Internet Safety

[Mooclan]

I came home from school today.. and had a weird thought. What if someone online tried to track me down?

To test if this was possible, I took a few of my (unnamed) friends and did a brief Google search about them.

For one friend, I took the name of his city, as well as his first and last name, and stuck them in Google.
I was able to find the names of him, his family, and his extended families.

On another friend, I typed in their city, what type of school they went to, and one fact about their school.
The results? I found the name of their school. Through that, if I wanted to I would be able to find their full name and address by making a phone call to their school.

A third friend who went under the same test produced similar results - I was able to find, from their name and city, their a) school, b) address, and even c) relationship status.

This was all using only Google. Through Social Medias such as Facebook, people could probably find even more if they wanted to.
I urge you to consider your actions before sharing personal information about yourself to people online.
Those three people who I tested could have been in danger, if I was an Internet stalker, creep, pedophile, etc. Luckily I'm not, but there is still a large risk to many other people online.

Also, I'd like to say one more thing to the female players of MCSG/MCG. Please don't take this as any sort of sexist or offensive message, because I don't mean it that way:
Females are, typically, less common within video game communities. The majority of online stalkers/creeps/pedos are males above the age of 18. It is unfortunate, but females are generally the targets of online sexual harassment.

Please use common sense, and avoid sharing things such as information about your school, city, full name, or physical description.

Here's a few facts and tips pertaining to this topic:

- If you are being pressured to share something such as your last name, city, etc., just say that your parents are in the room and you don't want to risk them knowing that you're sharing stuff like that. It's 100% okay to use your parents as an excuse in a situation like this.
- About 13% of young Internet browsers have said that they receive(d) unwanted sexual attention. If you think you might be one of those people, don't hesitate to contact authorities.
- If you share explicit images of you online or via text, there is more than a 1 in 4 chance of it being shared.
- There are almost 750,000 registered sex offenders in the USA.
- 93% of boys, 80% of girls who are molested reported that it was done to them by someone that they know and/or trusted.
- By my own personal estimate, over half of the active female forumers on MCSG receive some sort of attention that could be classified as unusual and/or caused by their gender. Almost all of it is by people of the opposite gender.

Scary, isn't it?
Keep yourself safe.

 

[ViolentKitten]

I'm extremely wary nowadays of what I say and what I divulge to others about myself, after something like this (nearly) happening to me a few years ago.

I used to play this App called Restaurant Story, on which you could comment on other peoples restaurants, etc etc. This 'woman' commented on my restaurant, saying, 'oh, nice restaurant, where are you from in Australia?' Being my unwise young self, I went as far as saying my suburb to this woman. Had my parents not found out about the situation, I might be in a very different place than where I am today.

Be careful about what you say and do online. Seemingly harmless comments and divulging of information can lead to much darker places.

 

[Nikocheeko]

Interesting. I'll be sure not to do any stupid things "With my parents around" Good tips man, very informative.

 

[Fireized]

Also, I'd like to say one more thing to the female players of MCSG/MCG. Please don't take this as any sort of sexist or offensive message, because I don't mean it that way:
Females are, typically, less common within video game communities. The majority of online stalkers/creeps/pedos are males above the age of 18. It is unfortunate, but females are generally the targets of online sexual harassment.

Yep. A female friend of mine had this happen to her. I haven't really talked to her about it, but from what she has told me it was someone she thought she had known and trusted for quite some time. It shocked her quite a bit. I also have a little story...

So one time there was a player on me and my friends minecraft server. It's not a "private" server, but we never really tell people the ip so it was weird that somebody was on. Anyways, me being the competitive person I am, challenged him to a 1v1. Let me tell you now, I got rekt. I didn't know at the time, but he was hacking. I was suspicious, but he was REALLY smart about it. I used to be really good with hacked clients like that too, there's this special way to use forcefield by having it on a hotkey and really quickly toggling it, when you get good at it you can make it look like you're just a good player. Anyways I kept accusing him of hacks. (Btw, my friend, the owner wasn't on at the time, it was just me and the hacker) he offered to send me a video through Skype and prove he didn't hack. At the time I admit I was just embarrassed to being rekt like that so I made up some excuse like "no I don't want hackers in my contact list" or something. A few weeks later I get a random request from a skype user with the username "anonymous." He kept trying to get me to add him, and after like half an hour of talking he said something along the lines of "add me, I just want to poke around behind your firewall." This freaked me out. I blocked him. A few days later I was talking to a another friend of mine and mentioned it. He said he knew who he was, and that he went to his school. He was a hacker who knew a crap ton about computers and he was always doing stuff like that. And then I made the connection, it was the same guy hacking on the server. I then also remembered something about skype automatically port-forwards (I'm not entirely sure that's true) and it made sense. He didn't want to add me on skype to give me a video, he would've gotten all my personal info and crap. Anyways, the morale is never add someone you get a random request from :3

 

[bridgedragon]

Honestly, sometimes I feel like people should check the off topic sections more. Why? Because there's so many amazing lengthy threads that say a lot, that don't get noticed at all. But anyways.

The internet is a very amazing, devastating, and unique place. You can make new friends, play games, and have fun! But the internet has a "danger side." Filled with pedophilic people, angry people who take out pain on other people, and don't forget the world of hacking, dosing, and much more. Despite these terrible things, people still go on to use the internet. Why? Because it seems almost essential in order to be caught up in everything.

The terrible side comes from social media. Example : Mynameisbonez. I can see how his videos entertain some people, but he's too brainless to think about the people he's making fun of. He practically ruins their lives by doing that. I think that he thinks he's some kind of giant or something, and everyone else must bow down to him. When In reality, the real world will sink in on him, and he'll not be so much of a giant. He will in fact, not be superior. I obviously do not live inside of his brain, so I can't tell what he thinks.

As for the people online, I can't put much thought into it. But people are too dependant on the internet. Like, some schools keep student information on computers. You know a hacker can probably hack into that, then tell all his buddies about these innocent kids. And you can guess what they'd do next.

As for things like instagram, twitter, Facebook. I think you should probably never put personal information on those types of things, because anyone can search you up, find you, and do unpleasant things to you. This is why when you create a username, you should never put anything but a first name in it.

To summarize though, the internet is never a safe place, and there's nothing called being "too careful" when it comes to the internet.

As for you Mr Mooclan I hope your friends are alright with you searching them up. I learned from experience that people don't like it.

 

[Mooclan]

As for you Mr Mooclan I hope your friends are alright with you searching them up. I learned from experience that people don't like it.

I notified them that I did it, and I shared my results with them. I explained why, and while they were definitely creeped out, none of them have blocked me off of Skype... yet.

 

[1qw3er5t6y]

 

[Sumakid8]

This is a perfect post. Thank you so much for this!!

 

[RC_4777]

To be honest, even being a rather cautious person, I have a lack of fear towards these things. There are a few people here that know my name and my general area, but even were they stalkers or whatnot, what's the chance that they are anywhere near me? When would they possibly be able to do anything to me (I can't think of a time in the day I'm alone)? Using Google it required ridiculously specific searches to find anything about me. My forum account (the only Internet account I use to produce content and that has really any info about myself) doesn't really have anything linking me to myself. Internet safety is important, but it's easy enough to protect yourself if you're smart. Just pay attention to what you do.

 

[Miner9823]

This thread really did help bring a lot of caution about the dangers of the internet, even I myself am vulnerable to exposure of privacy, and to be completely honest, I think my information is leaked already as well, but it just shows that even with the greatest kind of technology we have today, we can never be sure of safety or perfection of privacy.

I'm not usually that sort of camera person, who would show my face towards the camera as much. I have used to be a little confident with myself, but now I just feel plain daft. And every now and then, some mischievous children in my class would lack the brains, and have the audacity to take pictures of random things and take videos as well, and some of them including me, hence most probably exposing me in that random application I'm a little unsure of, called Snapchat.

Also, there are some servers that I am staff member in and believe me or not, what they can sometimes do can be unspeakable of. I'd rather not get any detail, but to say that it took no effort at all for them to find personal details about me, that is of course because I had Skype, and I'm usually vulnerable towards information being exposed that way. However they are in a way decent people, but they know what they can do, and it takes no effort for them at all to do certain actions.

But overall, I would be very surprised knowing if there are people in the world who would have the intent to going as far to literally stalking them, like physically stalking them just because of information leaks. It shows that they would rather in a way, have pleasure in an inhumane manner other than trying to get to a little bit of a more reasonable relationship to where both people in the relationship are at a term of agreement... ;-;