How Safe Are You?

    If you use ICQ as millions of us do you may have received random chat requests from numerous unknown persons... some of them just annoy the hell out of me while others have become good friends... a few of them I could not live without. One of them is "Shana" who inspired me to write this rave. She is probably one of my oldest and and definately dearest friends on the Web and we talk nearly every morning over coffee about all kinds of things. It was just today I got her real address so I could send her a little video of what life is like here at the Lair and give her a view of our great northern city of Edmonton...

    So what's my point?

    Shana knows I'm not a psycho/stalker... do you?

    I received a random chat request from a lady a few weeks back and she is really nice... we share the same professional background and have lots of things in common to discuss... she is also a big Hockey fan ( happy dance of joy!) When I receive requests the first thing I do is check the persons info because I tire of people wasting my time asking me for "stats". If they read my info they wouldn't have to ask and all those people cruising for dates could save themselves some time too. Anyway, when I was getting introduced to my newfound friend I checked her info and in five minutes I knew where she lived and had a map to her house thanks to one of the people finders here on the web. Was she freaked out when I told her what I knew? Damn right she was. Did she change the info on her ICQ? You had better believe it. We are still friends and she appreciated my telling her this.

    How many of you who read this have way too much personal info floating around on the internet? Not everyone is as nice as me... there are some truly strange and dangerous people cruising the Web looking for victims. I know a couple of ladies personally who have had their lives made a living hell because they told strangers too much too soon. There are too many horror stories of children becoming victims because they didn't practice safe surfing. It doesn't take much to protect yourself, practice being anonymous, don't give out specifics to anyone that you don't know really well and even then be careful. The number of people who know my real identity can be counted on a few fingers and it will stay that way... Tatiana or Lolagranola as some of you know her is the same way... if you are talking to someone on the net and they seem to be giving you too much information send them here... you'll be doing them a service that they will thank you for later.

A True Story

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