You all know now that I’m newly single. My friends talked me into opening an account on Eharmony (because in every day life I attract only the wrong men). I opened an account, completed the profile and the emails with my matches started coming. Shortly thereafter, I’m contacted by an interesting man named Ben. The picture shows nice looking man, his profile indicates that he’s 6 feet tall, an engineer. We exchange various questions and start emailing each other. He asks me to add him to my messenger and I do. We IM each other and I find his behavior strange. He does not want to answer questions about himself while asking many questions about me. So I ask him for his phone number and he informs me that he is currently in London visiting. Red flag goes in my head right away, there is 6 hours difference between us and it was 10 PM in US. I’m very curious now and reply that I don’t mind making international calls and would like to speak with him on the phone. He continues to insist that he does not want me to go through the expense, but I continue to ask for his number. He finally gives in and I call him. The conversation goes like this:

Me: Ben?
Ben: Is this…(my name)?
Me: Yes
Me: Good to hear you. How are you?
Ben: Good to hear you too. I’m great.
Me: Ben, you have an accent…
Ben: Is this a problem? You can understand me fine, correct?
Me: Yes, but I was expecting an American.
(By this time I knew exactly what his accent was, but decided to play along).
Ben: I was born in Spain.
Me: (In Spanish) Really? I was just in Madrid. Where in Spain are you from?
Ben: (In English) Do you speak Spanish? Aren’t you Russian?
Me: (In Spanish) I sure do. Are you going to answer my questions, Ben?
Silence
Ben: (In English) Wow, baby, you are very smart.
Me: (In English) Ben, answer my question.
Ben: You see, I was born in Spain, but raised in London.
Me: Ben, are you a Nigerian?

Beep-beep-beep

People, I would never ever mistake Nigerian accent for any other accent in the world!

I realized that while we chatted I accepted a file from him. It looked very innocent, just a picture of a heart. I ran to my computer and disconnected it form the Internet right away. First thing in the morning I had my good friend check my computer and sure enough he upload a file that would record my key strokes. You get the point, if I was to go to my bank account on line, it would not be pretty.

Always be careful! Leave a comment here if you’d like to discuss this. I will even allow anonymous comments for this post.