themostepotente | Fandom Discussion -- Online Safety

Fandom Discussion -- Online Safety

This is going to be radically different, I think, from anything I post here.

Some of you may have noticed I have a stalker. This clown I don't perceive as a threat, but there are a lot of scary people out there that would take sending an IM a step further.

Nobody should have to live in fear. Nobody should have to feel like they need to keep their identity hidden to feel safe. It should be a choice 'not' a requirement.

This isn't just about fandom, folks -- this is about keeping safe, so I'm opening up a discussion and encouraging those in fandom to speak up or out, whichever :-)

How much information about yourself is too much to share? When is it okay to trust?

If you have any advice about keeping safe, please come and share it.

If you have a story to tell about being stalked, please, come and share that too.

The holidays are upon us, and some people are especially vulnerable this time of year. And yeah, I know this kinda sounds like a public service announcement, but somebody's advice might save another's life.

Thank you,

--Penny

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

First off, if you have a stalker, you might want to make some posts Friends Only. Stalkers enjoy reading about how they're affecting your life. BTW themostepotente, if you don't mind me saying so, you have way, way, WAY too much personal information in your User Information page. It's nice to share, but you're making it too easy for unsavory folks.

I've had a couple of stalkers, as well have a number of my friends (one guy developed a crush on a married friend...what was particularly disturbing was that this man was a gun nut and had spoken openly of wanting to "go postal" in his workplace). It's always a poor idea to have your real life information spread around online where just anyone can find it. It's amazing what you can dig up with just someone's domain name and ICQ/AIM/MSN account name, let alone their email address. I cringe whenever I see one of my teenaged online friends openly list their phone numbers in their journals.

Of course, this online information can be turned around and used on your stalker. A man (who went under an assumed name, gender, and identity) was once bothering a friend of mine and with a little poking, I unearthed the man's name, college, graduating class, email, hometown, and fraternity information, even knew his IP log-on domain. Needless to say, the stalker stopped his behavior as soon as he realized we knew exactly who he was in real life. The man left my friend alone but I received reports later on that he still mentions my friend in passing.

Oh...and stalkers are female too. I've had experience with both male and female and I'm still think about them at times. It makes me sad as I'm a person who loves to make new friends and share experiences. Unfortunately, there's always some nutcase who has to spoil things.

I recall some people from the early days of Usenet, whose commentary and posts (on Usenet newsgroups) were always entertaining. As the internet aged, and the 'net users got wackier, these talented people felt so threatened by the negative affections of some lurkers that they deleted all their old Usenet posts (you use to be able to do this, when DejaNews controlled the Usenet archives). Early Usenet history is full of holes because of this. It's very sad. :=(

I don't recommend being to quick to sharen personal information. When I meet someone new, whether it be through a RPG, LJ, whatever I tell them my first name. Maybe where I'm from. That's about all.

As I chat with them, and get to know them, I will let them in on a bit more information. That's only when I KNOW I can trust them, without getting that doubtful feeling in my gut.

Yes friends, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS listen to your gut instinct! I can't stress that enough. It's usually NOT wrong, when it's telling you someone may be a potential danger to you.

In public forms, communities, etc, don't leave you full name, address, or phone number.

Screen names, and emails are easy to change if you feel unsafe. Your permanent address and phone number aren't.

Also...if you're looking for a potential lover who shares your fnadom interest...
Just be careful.
My first online dating experince was a mess and a half. I almost ended up meeting this guy in RL, and he was a pervert AND a lier.

So yeah...
That's my two cents.

I 'met' my stalker via a small, private mailing list. I never thought about not sharing info with 'friends'. On this mailing list, if someone was ill, we would send get well cards. I, as listowner, would send the card with everyone's get well wishes. Everyone who got ill, had a birthday, marriage, whatever, got a card from the list. However, this indicated to Stalker!Girl that I loved her. I didn't have a clue first. I had given her (and others) my phone number. My mailing address. My birthday. So on and so forth.

At first, she was just friendly. Then it intensified, and I explained, no, I'm sorry, not interested. She didn't stop.

When I stopped replying to her emails, she would send me messages saying, "I see what you're doing. I see you posting, I know you are there."

When I stopped taking her phone calls, she would call my house 14 times in an hour.

It got to the point where I would not speak to *anyone* online unless they were in my circle of trusted (I had met them in RL) friends. She finally went away (btw, this went on for around five years) because she 'fell in love' with someone else.

In that time, I moved (and all my mail is sent to a p.o. box). I no longer have a landline phone (she got my home address from a reverse directory online).

I stopped posting to my mailing lists. I stopped writing. I stopped making friends. Because of this situation (there's a lot more, but I just try not to think about it all), I have had bigtime issues when someone makes overtures towards me - I *am* getting better. I used to think anytime anyone made friendly contact with me that they 'might' be a stalker. But now I don't automatically think that, thank god. :) I don't want to live like that. But I won't ever give out my home address (only four people in the world have it and they are as close to me as can be) and most people do not know the name I was born with (which I don't use much anyway).

There are some strong anti-stalking laws (http://www.cyber-stalking.net/legal_state_michigan.htm) in your state that include cyberstalking.

I've been stalked several times, and in two cases I was able to deter the idiot by letting them know I was willing to prosecute. It depends on the person though, and how serious they are about it. The way I deal with it online is I never use my name or address anywhere unless I absolutely have to, like when purchasing something. Otherwise, on things like yahoo I use an alias, even on the official profile that only yahoo has, because yahoo in particular is very easily hacked. Also it is a good idea to be careful where you post photographs.

Here (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0440226198/qid=1101676662/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-1563594-9796055) is a good book on the subject, that can help you determine if someone is actually dangerous or just annoying. I highly recommend it.

That is a terrific book. I'd offer to have his babies, except, well, he'd think I was some kind of stalker.

(deleted comment)

It's pretty scary how people just 'give' their msn, icq, aol, and more.

I guess it's all how you look at it. To me a chat nick is no more "giving out personal info" than an email or URL is. Not at all comparable to giving out a phone number or address. After all, if someone starts harrassing you on IM, all you have to do is block them, or if it comes to it, get a new nick. Whereas changing your phone number or moving isn't generally an option.

I don't have advice. I have this instead: Precautions are not very useful against the determined. This is why we lock our car doors--because you do not want be prey for those who are randomly trying doors, looking for something to steal--but why we know door-locking is not useful for the skilled thief who says, "There. That car right there. That's the one I want." Similarly, asking for "netiquette" is just not going to apply for protection against the determined stalker.

The point I want to make is this: none of it is your fault. None of it is because you failed to follow netiquette, or take the right precautions against stalkers. Again, IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. If you've been singled out, there is no point in having anyone say, "Oh, you should have shredded your credit card statements/not carried your Social Security statements in your wallet/not used your real name in your email." Stalkers can get around all that no matter what precautions you take, and thinking that you could have prevented it if you'd only "followed more rules" is like saying a woman wearing a belly shirt was asking to be raped.

It's not your fault.

That's a fantastic post, darling.

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.

All personal information I'll give to a stranger (and that includes the things that are on my user info) are my sex, age and the country I'm from. Apart from that, I don't share anything with anyone unless I'm somewhat comfortable. I never give anyone a last name until I'm completely sure I trust them, let alone an address. I try to keep anything that might give away my identity out of my public LJ posts - as soon as I write about something particular about where I live or what I do in daily life, it goes under a friend cut. It's not because I've got anything to hide; I'm just very careful.

I think you're more prone to get a stalker if you're interesting to them at first sight, and if they have a way of contacting you. Keeping any info that might lure them off your profile and public entries, and keeping your e-mail address and IM info safe seems like a good way to protect yourself.

You're right, no one should have to hide their identity. However, the harsh reality is that this world is fucked up, and there are many fucked up people in it. It's better to keep yourself safe than to trust people who possibly don't deserve your trust.

I was stalked once, in person (this was in the mid '80s, in the infancy of bbs). I called the cops once and that seemed to take care of it. There was some proof (footsteps on my 2nd floor balcony in the snow, when it was clear that the door hadn't been opened, so she had climbed up). It was annoying, but I guess I never felt she was going to hurt me, or out me, or anything.

Being in the world is scary, and dealing with other people is scary, and you can hide from it, or you can get hardened to it. It's definitely true that it's not your fault, though.

Surfed here on recommendation from

ckr.

Hmmm. I've always been way too trusting. Way too generous. I do use my real name and people know the city I live in. I suppose I've been lucky, having read these comments, but I've never worried about things like that.

Naive, yes. Stupid, probably. I think it's really too late to change anything, though.

My general rule is that unless I've had extensive contact with someone - for example, have been emailing then and IMing them for several months - I won't tell them any more about my personal information than I would tell a stranger that I met on the subway. Even then, I only tell people stuff if I feel quite secure with them. There are people that I've been speaking to for years who don't know anything more than my name. (And really, if I had an uncommon name, I'd be far more careful with that than I am. As it is, it's common enough that even with a general location, you'd still have several thousand people sharing it.) I have a post office box to do ebay stuff in, or to give to random people online if we're exchanging CDs or something.

When I'm online, I have a firewall up and frequently - though not always - surf through a proxy server. (If I'm honest, I used MultiProxy (from mutliproxy.org) for quite a while, though I got a new computer recently and haven't reinstalled it. This post has reminded me to do so - thank you.)

It's still not foolproof, and I'm sure that if someone was determined to find out who I am and where I'm from, they could do so. But a few safeguards make it less likely, and I'm fortunate in that in ten + years online, I've only had one incident where I felt like I was being stalked, and one where I didn't feel stalked, per se, but certainly harrassed. In both instances, they were males, quite a bit older than I, who became a little bit obsessive. One of them was largely harmless, but the other started phoning me several times an hour, threatening to kill himself if I didn't pick up the phone, saying that he'd come and find me, and it was extremely creepy. I ended up moving and changing my email and ICQ number before he went away. (I was moving anyhow, it was just fortuitous that it happened when it did.) For me, red flags go up when someone - especially someone of the opposite gender - is 'just getting into' something that I'm in and wants assistance, or if they claim to be a fan of things x and y (things that I'm also a fan of,) but don't seem to be able to intelligently theorise on it or discuss it in any sort of depth beyond 'Harry's such a great wizard! I bet that he wins in the end!'. A huge age difference is again a warning sign for me, because honestly, the difference between my life and the life of, say, a 45 or 50 year old man is staggering, and I have a hard time believing that someone like that would be terribly interested in being friends for the sake of friendship. With women it's harder, but if we seem to be in completely different circumstances and don't have much in common, I'm a bit leery of being too friendly. Clearly, that's not always going to be accurate - one of my good friends is 20 years older than I, in completely different fandoms, and we get on swimmingly; I've known her for a year or two now, she has various pieces of personal information, and shows no signs of being batshit insane. But that's the sort of thing that makes me a little more likely to make someone 'prove' themselves to me before I really trust them.

Anyhow, I hope that some of that rambling was a little helpful. I guess in the end, my feeling is that anything that puts one more step between your real identity and your online identity is a good thing, and I like to maintain that distance unless I either really trust someone.

i've never had any problems with stalking at all. i only give my phone number to good friends, but most everyone on my friends list is welcome to my address for cards and such. if they weren't, they wouldn't be on my friends list!

there is one person i DON'T want to have my address or phone number, and that's my evil ex. i don't really have any fear that anyone would give it to him, though. there's only one person i talk to that has any sort of connection to him, and he hates her too.

besides, i live in a gated community. no one can drop by without getting past the front gate, and the gatekeepers are total assholes, so that's all good.

meh. i've never worried about being stalked. all this aside, why would anyone want to stalk me?

I have had a sort-of stalker (an ex-boyfriend who didn't want to be an ex--he made my life hell for about six months), but that was all RL, no internet stuff. It did make me really paranoid about online things when I started using the internet. Only recently (like, ten years after I first went online) have I given anyone I've met online my real name--first, to those who asked for a CD when I mailed out reverse-birthday presents (it was only fair, since they were giving me their info!), and second, to various Christmas card exchange thingies. Once or twice in chat, with people I've chatted with a lot (and who asked or told me theirs first... *g*).

I know how easy it would be to find out a lot of things about me with very little effort if my real first name was freely available--it's kind of rare, and if you search google, the first hit on my name is an outline for a presentation I gave in grad school.

(except I just checked--it's not there anymore! Woo! I'm not even on the first page of google results! Yay!)

I don't put my home state and city in my user info (though I have said where I live in my LJ) to keep out of the directory. I tick the 'Block Robots/Spiders from indexing your journal' box on the edit info page. I don't say where I work (though I have said what my degree is in). I use only my gmail account or my yahoo account for any kind of online interaction, and I don't use either one for family/job/other RL stuff, so no one could search on my email and connect my RL with my fandom life. I don't use my ISP webspace for anything fandom related (including posting pics), as someone could easily find out my RL username and email from that. Heck, I even have a separate gmail account for non-fannish, non-job stuff.

Um... I'm trying not to be super paranoid about my name these days, but I still get a little rush when I tell someone what it is, and I usually say something about keeping it secret. Of course, someone could still post it willy-nilly and I wouldn't be able to do a thing, but I'm trying to be more trusting.

...though I'm still way more paranoid than a lot of people I see on LJ.

I have been told frequently that it is much too easy for people to find out information about me and worse about my kids via the internet, but the only stalking-type situation I have ever experienced was in real life, and then by someone determined enough that I would have had to change towns and actively hide to keep my whereabouts a secret. I want to reiterate what people above said: It is NOT your fault, and the best thing you can do is not to discuss it in public and let this person know that you are being affected, but to ignore as completely as possible (new IM names that you only give out to your friends directly, even if that's a pain, and an e-mail address that's private for friends only, not one where you get e-commerce and web mail).

I've used the same user ID in multiple fandoms over ten years. I love it because people I knew years ago in different sandboxes find me and we catch up, but some really unpleasant people resurface sometimes as well. I don't know that there are any perfect solutions.

Sorry to be so useless here -- I mostly just wanted to give you support!

The only thing I'm trying to avoid is getting my screen name as a search result in a search for my name.

Anything else I don't care about at all. If someone is determined to stalk me, hiding my information won't help very much. I refuse to be so worried that someone might stalk me, that I start to question all my online activities and if I'm giving away too much information. I'm not shouting at the top of my lungs "Go there and stalk me!" but I'm too lazy to think about the possible implications of every little thing I say and do.

Of course I don't think I'm interesting enough to ever acquire a stalker.

Don't make too many easily accessible public profiles. Provide email, but only give out IM if someone trustworthy asks you in email or to people you know.
I have some profiles that use my current IM, and it's too mcuh trouble changing the handle now, and I don't remember where all of them are located. So can't delete the profiels either.
As it is, I get at least one man from Turkey a day wanting to cyber, or webcam or whatever.
Sigh.
Be wary...

My phone number and home address are secret except to family and close friends IRL. Everybody else can use email and the PO Box. :-) People can be wildly different online and face to face. Usually they are horrible online and lovely IRL, but sometimes it's the other way around!

I've experienced some minor cyberstalking. A warning (like "Do not contact me again. I'll report your next email to your ISP") has sometimes been all that was needed. When ignoring them, or warning them, hasn't done the trick, making a hell of a fuss has helped: publicly posting one harasser's emails in Usenet stopped her, complaints have stopped others. Realising that their actions are not a game and have real consequences seems to make them stop and think.

When I first came online some years ago, I was very naive. My last name was my email address, for fuck's sake! Unless you're named Smith or Jones, that's probably not such a hot idea, and it's even less of a good idea when you have an uncommon name like mine. My email was included with all my posts wherever I went, and one day a guy I'd responded to on a topic emailed and asked "Is this you?" with a link to a people search that had my full name, address, phone number and a map of where I lived. In my case I was lucky, because this man was merely from another culture and didn't realize he was being scary in his attempt to be friendly. It could have been a much more frightening situation if his intentions had been less benign.

That was my wakeup call. I no longer publicly reveal my last name or location. I don't even give a state, because it's not hard to put together info from a body of messages to give much more information than you intended to give. I don't mention my first name, my kids' names or my husband's. Mention a state here, a high school there, a restaurant or bar in another post, an employer in another... You might not realize it, but after a certain amount of time you've given out everything but your Social Security number. All somebody has to do is come along and put the pieces of info together from your body of posts. That would maybe take all of an hour with the search feature on most websites and a little bit of googling.

I will use my first name in email when I feel comfortable doing so. It's a common enough name, and I don't email with folks unless I have a certain comfort level to begin with. I use both gmail and Yahoo mail as yet another layer of protection between myself and the people I meet. Very few people have my real email, even though it's a national ISP. There are a select few that have the whole deal - last name, address, phone number, husband's name, birthday, etc. They're women with whom I've had an online relationship for years, and I have the same info about them. Hell, 16 of us pooled our money and rented a cabin together last spring for a weekend getaway. We had to send money and personal checks to the organizer and trust her to be honest, but she had to put the rental fee and the security deposit on her credit card, so the trust went both ways. That's a unique situation though, and that comfort zone was built over a very long period of time. It's also a large enough network that even if you haven't met everyone, you have met someone who has met the others. Everybody has spent face time with at least one other person, which does make a difference.

I guess that's the big criteria for me. Does the other person trust me enough to share personal info? If so, I'll be less hesitant to share my own. How long I've known someone isn't as important as how well I've come to know them, but I will admit that time does matter. For example, I was very tempted by all the holiday card offers on various LJs, but I didn't feel like I have been on LJ long enough to participate. Some of my flisters seem like really wonderful folks and I'd love to get to know them better, but since I don't chat much I haven't spent a lot of time talking to anyone. Somehow I don't think any of them are creepy serial killers or maniacal stalkers, but it just wouldn't be smart to share too much info at this stage, just like they wouldn't be smart to share too much info with me.

Geez, I've really gone on about this, haven't I? Sorry! *embarrassed grin* It's an issue that does concern me greatly, especially when I see so many young women being completely open about the details of their lives. It's probably the mom in me, but I cringe to see teens giving their names and locations in profiles on sites like lj or ff.net. My sons would lose their online privileges for doing that, because nobody should be giving scammers or stalkers an easy target, but young women need to use intelligent caution in all areas of life in ways that men will never understand. There are just too many cruisers and losers out there, and we have to be smart about interacting safely with others, both online and off.

I have no advice how to keep personal information secret, it's frighteningly easy to find out my address and phone number. (Feel free to check it, but don't call in the dead of night) But so far nobody stalked me, I have no idea why, am I that boring?

Cruised over via

su_herald

I've been stalked in real life, and that is why I am a bit hesitant to let online people see much of who I am.

I'm a bit of a bitch with people who try to cross the wall. No one gets my home phone number. I don't care if we've been online friends for over a year and your mum passed away.

If I've known a person longer than 6 months, and think of them as a friend they can have my address. And I don't just mean that they drooled over my Buffy stuff, they need to have a real journal with real elements of their lives available, so that I like who they are too. I feel comfortable with giving out my address because I don't live alone, and my landlords are a friendly couple that live upstairs, plus I move frequently enough for that to never have been an issue in the past.

I don't mind people I don't know well pinging me on AIM or Yahoo, but I'm also very comfortable telling people that I have things to do and don't have time to chat with them.

I was stalked by an ex-bf in the early 90s (no internet angle unless you count the fact that I'd originally met him through a BBS). Cruising slowly past my workplace or the route I walked from work to the bus stop to get home, circling the bus stop when I was waiting for the bus, making false reports to the police claiming I'd called him from my mom's place threatening to kill myself (when I'd just moved out of my mom's apartment into my own place and didn't even have a phone), lurking in my neighborhood, following my friends around... it only stopped when I moved to another state. I did talk to the police at one point, and they asked me if he owned a gun, etc, but otherwise didn't pursue it.

I've been semi-cyberstalked by another ex. Around the time we broke up he moved to another city, and after not being in touch for a long time we started chatting in email, then on AIM. At the time I was with someone else, and the ex started making innapropriate sexual comments when we chatted. I told him to cut it out, he didn't, I changed my SN. Now he makes vaguely hostile comments in my journal once every few months, just often enough to make me a bit uneasy.

I've had a few experiences on stalking and imposting, not in the Harry Potter fandom, but in the pixel/dollz community. Luckily enough just by very young girls and not very dangerous, yet freaky and frustrating. Because of my Dollz website (http://www.over-the-moon.org/dollz) there have been quite a few people who pretended to be me. Some people left nasty guestbook messages out of my name. That was bothering me greatly because some of the girls who got messages from "me" in their guestbook were very hurt. They used to think I was a nice person. Well there ya go.

I've seen profiles of MSN names completely based of information about me, my email address, website address, my name, age etc. I've seen messages on forums of people pretending to be me. I'm lucky to have a few friends around and usually they don't get away with it, because my friends recognize it's not me because of how the person types the messages or how they behave.

Also, one time there was a girl who copied most of my LJ interests into her own interests list, while I KNOW that she didn't know about some of those interests. Ha ha. It was transparent. Later it appeared she liked to be me, or close enough, be like me. Freaky!!

And thanks for making this post. (I'm here via QuickQuotes btw.) It makes one think. I will reconsider every item on my user info page.

[Here via DS or QQ]

Haven't been stalked, per se, though I've had a few annoying people latch onto me and keep bugging me until I had to Ignore them or designate their e-mail spam.

I did hook up with a guy I met online several years ago. I consider it my good fortune that he lived in another state, so when I figured out that he wasn't very good for me, it was a fairly simple matter to sever contact (though I imagine he could find me again easily enough if he really wanted to.)

My personal safety rules for the Internet:

1. Stay out of chat rooms. I suspect this is the single biggest thing you can do to keep yourself safe. The only chat-style environment I frequent is a semiprivate MUSH where I meet a group of trusted people once every two weeks or so for an RPG. I'm on several different IM services, but I only turn them on when I need to get hold of someone, and I only accept IM's from people on my friends lists.

2. Don't frequent porn sites (not talking fanfic so much, I mean "traditional" or mainstream porn) or if you do, use throwaway e-mail addresses and user accounts.

3. Go here to get a scrambled version of your e-mail address:

http://www.siteup.com/encoder.html

Use it on any web pages you have and in any place where your e-mail address will be publicly visible--both for visible text and links. Humans will be able to read it and click on it, automatic address harvesters will not. And check the "Scramble my e-mail address" option in LJ if you choose to make your addy public!

4. Run your name and address, SSN, and other important info that you don't want people to have through a Google search once in a while. Investigate any sites that turn up with this information, and contact them with a removal request if they've got too much of your info too readily available. (Note, make sure before you do this that you're running an up to date firewall and an antivirus program so nobody can swipe your info when you enter it into Google!)

5. Don't give out your last name online, or your first name either, if it's rare or unusual. Don't be too specific about location information. There's a point of diminishing returns, I think--I'll tell people the general part of my state that I live in, but not my city.

6. Absolutely do not give out your phone number or street address publicly, and think twice before you send it to anyone via e-mail. I won't say never, ever, ever give them to anyone under any circumstances, but apply some common sense; wait until you've corresponded with someone for some time, do a little checking into them online, and trust your gut instinct if it tells you not to share that info.

7. If you're being stalked, contact CyberAngels:

http://www.cyberangels.org/

They're staffed by volunteers from all over the Internet who are trained to help. Their site also has useful net safety information.

8. Software security can overlap into the realm of online personal safety, so here's a list of links to freeware security programs to keep your machine free of viruses, trojans, keystroke loggers, and other nefarious unwanted programs:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/amberdiceless/29652.html

I grew up playing on the internet. First rule I learned was that you never ever ever give out your real name. Also, you don't tell people where you live or where you go to school.

I have broken all these rules. Even back then. I didn't drive, so I met a couple people by having them come to my house and pick me up... I usually, however, tried to meet them outside the house so they didn't see the inside... though that might have been because I didn't want them to meet my parents.

I had one guy who stalked me who lived less than a mile away... I didn't worry much because he had epilepsy and couldn't drive... but my first day of college, I found him standing outside my dorm! That taught me not to dismiss people's abilities.

I told a few people my real name, but only when I was doing something where my name would be obvious. There's a whole slew of people I have met and had relations whith and all who only know me by my pseudonym.

Recently, however, my real life and my fandom life has been overlapping. I have been going to dinner parties and conventions and stuff... and it's been seeming silly to keep using a pseudonym with people I know and trust... but now that I have started using my real name some of the time, I have become quite careless. So it's something I am stuggling with a bit now, too.

Here through Daily_snitch I think.
I never had stalking experiences per se, onl ya pocket journal with nonsense doing serial friending (I've seen their username in several other friends-of lists and it makes me wonder why it's not possible to remove people from there) adn arelationshp that started iwth trust where I even borrowed him my laptop and ended in hell after wich I found my favourites ful of porn links and all kinds of dial-up nonsense that'd be launched when I started my computer. I dont' worry about him going after me because he's most likely slid of in a world of drugs ad has always been miles away from something as sociable as lj ora fandom like HP.

There's one more advice I'd like to give. Actually two .y oucan
choose on lj to have ip's logged. and you can choose to
screen comments and even to disallow anonymous comments. I did tht latter thing after a random post from me got an anonymous spam about The Passion Of te Christ.

I just want to say is that it's not only fandom that has its dangers. A friend and I fought, didn't talk any more, until I started a livejournal, started using Y!M and AIM, when I moved away, in order to keep up with those I wanted to keep up with. It was really scary when this ex-friend began to contact me again. However, we now have a court-order saying he's not to contact me or be anywhere near me (I think it's 1000 feet), so that has me feeling somewhat better.

I've only had one bad fandom experience, as far as being uncomfrotable with a person I was in contact with, but I always made sure it was easy to break ties (block emails, IMs, etc). I hardly use my real name any more, never give my phone number or address (I've been thinking about my PO Box, though, with christmas card season upcoming). It's really kind of upsetting to me when I see my friends giving out their info willy-nilly, but that's not my choice.

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