Tips for Safe Online Play

[chris_sub]

Hello all,

I realise this may have been covered in various respects in a few different places, but I wanted to share some thoughts on how to stay safe when playing online.

This may be particularly relevant for people playing on platforms such as Kik and for people trading photographs.

I recently saw some people talking about blackmailing people over kik that made me sick to my stomach - and there are a few rules that I follow that I thought may not have crossed everyone's mind.

Firstly - I feel like here it should be as important a message as "always use contraception" - there are online predators out there, and it would be wise to always view new contacts through that lense!

Pictures
If your new friend does not want to share pictures, that is entirely fair enough, but that should mean that you also do not share pics.

I think if you are mutually going to share pictures with someone, the safest way of doing this to verify that someone is who they claim to be, would be to exchange very specific requests - for example, touching a finger to the forehead, or something similar.
If both parties do this - you can have at least some confidence you are not talking to an anonymous fiend!

That said, I have noticed recently that "live" pictures on kik can be faked. All the "camera" heading below a picture indicates is that it was taken on a phone camera - it is entirely possible for someone to use their phone to take a picture of a photograph on a screen from google.

Paranoia should be king! Most people will probably have played with real people, and you know the kind of picture that a real person would send. If it looks to good to be true, it probably is! If the picture looks like other people may have been cropped out - it's probably bad!

Additionally, if someone seems to be trying to follow your request - but the picture isn't quite right - this should be more concerning than someone just claiming to be something and not sending a picture at all! Because this person is clearly trying to make you believe them!

A good indicator would be if you - for example - asked someone to touch their forehead, and you receive a picture of someone leaning on their hand - this could easily be taken from anyone's facebook - it is almost what you asked for, while being easy to fake - and the fact that someone is trying to fake it means they are probably up to no good!

Additionally - when taking pictures, it may be worth bringing back that paranoia once again! Try and frame yourself so that there are no distinguishing background features - never show your face. Imagine - if this person were to have your friends as contacts, even if you don't show your face, would they recognise your kitchen, your floor tiles, is there some of your mail with an address in the background - a street sign. If not, even if they message your friends, it would be hard to say that it is definitely you!

Another good idea is reverse image searching. Not everyone uses a real profile picture - but if you are receiving pictures claiming to be a person - try a google reverse image search - if the picture is found in a million places as "hot blonde 01" or whatever, it is probably someone lying to you!

And remember - it may take ages to find the one person who seems to offer everything you are looking for - but take a breath! Don't get over excited! You may not want to offend the super hot person who is promising you the world - but you can have fun with all different types of people, right? It doesn't have to just be <insert hot person>! And you would be in a far worse position if you believe a malicious person's lies!

P.S - Hopefully that is of some use to someone - and if anyone has additional suggestions, please feel free to add them. Additionally, I have never been on the receiving end of actual blackmail, so I don't know if anyone has advice for people being targeted?