Chat Safety Guide

Chat rooms are channels on IRC servers that are used by people to communicate and chat, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. Most of you think they are used by Perverts and Nerds, however they are some good places to chat out there and hopefully during this review I will provide advice on using chat rooms, which is what its all about the areas I will look at are, • Finding Chat rooms
• Personal Information
• Meeting
• Teen/Kids
• Psychologically speaking
• Faking
• Screen Names
• Scams
• Being Watched?
• Predators
• Law, Rules, Code of Conduct?
• Moderation
• Chat Lingo
• Plug-ins
• Safe Chats
• Unsafe Chats

- Finding a chatroom

You can easily find a chat room by searching for the type of chat you want in Google e.g you could search for Tech Chat, Fun Chat and xXx chat in Google and it would come with a result. And usually you can just enter a nickname and join with systems like Java chats or CGI chats (Which are just web interfaces).
Once reading this you should possibly be able to distinguish which is a good chat room and which is a bad chat room.

-Personal Information Never give out personal information fill out questionnaires or any forms online, as this could lead to many abuses. Things aren’t always as they seem, as many of you will know one of the main uses of the internet is to commit crime, with personal information people can, pretend to be you, access bank accounts, access your private data including e-mails or even come find you and harm you in some way so its always good to be Extremely careful when giving out information in a chat room or clicking links.

-Meeting

Never meet in person with anyone you have met online without Mom and/or Dad’s without someone with you, barely anyone on the internet you talk to into a chat room will tell you the complete truth and what do you have to go on they could be anyone, so stay safe!.

-Teens/Kids

Do not enter a chat room without Mom and/or Dad’s presence or supervision. Some kids and teens you meet in chat rooms may not really be kids; they may be adults with bad intentions. Remember, people may not be who they say they are, Parents make sure you try to keep tabs on who your children and teenagers are talking to. Not that any sane parent would let there child use a chatroom.

-Be aware, psychologically?

Be suspicious of anyone who tries to turn you against your parents, teachers, or friends. They may have a hidden agenda, some chatroom users are bad and try to “groom” people and get in there mind and control what you are thinking, this is mainly aimed at kids and the vulnerable but this could happen and is something you need to be aware of.

-Faking ?

Don’t be something your not. Although the Internet might feel safe, pretending to be someone else or older than you are can actually get you in a lot of trouble. Avoid the temptation as you don’t want to portrait yourself as something you’re not, seriously this can lead to many complications and probably being banned from the chatroom if you a caught.

-Screen names?

Choose your screen name carefully. Avoid using a screen name that identifies you in any way - even your gender. Most would say what’s the point in this, I would say do you really want people knowing where you live because you might choose the name “EastLondonBabee17″ or they might know your age because of your name containing your year of birth such as “2pac1988″ I would think not.
Oh and seriously avoid names that suggest you want sex male of female you may end up with 100’s of horny guys messaging you which isn’t cool, unless that’s what you want, -shrugs-.

-Scams ?

Watch out for membership applications. Some chat rooms are just cover ups for scams. Avoid giving out private information in membership applications and never give bank details or credit card information to any random website. Obviously not a good thing.

-You are being watched.

Private chat rooms do not exist. Even if you leave the public place to chat in a private room, there is no guarantee those rooms are completely private. Always be very careful what you say whenever you are online because you might be being watched by anyone, the police, moderators, vigilantes, hackers, Russian spies or anyone!

-Predators?

Keep in mind that the people you meet online may not be who they seem. Often predators are adults who pretend to be kids, girls, boys, men women, cats, dogs they will say anything if they think it will get you to talk to them. Oh and I don’t mean predator as in Predator from the films, they haven’t yet evolved to use the internet.

-Law, Rules, Code of Conduct? Remember when using chatroom you are applicable to the law that is in place in your place of origin and wherever that chatroom may be based, so don’t be silly. Also you will usually be applicable to the rules of the site/chat room you are chatting on which may come in the form of a Code of Conduct or a Rules list its always best to check this out before using a chatroom as you don’t want to upset or offend anyone, or do you? Well that’s up to you. However one main thing to remember is they have the right to remove from the service at anytime so just be careful.

-Moderation?

It’s always best to chat in places that are constantly monitored and have few people, usually what tend to happen is larger sites don’t have moderators as there are too any abusive users and they are probably making too much money off the Google ads to care. So basically to stay safe try smaller sites maybe chat rooms which just local people use your friends or chat rooms that have regular users.

- Chat Lingo

be aware when joining a chatroom you may be faced by really bad English, Abbreviations, Foreign languages or “leet speak”, chat rooms are generally associated with people who type “lyk dis a lut” which us CIAO users would find appalling, although you may make the odd mistake without MS Words spell check.

Anyway here goes users in chat rooms use many thousands of abbreviations and you will learn a new one every time you chat probably a good place to find out would be http://www.muller-godschalk.com/acronyms.html where some sado has wrote them all(well there is probably more) down for you, which is nice of him I guess.

Sadly :–( you may also be faced by similes now don’t be afraid you will usually understand what they mean as they are suppose to look like faces until people start going to far and star using ones like >#( which basically means nothing much. These are also known as Emoticons and you may have seen them in many places including MSN Messenger, Windows Hotmail and Yahoo mail. These can either be in Graphic or text form depending on the chatroom interface usually if there is a graphical interface the emoticons have been injected in so you can see the pretty pictures.

Also I will talk about 1337 or Elite speak which is generally used by nerds and can range from users saying “pwnd” or “owned” when they do something that amuses them to people tying like this “|-|3110 \/\/0r1d” generally not talking to these people will avoid confusing and make your chat experience happier.

-Plug ins.

Some chat rooms require additional software so you can access chat rooms through your web browser such as java or an active x control. Sometimes you will receive trouble with using these however if you have trouble you should just email the owner of the site and ask them what to do. However you should also be aware there are security risks when downloading software to run things on your computer. Remember if you’re not sure about something you are downloading don’t do it.

Safe interfaces I would recommend on java, Chat Space and JPIRC and on Active X MSN Chat Control. You can also connect to chat rooms through other tools that are generally thought of as safe including mIRC and ICECHAT. Which can both be found in Google, however these may require a slight amount of technical knowledge to chat with and use.

-Safe Chats

Safe chats as said above are ones fewer people use and are moderated heavily places I suggest you can get this kind of amazing service for free are.

http://www.sparkpea.net

Simply because it is heavily moderated, easy to use, has the ability to create your own rooms, is like MSN Chat in some ways and has lots of nice regulars users and staff. Other sites like this include http://www.buzzen.net, http://www.phreik.com and http://www.oacchat.com.

Yes I’m sure there is more “safe” chats our there I just don’t know them all and yes I also know a chat room can never be completely 100% dead cert safe.

-Bad Chats

Bad chats include the nasty http://www.faceparty.com chats as they are full of perverts and the terrible http://www.chat-avenue.com which is full of purvey mc pervesons. Remember generally if chat is un-moderated then you are at greater risk

-Conclusion

You enter chat rooms at your own risk and if you’re stupid or naive things you don’t like may happen to you, remember stupid things happen to stupid people. I wish you all the look with finding a nice place to chat to pass the time.

Love,

Ben.