I hesitate a bit to say that I’ve felt many times that my sixth sense is pretty developed and that I can often feel things to a great accuracy. No, I am not talking about psychic abilities but just general intuitive hunches about many of my situations. (Although I read somewhere that people born under the signs of Scorpio and Pisces are born with extra sensory perceptions, so may be it has to do with that I am a Scorpio). And every time I have ignored my instincts, I have ended up hurting or regretting afterwards. This inner voice is within all of us and most of us hear it but do not pay much attention to it.
In the online world, we are meeting new people and developing connections on a daily basis so it is all the more important to use discretion, stay alert and trust our instincts. On the Internet, all we know about some stranger is what he or she tells us and have no way of knowing if they are genuine, telling the truth or just trying to con us. I don’t mean to say we need to be paranoid about trusting others, but keeping our ears and eyes open, watching for the gaps in the information they provide can save everyone tons of misery, time, energy, heartache and many times even money! This is true whether you are dealing with someone on a personal level, in the Internet marketing arena, shopping or anything else you are doing on the Internet.
To reiterate why it is important to trust our gut and intuitions, I want to share with you a post that one of my very good blogging friends teeni wrote on how Appearances can be deceiving, in which teeni has provided links to stories and other people’s posts when some good intentioned and otherwise intelligent, compassionate people fell pray to online frauds. Teeni’s post stirred up some of my own emotions from a recent online experience in which I forced myself to trust someone despite having a very strong feeling that everything this person was telling me was a lie of some sort.
I am pretty careful in giving out my personal information to someone I have doubts about but upon finding this person was on a different continent, I sort of relaxed and gave out some information I shouldn’t have. Over time though, I couldn’t deal with deceiving, and clever conversations any more and stopped all contact. Now, this person didn’t do any harm to me and I doubt they are out to harm anyone but who knows? Pretending to be what you are not, you are playing with other people’s emotions and that is not forgivable. I was on guard most of the time and that did not sit well with this person as they showed frustration that I wouldn’t ‘open up’ with them but it goes to show how many of us are vulnerable and readily trust the outside world than our own selves. Like teeni points out in her post, a lot of people have self-esteem issues and this is their only avenue to get attention, by trapping innocent folk for their own benefit. So Be Careful.
Here are some more resources to check out on Internet Fraud
Would love to hear your take on this issue and if you know of any such incidents.
photo: Neil Phillips
TDMV
Pearl
Gut feelings are sometimes more truthful then we want to acknowledge. I know you read Mig’s latest post about the ad-scheme, and I as I told her, my gut feeling tolde me to stay away. She proved me right :)
Even on the internet, first impressions count. We should listen more to these ‘stirrings in the belly’, although I always follow my personal rule: there’s a 1% chance I’m wrong.
A lot can be learned by simply observing what people write (reading between the lines) and how they write it. Like all other skils, practice makes perfect.
Theo (or Yinepu) :)
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