Advice & Warnings

"Should I not involve myself in anything but surfing online then?", you may ask. The answer is that you should indeed involve yourself in as much as you want, but be very careful with what you tell people about yourself and never shop from sites not recommended to you from a person you trust (offline preferably) or only shop from large, well-known online stores such as Amazon.com.

Tips

• Never tell people your full name, phone number, address, or anything else through which any of this information can be found out. Basically you can tell them anything you like, including your innermost secrets, as long as they have no way of actually finding out how to get hold of you offline.
• Get a generic e-mail address that you use for all communication online. You can get one for free at www.yahoo.com, or www.hotmail.com for example. Only use your ISP e-mail address (ISP = Internet Service Provider, i.e. the server you connect to the internet through) to mail family and other people you have known for a long time.
• If you have ICQ, make sure you aren't disclosing any more information than you want. Check this by opening ICQ and press ICQ/Change My Details and ICQ/Preferences. You may also want to check your settings in ICQ/Security & Privacy and check the box for "Do Not Publish IP address".
• Always read privacy statements and terms & conditions before you agree to anything that will bind you legally. It is tedious and boring, I know...but do you want to risk ending up in court when doing something as simple as reading some text could avoid it? At least skim through the most important parts.
• Always check sites out before you buy anything from them. Check out their form before you decide to buy anything. Never ever buy anything from a site that asks for you social security number. There is no reason whatsoever they would need it. If anything seems suspicious to you, don't buy. On sites like E-Bay, always check out the seller's history. Basically, before you entrust anybody with your money (or with anything else for that matter), find out everything you can about them and try to get some recommendation from a friend or a family member. This may be difficult, but you have to ask yourself how badly you want the object in question and if it would be worth risking your money for.
• When chatting, remember that a series of pieces of information may allow someone to get hold of your phone number or address. If I, for instance, tell people I am from Sweden and then my full name, I could easily be found by someone who really wanted to find me. There aren't all that many swedes with the same name as I. Or if you give your name, state, and town name (if it is a small town at least), you could probably be found fairly easily. So be careful when disclosing information about yourself; don't forget what you have already told the person you are chatting with.
• Remember that a good scam artist finds the ways to get to you. Flattery is a very easy way of making someone like and accept you, sad but true. :) Beware of excess flattery from someone you chat with! It is all too easy to fall in this trap.
• Flattery is an area where all of us are vulnerable, but everyone also has other, different areas where we are open to getting fooled. A scam artist will play on your desires. He finds out something you really really want or something you feel very emotional about and use the information to black-mail you, openly or in a more subtle, guilt/blame way. Something you really want to believe in, it is easy to suspend disbelief about. A good example is fake psychics who claim they can get in touch with a close, dead relative. Now most of us, theoretically looking at the situation, probably would see that the psychic doesn't get everything right (especially during cold readings) and therefore we could logically assume that she is just guessing, she's bound to guess right a few times at least. However, if your dearly beloved husband just passed away and a psychic said you could talk to him through her, you would percieve the same things as normally but you would be so much more willing to believe in it (suspend disbelief) and be prone to ignore her wrong guesses and rejoice in her right answers. This is a little crude example, but it illustrates what I mean with having vulnerable areas and how we are more willing to suspend disbelief in those areas. So when you chat, beware of your vulnerable areas and be extra suspicious when the conversation leads there.

These are all very important things to remember. It is easy to think that the nice or wonderful man you chatted with in Yahoo is just an ordinary person just like yourself, which is most likely what he is, but what if he is actually trying to get to meet you in order to rape and murder you? This is a much too common scenario unfortunately. Sure, most people you meet online are being honest with you, but there really are quite a few who aren't. You should continue chatting and involving yourself online, but be very careful with whom you choose to really trust. Remember that it can make the difference of life and death! You don't need to answer everybody's questions. If you don't want to disclose your phone number, just say so. Don't disclose it just to be nice. If someone is really pressing for it, that person probably doesn't have anything good in mind for you, or he or she wouldn't ignore your refusal so rudely.