Safe communication before you meet

Your everyday phone number is tied to your name, your bank, and usually your social accounts. Once you hand it over you cannot take it back.

A second number costs very little. Prepaid SIMs work, and so do the free numbers you get from apps like Google Voice or a second WhatsApp account on a spare device. Use it for this and nothing else. If things go wrong later, you throw the number away instead of changing the one your family uses.

You are trying to work out two things before you commit any time or money. Is this person real, and are they the person in the photos.

Good questions are specific and hard to answer from a script:

Pressure is the common thread. Someone who wants your decision right now, before you have thought about it, is managing you rather than talking to you.

Be careful with anyone who refuses every form of confirmation, changes the price after you have agreed, or moves the conversation to a new number partway through. None of those are automatically dishonest, but together they add up.

Anything you send can be saved, forwarded, and kept indefinitely. Disappearing messages do not stop a screenshot.

If you want to confirm you are a real person, your face is not required. A photo of your hand, a short voice note, or a video call of a few seconds does the same job and gives away far less. Never send anything with your face and your name attached in the same message.

Before you travel, have the time, the length of the booking, the rate, and the area written down in the chat. Not because it is a contract, but because it stops the honest misunderstandings that ruin an evening.

If someone will not put simple details in writing, that is your answer.