When I was seventeen, I used a java chat and ICQ. And yahoo mail, which had a fake name on it. People knew I was in Australia, and they knew me as 'Maggie'. Not my real name. There weren't any pictures of me on the internet, I didn't have a livejournal. We sat around and talked about Stargate, and that was it. No idea how we talked about Stargate for ten hours a day, but we somehow managed it. :) Oh, and cybersex. But I was pretty much a virgin, and I strongly doubt that it was particularly realistic.
Somebody managed, somehow, to find out my real name. Including my last name. My parents were stupidly paranoid, and I never gave that out. And considering I hated my first name, I don't see why I would ever have given it out. There was no mailing people... everything was done in this chat room. Yet somebody figured it out, and they logged into the chat with my name so that everybody in the chat could see it.
Fortunately nothing ever came of that, but it was utterly terrifying. I'm heaps more open nowadays, and there are at least five people on LJ with my home address. Any of them could give it out. Hopefully they won't, but that's beside the point.
Somebody sent anonymous hate emails to a friend of my sister's. I posted on miss_magdellin asking what they could tell from the hotmail send information, and within half an hour we had the guy's full name, course code (he was studying), home address and home phone number. Same as when my ex, the one I had a restraining order against, got his then-girlfriend to comment anonymously on my livejournal. I asked one person, and we knew who she was and that she had posted it from her work.
It's nuts. And it really does seem, with friends like mine, that there's nothing you can do.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2004-11-28 04:38 pm (UTC)When I was seventeen, I used a java chat and ICQ. And yahoo mail, which had a fake name on it. People knew I was in Australia, and they knew me as 'Maggie'. Not my real name. There weren't any pictures of me on the internet, I didn't have a livejournal. We sat around and talked about Stargate, and that was it. No idea how we talked about Stargate for ten hours a day, but we somehow managed it. :) Oh, and cybersex. But I was pretty much a virgin, and I strongly doubt that it was particularly realistic.
Somebody managed, somehow, to find out my real name. Including my last name. My parents were stupidly paranoid, and I never gave that out. And considering I hated my first name, I don't see why I would ever have given it out. There was no mailing people... everything was done in this chat room. Yet somebody figured it out, and they logged into the chat with my name so that everybody in the chat could see it.
Fortunately nothing ever came of that, but it was utterly terrifying. I'm heaps more open nowadays, and there are at least five people on LJ with my home address. Any of them could give it out. Hopefully they won't, but that's beside the point.
Somebody sent anonymous hate emails to a friend of my sister's. I posted on
It's nuts. And it really does seem, with friends like mine, that there's nothing you can do.