Lesson
Nine!
Deception of the heart!
Your
instructor is Professor Taltos!
Welcome back ladies and gentlemen. It’s very nice to see you again. As I
mentioned last time today’s lesson is going to be dealing with some of the
more serious pit falls that you may encounter in chat rooms. I don’t want to
begin this lesson sounding like I have nothing but gloom and doom to report to
you. I think by now you all know I have been having a blast meeting and chatting
with all my new friends in cyber-land. But I have come across a few pitfalls
that I really believe are worth mentioning to you.
At the top of my list are
those of you who insist on easily trusting the folks you meet in chat land. Come
on people; let’s have a reality check here! In the blink of an eye you can
change your profile to be anyone or any thing you want to be. You can be any
race or religion you chose. I see in the future some kind of a system that
requires identification of some sort before you can log in to it. But for now we
have to keep on our toes and don’t be so fast to trust just anyone that comes
along. If you are careful and are lucky enough to meet a trustworthy person I am
sure that person has the same concerns as you do. I suggest talking openly and
honestly, between the two of you. I won’t say that relationships that start on
line don’t work. There are many relationships that wind up being long term and
happy. I’m just saying please try to lean on the side of caution.
Stalkers are one of the top
problems in chats. They generally are content to just be a pest, following their
victim from chat room to chat room. Occasionally however there comes along an
evil creature that is capable of cruel and unusual actions, disrupting you and
your lifestyle at a whim. At first he or she enjoys tormenting their poor
victims following them around from room to room. From there they escalate to
incisively sending e-mails. Some have even been known to be able to figure out
where their victims reside and work.
I have never been a victim of
a stalker but many years ago my Mother was. Mom was an exceptionally beautiful
woman, her heart and soul shinning through no matter what was going on in her
life. There was something about her that made you think of the term woman-child.
This also made you want to protect her in any way you could.
I can remember coming home
from school one day to find my mother crying at the kitchen table. It wasn’t
very often I had seen her cry and the look of terror on her face made me want to
find whom ever had done such a terrible thing to her and hurt them back. I sat
with her and listened as she told me what had been happening to her, horrified
that she had been going through this alone not saying anything to this point.
She began by explaining that
who ever this man was he knew every detail of her daily routine. He knew when
she was at home and when she wasn’t. At one point he had told her what she had
bought at the store. That fact was what was scaring her so badly, she knew he
was watching her and he was very close by. I called the police immediately.
Months later thanks to a lot
of police work we caught the man who was terrorizing her. It turned out he was
our mailman. He was in some
demented way in love with my Mom and wanted to let her know it. It had been
especially hard to track him down. The man never had a previous record.
The lessons I learnt from this
situation have stayed with me all my life. I am always very careful how much
information about myself I allow to be known. To this day I remain a very
private person. Many years have passed since that time but I can still close my
eyes and see the fear on Mom’s face that afternoon. Gratefully the man was
caught, charged and served time in jail. We never heard from him again. To this
day it still makes my throat close with anger when I think of it. No one on this
planet should ever have to feel the fear and intimidation that my Mother felt at
that time.
My mother’s stalker was a
phone stalker. He was using the best tool he had to get his thrills. That was
many years ago and now as I look around my writing room I try to visualize
through my Mother’s eyes what my world has become. The world I live in is a
world of microwaves and cell phones. My computer is my right arm; with out it I
doubt very much I would have the time to work as I do. I can’t remember the
last time I wrote anything longhand. The acronyms I include at the end of our
lessons make more sense to me than some of the proper English terms I was taught
in school.
Realizing how much my world
has changed since my Mother’s time made my little voice start screaming at me
once again. For I also realized that with every step we have taken forward in
our technology, the stalkers, hackers and all the rest of the deviates have also
evolved with us. They are as smart as any of us and can get any information as
easily as we can. Many of them spend their time simply trying to see how far
they can go in cyber-land. The dangers of my Mothers time have grown telling me
the way we protect ourselves has to evolve also.
I have a few pieces of advice
I wish to pass on to you when it comes to this. I sincerely hope those of you
who are reading this will take my advice to heart. Most of this advice is the
way to prevent stalkers or dangerous people from being able to find you. This
advice is not just my opinion. Much of this advice is compiled from talking to
people on line. Of course some good old common sense needs to be followed, also.
There is no excuse for being vulnerable when you are in chats. If you have
managed to get to the chat rooms and can hold your own then you can make sure
your safe while your there.
As I have mentioned far too
many of you are trusting people far too easily. When I go to a room I treat the
experience the same way I would if I was meeting a person in the real world. I
even take it one step farther and pretend I’m at a small sports bar. I
practice the same caution I would there. I’m careful not to let too much
information about me out. A first name should be enough information to begin
with. If the individual you are chatting with is persistent in trying to get
more information then it is a good idea to end the conversation. There’s
nothing wrong with someone wanting to get to know you, however your wish for
privacy should be respected no matter what.
Be careful whom you give out
your e-mail address to. I have made the mistake of letting mine get out to the
wrong person and began getting flooded with annoying e-mails. It’s nice to
link up on messenger with people. I have a lot of friends on my list. But
remember if the government can find you and find out what you are doing on your
computer, a stalker can too. There is no limit to the ways this can be done. I
don’t have the intelligence or know how to explain how they do this, but I can
assure you that they exist.
Every time I get brave enough
to turn on a talk show to watch, there sits some poor soul telling their tales
of horror, describing how someone they met on line broke their heart or took
them for a whole bunch of valuables and cash. I’m truly sorry that we still
live in a world where people can be greedy or cruel. And it hurts me when I read
the statistics that tell me how much more dangerous of a world we live in now.
Yet somehow I can’t find a lot of sympathy for people who volunteer to be a
victim. And that is exactly what you are doing when you let your guard down in
chat rooms.
Years ago I could go to the
store at night, today however I will not go out alone after dark. This isn’t
because I got old and turned into a chicken. This is because I think I have good
common sense. And common sense tells me that as the world grows so does the
worlds problems. We as logical thinking human beings have got to up grade our
practices of safety to suit our lifestyles. It is that simple!
And now I have once again have
taken up far too much of your time. I shall be continuing on with a few more of
the issues of cyber safety, next time we meet. There are definitely a few more
that I need to go into.
Until next time this is
Professor Taltos signing off.
I’ll eliminate the acronyms
for today.
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