REMINDER: SAFETY ON THE NET

Since we have many newbies, we thought we should remind everyone about safety on the internet. This message is not meant to scare anyone, because we really do have a wonderful community here, but you never do know who is lurking, so it is better to be safe than sorry.

1. You should not give identifying information. For example: your last name, exact location, doctor's names, school names, etc. These little bits of information put together can make it very easy to locate who and where you are.

2. Photos. We love all the pictures of the families here, but use discretion when posting. Avoid posting any "nude" baby pics or pics that may identify your car, license plate or home address. It is frighteningly easy to copy any pic on the net to my home computer.

3. Requests for money or donations. There are a lot of people who legitimately need help but please use caution with this. Sending packages usually requires a return address and a lot of people are just out to scam others. NEVER give out your credit card or banking information to anyone.

Stay safe!
Moderators

I notice last names in baby spotlight all the time....I know people think its harmless...but it is pretty dangerous.

Thanks for the reminder Kim............................good advice!

Thanks Kim! I appreciate the reminder! This is great advice! Sometimes even I forget to take precaution b/c I consider everyone here such close family.

Thanks Kim!!!

thanks for the reminder, Kimberley

Thanks Kimberley!

Very good advice!!! I think we all need to remember this! Like Aimee said, we all are probably guilty of sharing too much at times, but this does feel like such a close family here that it's easy to forget. Good point about the money and donations too...unfortunately I've seen many people taken advantage of over the last couple of years, since I've been a part of parenting communities, when trying to help out families in need that turn out to be bogus and that is so sad that people would take advantage of a fellow mother's kind heart!

Thanks Kimberly!

thanks

I just recently had a problem like this. I went to join a website/community board on iVilliage, and it said I was already a member....which I wasn't. Someone was using my email address and was even using my name. Talk about SCARY!!! I'm not sure how this person got my info, but it makes me think twice about things. It's always best to use caution on the internet, and keep yourself informed.
Thanks for posting this!
Ann

Because of the recent "event" here, I really started thinking. Are there "fakers" here often? Is there any kind of tips for spotting a faker?

i wouldn't say it is an often occurance, but on a board this size, it is bound to come up every now and then. unlike other boards, we have a very active moderating/administration team and are on top of these imposters usually long before members are aware of it.

if anyone has suspicions or concerns, please contact a moderator as soon as possible. we ask that you leave it to our resourceful team to handle because in the off chance you are wrong, it is difficult to undo the hurt feelings that it could generate. we do have a wonderful group here and we will definitely do all we can to protect that

I'm not ashamed to say that I'm blinkie snatcher and I know that there are certain sites that disable the ' right click save as' so you are not allowed to take any of their graphics. What I'm wondering is if there is a way that maybe the Administrators would be able to use the same technique so baby pics that are put on the forum (siggys) would not be able to be taken. I just think it would be a nice safety feature so you wouldn't have to worry about what pics you put on and who will take them. It was just an idea. I'm not sure of the finances that that would involve though or how you do it.

Maybe we could watermark our pics so they are less able to be snatched and used as someone elses child on another site.

This is the reason I don't generally post pictures of my daughter on message boards. Too many scary people out there.

Definately good information. Thanks for the tip. i am going to check my sons babywebsite just to make sure none of our photos include our license plates or stuff like that. i would have never even thought of that before and I have his full name as the header on his site so I think I will remove our last name from it. Thanks for the info.

I just left a parenting message board where I have been posting VERY DISCREETLY for several months with no problems at all and NEVER EVER giving out ANY identifiable information aside from type of work, NOT real name, not where I live aside from state. Then over the past week or so seemed to begin attracting a few strange people, one nasty one in particular, and all within a day or so of each other. This one in particular cut/pasted EVERYTHING I have ever typed and sent it all to my e-mail, went to one of my favorite areas of this board (NOT HIS ONE ) but the former board I was active in but no longer and began name calling and creating problems with some of the other posters (TROLL). Not just to me but to two other posters they had sent e-mails of the cut/pasted writing they EVER shared. Very creepy so I wrote to the moderator as we suspected it was someone with way to much time on their hands and were "Trolling". It has been over a week with no word from this nasty one but still, I am going to steer clear of that board as that is a sign of some issues there that I do not need to be bothered with. I do not have time for that at all.

Anyway, I have been making visits here and there throughout this amazing board, and wish I had more time as there looks to be LOTS and LOTS of wonderful information here! But I will be making visits and responding to anyone when I do get a moment so any messages/questions I WILL read and respond, but may be a day or so okay?. My hubby is a computer programmer working full time, AND he has been writing his own program which we hope to be marketing soon and therefore into our own business. I work as well in the investigative field and getting ready to go back to college. Son 18, I and hubby in our early 40's...and that's enough I think for now folks! Thanks for reading if you do and I shall return soon! Have a great evening.

This post has been edited by Old Mom Hubbard on Jan 29 2007, 05:52 PM

OH YEAH...THANKS for sharing those safety tips!


See you all around soon I am sure Bye for now.

I'd like to add something that seems harmless, but could have disastrous results.

Ever gotten an email from friends/family that was a questionnaire? They seem totally harmless... Ice cream or pie? Red or Pink? What book are you reading? etc, etc. But inserted into the questions are ones like, Do you have a credit card? What's your hometown? What's your middle name? Bank or credit union? They seem innocent enough, BUT now someone knows your middle name, your hometown, that you have a credit card and what type of bank you deal with. Identity theft in the making.

One to help cut out spam: ever been to a site that has an "Email this page to a friend" and you can type in email addys? Guaranteed that site has now just sold every email addy typed into it and now those people are getting tons of spam. Did you really want to share that site? Copy and paste the URL [website address, http://....] and email THAT to your friend/s.

Another one to help cut out spam: Ever sign guestbooks? Type your email addy into a website? Welcome to Spam, hon. If you need to type your email addy in a site or guestbook, type it like this: johnsmithREMOVETHISPART@domain.com. There are programs called Email Bots and all they do is scour the entire internet for email addys. This is where a lot of spam comes from. Putting the "REMOVETHISPART" in your addy just causes whomever's behind the bots to send spam to THAT addy, NOT yours! REAL people are smart enough to actually remove that part, the bots are not.

A little handy trick to block spam: I only deal with Hotmail, so I don't know about AOL or Yahell filters. In Hotmail, there's a section where you can block email addy's from even getting INTO your Inbox. There's a 200 limit to it. BUT, say you're getting spam from @infosite.com, but the addys are different. Add just the @infosite.com to your blocked list and it'll block EVERY email from that domain. If you blocked 123@infosite.com, 1234@infosite.com, samiam@infosite.com, you can delete those and just keep the @infosite.com part.

Hope this helps!

Great reminder post! I had put my kid's first names on my family blog, and a close friend suggested I remove them or change them. She reminded me of the sickos that may pose as friends of mine and contact my children. True to also leave off any personal info like addresses, phone numbers.

I am totally agree with kimberley. We must avoid to Publish our Real Information on internet. It may be cause of anything worse

Thanks for the information Kim! You know, it is just sad to think that there are some people in this world that are just so sick and perverted. There should be no such thing as a missing child! My wife travels back and forth to Thailand from the U.S. every year and takes one of our two children with her everytime. I always get so worried until they arrive and I get confirmation that they both made it safe.