Online Safety: My Advice

Very well said indeed.

One more point that I would add - Never, ever give out your personal information such as your real name, your address, your phone number, or even your e-mail address to people you meet on-line. Such information can and is used by stalkers and pedophiles to locate potential victims on message boards.

I recently had someone who probably had their profile picture from google. They had no profile, and when I asked them who they are and what they're interested in, they literally just copied and pasted a part of my profile in the mail lol. They sound like a bot of some kind, with no personal message. Then again I know how people type when they only have one thing on their minds, there's still stranger people yet. I remember someone who claimed they were Korean and female but they were always trying to over prove that they were Korean or female on this one forum, ( not this one ) and that they also claimed to know magick in the way of teleportation and that they felt they were some kind of goddess of nature lol. I'm still waiting for Kim to teleport me to a party.

Not only stalkers make use of information, so do scams.Personal information can get your bank account robbed!

Arcadian- Thanks! I also feel that there should be an extra strong amount of moderation when it comes to this issue. Of course, it can naturally be hard to point out who's a pedophile or who's a stalker. That's the unfortunate part. But, we all do have a voice when we do find someone suspicious.

Lark- That is also a huge point. It tends to be said countless times for this topic, so I decided to look at it from other angles for this post. :)

GrayGhost- Those are creepy stories! People like that that claim they are like a goddess, etc, usually are either bored teens or adults that are facing more complex issues. If you ever notice something like it again, just block them or don't reply. My story was also rather eerie; I'm not going to give out that person's former SoM username, but basically the sum of the story is this; that individual was significantly older than me and he seemed obsessed with me. He'd constantly flatter me to the point it became "off", and then at the end he became very obsessive, making statements such as, "I want you to be with me. I want you in all ways.", etc. I'm not going to go into full detail on a public post. Though my contact with this person never went beyond the screen, it was still rather scary. Be safe, everyone!

Brysing- That is also very true! No one deserves to have their bank account robbed.

Bless this post! Haha. I'm so glad to see and internet safety post here. When I was in high school I headed an internet safety club type thing and we went around to the middle and elementary schools teaching them safe web practices.

There are so many children on this site that I'm kind of surprised there isn't a sticky post on web safety. It is so important.

haha I guess I'm not so nice as you DawnMaiden, because I personally hate it when strangers compliment me at all because of that. I used to go onto chats ( normal ones like chat avenue or something ) and its so common for perverts to be there, hundreds of them. It's mundane after a while, when you're just trying to find actual people to just chat with and not have all the sexual nonsense going on. Since I move a lot, the online chats have been nicer in some cases. But in others they will literally make me spit fire to everyone who messages me. This one person I met on there was obsessed with meeting someone who was willing to urinate on him lol!

And given there are also places such as 4chan, nothing's new and I just hope the younger generations to come are smart enough to sit and think about what's going on and lose that naivity or at least have a parent or older person around to help them navigate.

I'm glad this place isn't a cesspool, but then again it's one step away(from every other place you can go to), especially if anyone is an online gamer they will know what I mean xD

Also about the fact to be very careful of who one may contact--some instant messaging websites only use a computer-to-computer connection and the other person can be a hacker willing to steal your information or wreak havoc in many other ways via the internet and networking in general. If someone is paranoid about that and if you're also reading this, look into getting a VPN or proxy server so that you're always protected and your privacy is a little more concealed. So that if someone does attack you, they will be attacking the proxy server, instead of finding your IP address and then your main router to which they can do a service denial attack ( DDoS ) and you can be offline for hours or days.

Also depends on who you associate with, but chances are you'll never find a hacker around a website such as this. They're usually on websites or servers that involve gaming.

That is also another great point to add to this.