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You're home alone or out somewhere and nothing's going on. Or you're bored, lonely, horny or all of the above and more. What to do? A lot of gay guys might go online to see who's available for some fun. Without a regular bf or fwb, finding some casual sex online can be interesting, but there are a lot of safety issues to consider. I sometimes visit craigslist and check out the ads of guys looking for "casual encounters", the craigslist term for hookups. I've actually found a few fwbs and some good hookups on craigslist, but I've also had some regrets  and made some mistakes. So let's talk about you not making those mistakes, especially when it involves your photos and information.

"Phishing" is the internet scam practice of trying to lure someone into giving out personal information. Like real fishing, where you bait a hook with something that will entice a fish to bite the hook so that you can have said fish for a meal, phishers use many deceptive means to get unsuspecting people to give up information about themselves. Let's say you're looking at an ad, the guy sounds just like your type. His age, stats, location and things he's interested in all check out with what you're into. His ad says to "send stats and pics". But does his ad have pics? I run into a lot of ads where guys ask for pics but provide none of themselves. That's a red flag to me. Or, they might have pics, but they're taken from a porn site. Why should this matter?

Well, ask yourself, "Why would someone ask for pics from me and not post pics of themselves?" They might be exercising caution themselves. Then again, they might be trying to lure others into sharing their pics while not sharing pics of themselves. I'm a quid pro quo guy.(That's Latin for "something for something".) I do something for you, you do something for me. If I send pics to someone who doesn't send any back, something is off.

Best thing to do, if you want to send pics, is to send pics of your body that don't include your face. Check out the pics you're going to send to see if there's anything in the pic that could identify you, just in case those photos wind up on some site somewhere. It's one thing to have someone say that this dude in a photo online looks like you, it's entirely different when something that's very identifiable as yours is clearly visible in the photo.

Be SUPER careful about requests for face pics. I don't give out face pics. If someone wants to see my face first, we can meet somewhere in public, like a restaurant where they can see me and decide for themselves whether or not they're interested.

Please remember this well. If you share your pics and they wind up being posted on the internet, they could be there for a very long time. This could be very embarrassing if they're, shall we say, "sensitive" pics. 'Nuff said.

Be similarly careful about requests for your phone number. Just don't give it out. Use an app like Kik, snapchat or some other method of texting if they want to text you. If you've used craigslist, you know that when you reply to an ad, the site assigns you an email address within their system. The person on the other end doesn't have your real email, just the one the system assigned to you. Craigslist routes the email to your actual email account. The person you're communicating with won't have your email address unless you send it to them, so don't.

Check things out if something seems not quite right. I can't emphasize enough, go with your gut feeling. If something seems off, you can check it out online. Phone numbers can easily be checked out on whitepages.com, which has several options. I use the "reverse phone lookup" a lot. I type in the phone number (with area code) and it will give me the location where the phone is from. No exact address or name, but it's at least one way to verify a number.

If someone sends you a pic that seems too good to be true, you can use Google to search the image and see if it's legit. I had a pic sent to me today in an email and the guy asked for a face pic. Red flag, remember? So this is what I did:
-downloaded the pic onto my comp (you don't always have to do this);
-get on the Google site and click on the "images" tab;
-click on the image you want to search and drag it into the search bar on the  Google Image search page;
-click the "search" button and check out the results.
Turns out the pic the guy sent to me was an image that was on a lot of porn sites, including two tumblr accts! I think it was pretty safe to assume that pic wasn't his and he got nothing from me.

I hope this has been helpful and will useful for all of you venturing out on the internet looking for friends and fun. The internet's a great place, but just like going to a theme park or a concert, it pays to know your surroundings and how to guard your personal information.