New issue of Sal's newspaper is out. Take a look at the "When the Predator Looms" article by Merch Gwyar there (the last article on the page). It is indeed a serious issue, please, be aware about it and play safe.
Monday, January 28, 2008
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3 comments:
Statistically the majority of people are not going to harm you if you have an encounter meeting someone from Runescape, who cares about statistics if YOU are the one harmed by a personal meeting.
I have set rules for my son when dealing with people on RS, he can tell them his first name and that he lives in Bristol, UK and that he is 8, he will not give out any more information because he knows if I find out I will ban him from RS for a week.
I had a friend in game who was a girl, we had been friends for a while through a clan and she started to get a bit more personal and asked if she could be my girlfriend, I asked her to go to a private channel on swiftswitch IRC and asked her what she knew about me, she said well nothing really, I said did you know I am 40 years old and I have a son who plays RS and a daughter older than you are.
She said Ohh we can just be friends on RS and nothing else, I said I told you this others may not have, be more careful next time.
If someone asks for personal information that you are not happy giving just ask them if they have read rule 13.
If I see someone asking for personal information from someone I will remind them of the rule, if I see someone persistently asking for information I will report them.
Good advice, Steve.
In general I am trying to not make very close relationships in the game, but when I do I am telling that I am an adult right away to avoid any kind of misunderstandings.
Unfortunately, there are indeed some creeps out there, and the safest way to deal with them is to not disclose personal information about yourself.
I'm like a rottweiler with it all. I host a clan chat (within Runescape) which has a high density of regulars in their early to mid teens. It tells us something that I even know that.
At least once a day, I'm commenting, '*cough* personal information *cough*'. It's a low-key approach, signalling that I'm about to come down like a ton of bricks on the next person to reveal personal information in this conversation.
They all remember the time when I had enough of telling them (can we say surrogate parenting over here?) and chose one at random to identify. I chose very randomly, in fact it was the next person to type after I made the decision. I gave myself literally five minutes to research, using only the internet. At the end of the five minutes, I'd frightened myself, as I'd not only traced this person's real name, but also home address, school and a host of other things. Everyone knew that I'd done it, they just didn't know who it was. I did describe to that person alone how I'd done it, so (s)he could go and erase that information.
The knowledge that it had been done does appear to have been a wake-up call in my chat, as no-one ever actually asks the personal questions. I find the biggest problem instead being people's friends and family, coming in and addressing a player by their real name. *rolls eyes*
Though I hear myself nagging so often, I have room to learn too. Recently, I had one of the younger ones ranting in the clan chat because Mum was on the warpath about just this issue. The player was very indignant about all of this, but I sided with Mum. I shouldn't have.
In response to his increased ire about such a lack of trust by adults, I set out to repeat my earlier experiment, just to show him how much he had given away. I didn't get very far. Against the challenge, I took much longer than five minutes, but can honestly say that I could not have tracked him down in real life with the meagre amount of information that I came up with.
Maybe us older ones have something to learn about trusting the next generation to have a little common sense after all. ;)
That said, I can't see me stopping warning on this issue any time soon, even if I can see myself turning into my mother. :s
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