Considering the recent events that took place here, I feel it necessary to stress the importance of being cautious about who you interact with. I used to work for a net safety group so I am gonna post a few things to be aware of. The net is loaded with pedos. I have personal experience with this. PLEASE, PLEASE if you give out your age, be aware that some unscrupulous pedophiles will try and form a relationship with you. 1. NEVER give out personal info. Dont give out the name of your school, your town, your own name. The smallest info about you can be used to find out who you are easily. 2. Dont ever think that some older person has pure motives for contacting you and interacting with you in a manner that is not appropriate. BY this I mean, asking you personal questions, flirting, even trying to elicit some sort of relationship with you. As writers I know that we all get familiar with each other and help with writing issues and thats ok...but just remember..if it goes beyond that, its not ok. I hope you younger folks will please be careful and make sure and report and strange activity to the mods asap if you suspect someone is being inappropriate. Take care and always be watchful.
Good to see some advice posted, IndianaJoan. I just wanted to balance it a little by saying that not all older people are pedos. Actually, pedos are not all older people, either. Sometimes you can validate someone's online identity. In those cases where you can't, be safe. Cheers, Rob
Excellent point! I am an older person too LOL I should have made that clearer, thanks for bringing it up
Its a sad thing when we have to issue a warning like this. So please read Indianajoans post and Like said please report anything that you consider strange no matter how trivia. Thanks ~Raven.
Am I in a position to request the information of what went on here a little while ago? That way I may be more aware of what to look out for.
A slightly unhinged member posted some far out stuff on the site. I missed most of it myself - What I read I took to be the usual attempts to be outrageous by a young girl determined on rebelling against her parents rather than the determined campaign of an insidious pervert, but she offended a lot of people and sent some pm's (I hear). All very melodramatic. The moral of the lesson: a) Be careful of weirdos on the net. b) Be careful you are not the weirdo. Common sense, you might say, but then the problem was always that common sense isn't common, and often not sensible either....
The main thing that must be done from the user's end is simply to notify one of the moderators or myself. Report the post or forward the PM. We can't help if we're not aware of the situation. Thanks!
Gah! What happened here! Whoever was influenced I am deeply sorry! I'll side with IndianaJoan in a heartbeat on this one, which is why I try to stear clear of the posts about age, location, pictures, hobbies, etc. Why they would come here when they could hit up myspace is beyond me but it's still a VERY scary thing. Thanks for posting this one Indiana and sad that there was a need . zb
I'm not mad or perverted, so no worries there then. Well, not that perverted, anyway. And not that mad, either.
What a shame that something as wonderful as the internet can be poluted by those dark soles bent on destruction, both of themselves and others.
This kind of thing happens all over the internet though and I apologise for dredging this up again everyone but I think that some excellent points have been raised in this thread and that members should be made aware of them. Torana (I am actually writing a short story about this kind of thing and remembered I read this here not long after I joined here so I wanted to make sure everyone was actually aware it can happen.
I hate that there are sickos out there on the net, but at least there are good people who care enough to make sure everyone is safe. Thanks Torana for posting this thread
With this; may I ask everyone who knows my real name to not use it, especially when they're replying to my threads and posts. Cheeerrrsss
Good point, Eoz. I deliberately don't use the real names of people whose names I know (that flowed better in my head...) on the forums. I think it should be general practice really.
When it happens, it's usually an unconscious slip up. But if anyone sees that someone has used their real name, whether or not it's accidental, please PM a moderator, and we'll expunge it as quickly as possible.
Can I ask what happened? I don't know if anything similar is happening in the US, but the Australian Government has just sent a pamphlet to all Australian families regarding Internet safety and who you talk to online, what sites you visit, etc. Hopefully it'll be very helpful for parents and young teens who don't realise the dangerous of the Internet.
I used to frequent some other websites and forums that are pretty, fanatic, for lack of a better word. I've seen cases where a particular person was targeted through their myspace pages or their MSN or yahoo handles, and these fanatics made it their personal mission to find out every possible detail about the person, for the most trivial of reasons. I joined up here because it was actually a nice place to be, and it still is. Yet, you'll note that there are almost no details about me in my profile. I agree with the others that are stressing that even a few little details can do you in. Lets say, a 15 year old named Wendy Parker from Parramatta. Thats not very critical information, but a stalker could phone highschools in that area and ask for information, then find out the phone number, and then the address, and the next thing you know, something very bad could happen. At least 50% of the details I give out about myself on the net are lies (ie if I tell a story about something that happened to me), and I change my aliases like I change my pants. If I ever did want to contact someone on the net, I'd use my mobile phone. You can't work backwards from a mobile number to get peoples details, and if you're being stalked via it, you can use the caller id/message logs as evidence for the police. Some people have little else to do than to **** with other people for the hell of it. Don't give them anything to use. And I'd advise against visiting any site with 'chan' in the name. They are the people I'm talking about.
Nothing more than what you see above. Someone's (partial) real name appeared in a couple posts, and it was clearly not deliberate. No real harm occurred, as far as I can tell, but we take privacy issues seriously.
The world is a dangerous place nowadays and the internet is making it smaller. My message to all you youngsters. Trust no one until you are 200% sure of their intentions. If you have any doubts -TELL SOMEONE!
