Fandom Discussion -- Online Safety

[themostepotente]

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

Comments

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

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.

[maelwaedd.livejournal.com]

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.