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Chat Room Safety Tips: |
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These are some safety tips to abide by when using either our chat rooms or other chat sites across the Internet. Following these tips will help you to keep safe.
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- People you chat online might not be telling you the truth about themselves. Any person can easily impersonate online to what they are not.
- It is strictly advised not to pass your real name, telephone numbers, pictures, address and other personal details on chat rooms to anyone, no matter how much you think you can trust them. He can share this information with other people and you could be getting prank calls or unknown visitors.
- If you make a personal profile, avoid sharing any personal information on the profile such as email address, mobile phone number, home or school address, as this information can be accessible by people unknown to you.
- Avoid giving personal information about your friends and relatives as well. Your passing of informations about them can create trouble for them. If they have shared something personal with you, you should not break the trust, by sharing their private information with others.
- Never arrange to meet a stranger from the Web. This could be dangerous.
- If it is really important to meet someone in person despite our advice against it, you must take following precautions:
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- Always arrange the meeting in a non-isolated public place.
- Avoid going all alone, its better to take a friend with you the first few times you meet.
- Inform a friend or a relative where you are going, who you are meeting and when they can expect you home.
- Its is not recommended to call strangers home or to go a stranger’s home till your are confident about the person and his/her intentions.
- Don’t forget to carry your fully charged mobile phone with you. Make sure that you have enough call credit so that you can call in emergency and others can reach you.
- It is highly advisable to ask a friend or a relative to call you at a predetermined time to verify that nothing is going wrong. You can also use this call as an excuse to leave the meeting if something seems to be fishy.
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| Precautions
while chatting: |
- You can always avoid a user by right clicking on his/her nick and choose to 'Ignore/Block'. Even then if you ever feel uncomfortable and threatened by someone in a chat room leave the situation by logging out.
- If you decide to respond to a private message do keep in mind that a private conversations can end up being more personal than you like. If you wish to end a private conversation with someone and they do not respect your request to end the conversation you can always choose to ‘Ignore’ that person by clicking on action on private chat window.
- Avoid using your real name in chat. It’s advisable to use a pseudo/nickname as your username. Also avoid using a provocative nickname or one that attract wrong attention.
- Tell your parent or guardian if someone behaves in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable. You can take help of local police if a dangerous situation arise and you are not able to share it with anyone.
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| Other online safety information: |
| Links to more websites advising on online security and safety, should you
like to know more about it: |
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