Kidnappers are masquerading as Uber drivers

Never get into an Uber if the driver doesn’t know your name, kids. Even if the car has water and candy inside.

Over the past month, there have been two separate accounts of men posing as Uber drivers in an attempt to pick up women.

In the first, a Florida man impersonating an Uber driver attempted to abduct a 19-year-old college student as she tried to hail a late-night ride from a Florida State University campus dorm. The student asked to be taken to a nearby apartment complex, but instead he started driving in the wrong direction, eventually whipping out his you-know-what and demanding sexual favors, according to a local report of the encounter. The student made a run for it and managed to evade the Uber imposter as he chased after her. The driver was later arrested by police and charged with kidnapping.

In a second, unrelated incident, a man who said he was an Uber driver convinced two young women at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth to get in his car outside of campus after telling them another passenger had cancelled on him. The man “initiated inappropriate conversations,” according to the local news, and tried to hug one of them before dropping them off without charging them. Campus police later sent out an alert, warning students that an Uber fake was on the loose.

Luckily, the lesson here is pretty simple: when you’re getting into cars with strangers, make sure that their photo matches the one in the Uber app.