A few years back, a non-profit group I have been associated with ran a seminar about child safety on the Internet. One of the things about the online world is that anyone can become anybody at anytime, and then disappear and re-appear as somebody else.
In general, most of the people you will "meet" online are mostly truthful and open about who they are, particularly when you are not using a site that is devoted to dating or hooking up. On general audience sites, the untruths you generally uncover are related to efforts to impress -- people boosting their own self-importance, trying to make themselves look more interesting, or efforts to give their viewpoints more credibility by padding the online resume, so to speak. These are relatively harmless, and often the people that do it the most end up getting caught by their own inconsistencies.
On sites or chat rooms that are more designed for local people to meet, date, or just hook-up, the honesty factor drops considerably. I was watching this back in 1986 when I was accessing multi-user systems with a modem. A lot of the same silliness back then still takes place today, and some of it is weird.
I would agree that teen and adult women users are most frequently targeted, but mostly by guys looking to date (or have sex or both.) An obviously female username would get pelted with come-ons that ranged from being sweet and funny to explicit and offensive. More bizarrely, I ran into a number of instances where a seemingly straight guy would adopt a female username and entice other men in online conversations. I have no idea what that means.
When there are problems, they usually happen in one of these ways: With teen girls these conversations sometimes start when the girl lies about her age in her profile and tries to act as maturely as possible to demonstrate they are more mature and can attract older guys (many have been under 25 - we're not talking about 50 year olds here, usually). Then there are guys who feel they can effectively manipulate younger girls into compromising situations but aren't true pedophiles, and then there is an even smaller group of true pedophiles who have a propensity to only be attracted to underage girls. With guys, I've found that hook-ups happen much more quickly and can be either people around their own age or older guys. Most younger guys don't seem to pad years onto their age unless they were consistently being rejected by older users once they found out how old they were. What is quite common with those crossing the line are guys sending nude pictures of themselves asking for reciprocal pictures. You may find these on a computer, but just as often on cellphones. People have lost any shyness about taking nude pictures of themselves as digital cameras and camera phone have become the rage.
Teenagers often explain to their parents that they are too smart to get sucked in by this kind of behavior, and while some are, most teenagers are really not masters at recognizing the high level mind games that older people can use to manipulate the situation. Being made to feel important and special is something most teens strive for, and when you combine that with natural rebellious behavior and breaking all the rules, you have a recipe for a real mess. The good news is that some of their peers will apply pressure to get them to stop even if parents remain clueless. Nobody wants a reputation in school as a slut or being kept by some older guy.
I've been around the online world long enough to also know that everything changes incredibly fast, and in most cases, your kids know more about your computer than you do. Parents need to understand some basic realities here:
1) Your son or daughter will be exposed to porn online via e-mail, file sharing networks, and websites. Just is just the way it is and there is nothing you can do about it. Even if you don't allow kids on a computer at home, they are getting online outside of the home. I have found that many kids end up doing the same thing adults do - they learn to ignore the unsolicited stuff. After the 5,000th porn spam, there is no thrill in getting 5,001. And kids who are raised not to think of a naked body as something inherently bad or strange seem to get over it much faster than those who were raised in an environment that makes such imagery just one more "forbidden fruit" their natural teen rebellion will draw them to.
2) No filtering software, site blocker, or other "access controls" will ever be effective. Most kids have learned to beat every last one of them, often by leaving no trace that a parent can find. These things haven't been the answer and never will be. In fact, they usually backfire in making teens want to access these forbidden pages even more, and they'll have no problem finding access outside of the home. The much better approach is to put the computer in a family-visible location and not in the bedroom where it cannot be monitored. Since most predatory relationships built online require hours and hours of chats or e-mails for manipulation to be effective, reducing the window of opportunity for such things generally makes the bottom feeders look elsewhere for less of a challenge.
3) If your inner intuitiion makes you suspicious, listen to it. I've usually found my intuition kicks in when my sub-conscious has picked up on an inconsistent statement that someone has made, such as changing their age, changing an important detail about themselves, or tells a story where the facts have changed. Often your conscious mind won't connect the dots as to inconsistency, but your sub-conscious mind will send generic vibes out to signal your intuition. If you challenge a liar about the changing of the story, they'll usually become very hostile and attack you for not remembering the original story. Most honest misunderstandings don't result in hostility. But manipulators will get hostile or blow something out of proportion to force you back into compliance with them or distract you.
If you are an adult, I can make some additional suggestions:
1) I think the fear of giving out ANY personal information is advice more often given in situations dealing with minors. I think most adults can safely navigate the online world and be more forthcoming about themselves, within reason. I would never be afraid of a chat room as an adult. The majority of intentions are honorable out there on most of them. But a lot of bets are off in rooms dedicated to dating or meeting people. But people will lie to you in a bar too, just not about as much.
I think the gender neutral usernames are effective at stopping some of the unsolicited come-ons, however.
I met John through a computer bulletin board back in 1987. You just have to be intelligent about how you use the online world, and trust but verify. And if someone does bother you, report it to the website service and have them deal with it. If someone starts asking for your money or bank information, never give it out. Would you give that information to a stranger on the street?
If you want to exchange e-mail addresses, get a freebie web account you can drop anytime if the person irritates you. If you want to give out a phone number, you can get a free voicemail box at
www.privatephone.com in most exchanges in the country and give that out as your number. You can then retrieve the messages and make decisions accordingly, and if the number gets abused, you can drop it instantly and get a new one.
Remember too that whether online or offline, one never *really* knows who someone else is until you've known them a long time (and even then there are exceptions.) But you should not be afraid to build trust in fellow people just because of who someone could be. Just use your common sense and take your time in getting to know people, and avoid making any commitments or disclosing too much information too quickly.
