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Remember that people online are not always who they claim to be. This means that the fourteen year old girl that you meet in a chat room the other day could actually be a forty year old man. Besides, not everything that you read online is true. In fact, any deal or offer that is "too good to be true" probably is. In short, be careful of who you give your full name, home address, telephone number, or anything else that a person can use to identify and/or find or contact you with. You never know when somebody is going to use this information to do anything from sending you annoying e-mail to actually locating you and doing you harm.
When you are at a point where you have to give out information that you shouldn't or don't want to give out, like in a survey form for a new e-mail address, consider using "N/A" (which stands for non-applicable) to fill in blanks. Also, think about using an abbreviation of your name, a nickname, or a "pen-name" instead of your real name.
Any e-mail that makes you feel uncomfortable by suggesting such things as asking you for personal information about yourself, attempting to arrange private meetings, or using obscene or threatening language or advances, etc. should be considered suspicious and be reported immediately. If you receive an e-mail of this nature, report it to your teacher or a parent. Messages of this type must be handled properly by being forwarded to the internet service provider. In certain cases, like the transmission of child pornography, the authorities should be contacted, as in this case the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Probably a more common occurrence are people as system administrators asking for your password. Never will a system administrator ask for your password. If someone claiming to be a system administrator asks you for your password, report them immediately. Your password is something that should be safeguarded as giving it out, or letting others use it can result in your system privileges being revoked.
The content of you e-mail mailbox is your own responsibility. This means that you get into big trouble if the system administrator checks your mailbox and finds something in violation of the computer usage guidelines. This also means that anything private should not be kept on the server. It is always possible to save the message onto a diskette or print it out, and delete it off of the server. Pretty much, don't leave anything in your mailbox that your would not want both your grandmother and classmates to see. Besides, it can get you into trouble. If you receive something that is of a nature to get you into trouble, report it and/or delete it from your mailbox.
A large concern of today is the number of viruses that are spread through e-mail. Usually this occurs when a user opens an attachment that contains a virus. These attachments can included an innocent document that a classmate sent you as part of a class project to a movie clip or picture. Always use caution when opening attachments. If it looks suspicious ask the sender about it (the attachment might have been sent to you by the virus!) or just delete it. Hours spent in front of your computer trying to repair it are not worth the risks of opening unknown attachments. Of course, this doesn't mean never open or use attachments, but be careful with them and use virus scanning software and keep it up to date.
Created on
March 7th, 2001.
Please direct questions and comments to: Webmaster.
