The problems encountered in social networking or other anonymous online communities typically fall into three categories:
- ID theft, fraud and privacy abuses;
- cyberbullying, cyberstalking and harassment; and
- sexual predators, con artists and sexual exploitation.
Keep Your Personal Information to Yourself: Never divulge any
personal information that could be used to find or identify you in real
life in a public forum. Password protect this information. This
information includes your real name, address, telephone number, mobile
number, your workplace, health club, or links to websites or other
profiles that might give this information away. It also includes this
kind of information about your friends and family. You may be sharing
more information than you intended to by including a pic with something
showing in the photo. Your personal information could be easily abused
and misused. Your password can often be guessed, your identity can be
stolen, it can be used by people wanting to defraud you or groom a teen
into an offline meeting, or used to cyberstalk or harass you or by
cyberbullies. It's your personal information...PROTECT IT!
They are Just People You Meet Online, Not Real Friends: Remember
that your online friends are not really your friends. You may like
them, think they understand the real you and even connect. But, unless
you know them offline, they are not real friends. They are just
cyberfriends. You don't know if that cute twenty-year old guy is cute,
twenty or even a guy. Treat them like strangers you encounter on a bus.
Chat with them, but don't spill your guts to them. They should not be
entrusted to provide you with advice about important life issues, or
confided in, no matter how tempting it may be. No matter how often you
have chatted with someone or how much you think you know about them,
you never really know who you are chatting with online. People who are
smarter than you have been tricked. Don't become a victim!
Protect Your E-Mail Address: Use a free e-mail service, such as
yahoo or hotmail. That way if things go wrong, you can just delete that
account and don't put your own e-mail address at risk. Also, get a good
SPAM blocker program and never reply to SPAM asking to be removed from
their lists. At best, your response never makes it to the sender. At
worst, you are now identified as someone who reads the SPAM and are in
demand by all SPAMMER lists.
Protect Your Password! Keep your password to yourself and don't
pick one that's easy to guess. (Keeping it on a post-it note glued to
your monitor at work may not be the best way of storing your password
securely.) To protect yourself from posers, come up with a secret code
word for friends. If you are chatting with someone and suspect that it
may be a poser, ask them for the code word. If they don't know it,
log-off. (It could be a crook, their friend, roommate, or parent!) And
know that the people who abuse your password the most are your close
friends. So make sure you don't share it with them either.
