a reason.

Are they asking too many questions? If someone needs a lot of personal information from you for reasons that you can’t really understand, be careful. If it feels like someone is prying into your personal life without cause, you may have right to be suspicious.

Are they pushing a meeting? The biggest red flag of them all is if the person seems to be pushing too hard for a face to face meeting. If someone wants to see you five hours after you have “met,” it’s time to reevaluate their motives.

Web 2.0 Roundup

The web is a powerful tool and social media is opening up new worlds, but the price we pay for this increased connectivity is an increased need to be careful with who we choose to trust.

[Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed before leaving. Photo Credit]