- Never give any personal info, such as address, phone number etc. You never know if this is some harmless creep, a nice person, or a serial killer who's never been caught.
- I wouldn't let my real name known, well unless it was a friend I personally knew.
- If the person asks any personal questions, block them, there are a lot of sick people out there.
- I wouldn't recommend meeting but If you choose to please make sure its in a crowed public place. I've had a friend who met a guy online and met at a hotel, she was found o.d. in a hotel and rushed to the hospital, she was drugged, beaten and rapped.
Online friends and even dating.
By mysticalmoonray - Posted on February 22nd, 2006
Sure I've been to a few chatrooms, been a member of sites like Hi5 and myspace, I've talked to people who claim to be from Africa or even right in the next city. What do we really know for sure about the people on the other side of the screen?
On yahoo I've seen people's "pictures" when they later have a webcam they don't look anything like the pic. I've had friends who wanted to meet their internet buddy, but what do they know about them for sure.
My tips are as follows:
I'm glad that you posted this. I wrote something somewhat similar a few weeks ago, if you're interested.
http://www.progressiveu.org/122219-the-intellectual-and-emotional-traps-of-the-internet
The Internet can be a wonderful tool but people tend to be too trusting of other people online about whom they know nothing!
Yea so many teens are really stupid when it comes to the Internet lately. Recently in a town very close to mine 7 girls were raped and then murdered after people that they had mey on Myspace met them. I do have a Myspace myself, but I know not to post things like my address, phone number, last name, etc. And I also don't have pictures that look like me...I just have ones in Halloween costumes so you can't really tell who it is. So many teenagers feel like they are invincible and don't think these things would ever happen to them, but guess what? They can.
It is a sad comment too that this advisory weighs much more heavily on women and girls than it does to men. I have really no fear of having my MySpace picture looking exactly like me. I am not going to post my address or phone number though, but I have a lot less apprehension about meeting people offline that I have met online. I've met probably seven people doing this. Hell, I met my last ex-girlfriend doing that.
So many people are naive and dont realize the dangers. There are a lot of sick people in this world. I have been imed by the most random people who ask questions that are completely random. And i do talk to them sometimes. Whether I believe a word of what they say, that's a completely different story.
Considering the size of on-line communitites there will always be problems associated with online meetings. A community of 57 million people worldwide like MySpace having three reported rape cases is arguably pretty low. In order to make a real assesment of the risk we need a statistic on the percentage of meetings that lead to problems for both boys and girls.
There have been more than 3. Just in one town close to mine there have been 7 reported cases in which females were raped and later killed. Considering that's only one town, that's a lot.
home equity line of credit
I think you should take your point about meeting online people even further. If you want to meet someone you met online, bring a bunch of your own, personal friends... I mean, it's unsafe to do it at all, and even less safe to do it without people you know in real life and trust to be concerned about your safety.
That being said, I've met a few people I've met online in real life, and I had my friends around. Everything went fine, but I would NOT have taken the chance if I didn't have my friends around AND didn't already have reasonable proof of these people's existance (and it would never be an either-or situation with me).