Online Dating Hazards

   Today I was explaining to my students about online dating hazards.  Now most were not 18 yet; however, there was a girl at my son's high school that ran off with some child molester that she met online.  So just as high school students dabble in drugs, alcohol, and sex---adult behaviors---they dabble in online sites, and they dabble much more than the less-wired older generation.
    So today's lesson to my Computer Aided Design class was about online dating hazards.  First I explained how I always copy everything that every prospective suitor writes into a file under his name.  Then I check facts at my leisure.
    My students were astounded, "You really do that?"
    "Absolutely.  When I was just getting a divorce and my two children were still at home with me,  I was falling in love with another man and did a Boolean search using his name and any facts that he gave me.  It ended up that he was implicated in a child pornography scandal!"
    "Today there are many fake people online, so you have to check the facts.  I just caught one of those fake people.  He used a famous name so it made my Boolean searches difficult.  For three weeks I kept trying to find this person's background by putting his name in and any facts that he gave me and got absolutely nothing.  For a former corporate spy like myself this is a major flag.  Everyone has an internet trail.
     "He was portraying a  petroleum engineer and moved oil rig locations from Buna, Texas to the Falkland Islands, but he kept being available to chat at the same time everyday, even though he changed time zones and should have been asleep.  The kicker was that he asked me for money.  Never give anyone who you're corresponding with online money."
     Hopefully, I covered the facts well enough, so none of my computer savvy students will let their hearts and minds go astray to an online predator.  There are so many of them.

P.S.  To my blog readers:  If you want to support a struggling math/engineering teacher and author, please buy my first book, "The Romance of Kilimanjaro," soon to be followed by my second book at:  https://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=9781613464960         Thank You!