Hello SP
Today I attended a seminar on Internet bullying, teen suicide and online predators. (for minors safety but I guess it applies to everyone)
Some tips the speaker gave when protecting yourself from predators were
1. Don’t tell anyone you meet in a chat room your real name. Under any circumstances.
2.If you are underage do not make it explicitly known. If you feel a conversation is going in a direction you are not comfortable with just tell the person this content is a bit mature for you, or say I am a Minor. Do NOT tell your exact age.
3.Don’t meet anyone you meet online if are underage. It is just not safe. There are good people, but there are also very bad people. People who will convince you that they care and what to be your “friend”.  I ask that you try to stick to chat-rooms and emails. If you are an adult you should still be careful.
If you are the Defiant type and are sure they are good people, at least meet them in a very public place. Do not get into a vehicle with them under any circumstances.
4.If you feel you are being harassed online contact the chatroom administrator. A way to avoid harassing emails is to use a different account for the chatroom.
5. If you are being harassed in your home life by phone calls and unwanted visits keep a record of all the calls and take pictures of your assailant, tell your family and contact the police in your local area. If you feel the police are not taking you seriously contact social services if you are a minor.
I know the above may seem very drastic but it is important to protect yourself. Predators are masters at making you feel safe and getting you to trust them. A healthy dose of mistrust is a good thing when dealing with people online. You just don’t know who you are really talking too.
If you are worried or you are being harassed by someone on SP please contact Admin. Failing that you may contact myself. I will never ask you for your real name, where you live or your age. No one should ever ask you these questions, and I encourage you to not answer them for your own safety.
I don’t want seem like the world is against you, 95% of the people here on SP are good people. But in life there is always that 5% of bad people. Just please be careful.
17 comments
I actually follow most of these. Question, though, what about giving JUST your first name?
By giving your first name you have left a breadcrum, with no name, no age, no address a person cannot find you. If someone has your name they may find a facebook account, etc etc.
I recomend you stick to your username or a shortend version. Stay safe.
chat room’s bane me. Why.? All i’ve got is hello sp & sp chat.
Euthanasia site’s are the worsed. 404erorr
As I don’t actually have a Facebook page and don’t use my real name anywhere on the internet, ever, is it still a bad idea? (Sorry, I just want to know as much as possible.)
@Sinine since you havent used your name anywhere I dont see why you would start now. I dont want to post how to find someone on the net for anyone to see, but it is very posible, just because you havent used your name doesnt mean others havent.
@Donnie I dont know why they banned you. Perhaps you were being acting inappropriately.
Alright, thank you BlueberrySman! 🙂
I stopped using my real email address because I was afraid some strange random girls would start stalking me but then I got desperate and changed it back.
I was acting like a gentleman.
@OP: No personal offence, eh, BlueberrySman, but it is precisely this type of paranoid attitude and thinking which has prevented me from ever meeting an online stranger, not to mention created a great barrier to me meeting oh-too-many offline strangers as well. My real name is Andy and I am a 47 year old male. I certainly would not ever agree to meet anybody under adult age offline, but I would always be willing to exchange with them via internet and/or telephone if I felt we shared good rapport and mutual healing was possible.
@ Donnie I wouldn’t want to be part of a club that didn’t want me as a member anyway
I am not saying that you should never meet someone you meet on the internet ever provided you are not a minor!! I am saying that minors should not be meeting people they meet online because they are the targets of predators. By revealing information about themselves they make it easier for someone to get into their lives and harass them if it goes bad.
When someone is past their teens, by all means meet whoever you like.
@ Duke, “then I got desperate” lol.
Donnie.Don’t worry about it.Chat rooms only give you a headache after a while anyway.Some nice people there,but u run out of things to say sometimes
I understand, BlueberrySman, and even agree with you, especially with minors. I know I would not ever agree to meet some stranger anywhere but a public place, if I would agree at all. So I think you give some good advice. I also would not meet an online stranger until first establishing a telephone relationship. So I am not against you here, I was just sharing my experience of fear of strangers which I have been working on overcoming since I was 12/13.
PS don’t take sweets from strangers
I agree with Andy2112 and I agree with BlueberrySman,
you need to be careful not just on here but everywhere, I believe that for this site or any site for that matter, but I also believe you could meet someone on here you could be friends with. However I know someone is going to say it’s not a good idea for crazy people to be friends with each other. I don’t believe everyone is crazy on here, yeah we all have are problems but that doesn’t make us crazy and predators. However there are a lot of youngsters on here sometimes when they talk they sound older than me! I do wish there was some way of knowing there age like rocketman56.or how about a youngster suicide project? no adults allowed! But then you have youngsters helping youngsters? I’m not saying they can’t but I believe a balance is needed.
Donnie, you arent banned from SP Chat I checked. You have only been banned from there once to my knowledge and that was for about 24 hours and you know what was behind that.