There's one thing to talk to others on places that are also anonymous, it's something entirely different to buy/etc things from people.
Like you mentioned the poll is to see if people are aware of their own safety, there are many ways people can contact others outside of here, and people can still use fake names/info on most/all of them. So it's not entirely a safety thing as much as which things people give out to which people, and how honest one party is compared to another. But then that even applies to here.
I ran a forum once, a member said she lived in a state, she passed a place on her way to work, and it took her like 10 minutes to get to work. I sent her a PM with a map, and said "hey, you gave enough info to say you lived in this area--if true you might want to remove that post" because the nature of the board, safety was paramount.