| Safety | Not everyone is a nice guy |
The CU-SeeMe community is a community of real people, and as such has several examples of people who only want to abuse that community's trust. People who are socially inadequate, ill-fitting or have problems of their own are just as capable of buying a cam as those who are only out for some innocent fun, and it's these people that you should be wary of. They can be categorized into three broad areas, screen-cappers, blackmailers and child abusers.
To take a screen-cap is to literally capture an area of the computer screen as an image into a file, thereby making a permanent record of what is there. The problem as far as CU-ers are concerned is that there is no way of knowing it is taking place, and no way to control what happens to the images once they have been taken. On several occasions screen-caps have appeared in large numbers on Usenet news groups and on web-pages, often scaring those who are shown (almost always women) away from CU altogether.
It does have to be said that the majority of screen-capping that goes on is almost certainly purely for personal use, and they will never surface anywhere, but it only goes to prove that like in real-life you should feel that you are comfortable with those you are with on CU.
Rest assured, however, that the CU community as a whole, and #cuseemesex in particular view the taking and trading of screen-caps to be the third worst thing that can possibly occur, and treat those found to be doing it with extreme prejudice and will make sure they never show their little pointed heads on our channel or reflectors, or on other channels or reflectors who also take as dim a view on the subject as we do.
This is much rarer than screen-capping, but is closely related to it. Sometimes the social inadequates who can't relate to women on a friendly basis will try blackmail in an attempt to make them have sex with them (either CU or real). Usually this blackmail will consist of screen-caps of the women in 'compromising' positions, or more usually the implied threat that they have screen-caps of them and they are in a position to get those images to husbands/employers/friends etc. The double irony of this is that the blackmailers are usually demanding that the woman have a sexual CU sessions with them, which is the perfect time to get screen-caps of them in the first place! No-one said that these people are bright.
If someone messages you with a direct or indirect threat of blackmail, under no circumstances even contemplate doing as they ask, 9 times out of 10 they don't have any pictures in the first place. The correct thing to do is contact an op on the channel immediately with a log of the messages you have received. If a channel op isn't available, send email to the following address: alert@cuseemesex.com with details of who was making the threats (including their whois information from IRC), a log of the messages and a date and time when the threats were made. Only use this address for this, and maliciously using this service will result in you being banned from the channel permanently.
Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before the sickest people in society got to grips with new technology. These people are rarer still, but should be treated like the human refuse they truly are. If anyone starts asking questions about children that you are uncomfortable with, tell a channel op at once.
Graybare (also uses lots of other nicknames)
*!*@*.beaverton.uu.net
AL^^ (nicknames usually a variant of this)
*!*@*.sugar-river.net
Dojo
*!*@dojo.owl.de
Others will be added to this list as and when we identify them.
| Back | Back to the main page | Next |