# Sticky  Being safe on the internet



## farmpony84

I just wanted to post a short message to kind of give our younger members an idea of how easy it can be for a bad guy to find them.

Take this fictitious post for example:

Hi, I'm new here. I live in a small town in Alabama. I go to middle school and I ride horses at a stables that is walking distance from my school. I ride a pony but that's ok because I'm kind of small anyway. My pony is a palomino and I love how his mane is the same color as my hair!

I also play soccer for my school team. It's really cool, our uniforms are blue and green. I hate the color. The other day I made my first goal. It was so cool having everyone screaming Go 1-8! I loved it! Go Falcons!

Now - I threw a lot of info in that first post. Usually that information would be spread out between a lot of posts but lets break it down shall we?

Small town in Alabama... we have the state. (I made up the school colors and the mascot so I'll make up the town too).

Middle school - colors are green and blue - mascot is Falcons... Dreamtime Middle school in Dreamsville Alabama.

Little blonde girl that plays soccer - number 18. Quick internet search pulls up facebook pages where a mom posted the Falcon middle school soccer team and listed the names of the girls... Barbie Cool is number 18.

Another google search finds Dreamtown stables 3 blocks from the school.

Bam. Bad guy found the girl...

I just want to make sure our younger members are safe and consider what they type.... That is all... Anyone else that has helpful info please feel free to post.


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## marymane

Also important to note: pictures. With technology being what it is it's possible for people to find where you're from based on landmarks and other identifying information found in pictures. (I'm not sure quite exactly how it's done because I'm not savvy like that but I do know it can be). If you do post pictures it's a good idea to try and make sure they're as vague as possible as to unique landmarks or that there isn't anything in the picture that would tell the location (for example, a sign in the background of your barn's name and/or address, a local restaurant sign that isn't a chain and only has one location, a trophy with your full name on it...and never give your full name out either if you have a more common name it's fine to just use the first name or go with a nickname or just your username or by initials...scary the things people can do with just a name, etc.)

It's also a good idea to do things like tell people you were at an event only _after_ you have already been to an event. Not that you're going to it or what plans you have because then they'll know where you are for sure at a specific time and place. It seems so simple and like something that may not happen but it's always better to be safe than sorry. You'll never know when your precautions have deterred something bad from happening because the precautions _worked_. Never let yourself be tricked into the false security of thinking because the safety and caution you take hasn't given bad actors an opportunity that there isn't a chance it'll never happen and so the precautions are no longer needed.

Stay safe. For some reason a lot of people these days seem to think because the internet isn't "real life" (in many ways it isn't, but you're still talking to _real people_ and that counts for something) that they don't have to be cautious about stuff like this.


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## Acadianartist

I totally understand the concerns, but I wonder... is there really any way to avoid it these days? Schools also post pictures of team sports. Heck, my son's football team was regularly in my province's newspapers. My daughter was in the papers for winning a gold medal at the provincial science fair. Her riding barn posts pictures on Facebook of riders and horses pretty regularly. With social media today, very few people do not have an online presence. I'm not saying people (especially kids) shouldn't be careful, but I think that it's pretty hard to avoid altogether. Perhaps educating kids is the better path to being Internet safe - much like we didn't keep our kids off the streets to keep them safe, we taught them to be smart, not to talk to strangers (same should go for online! don't be "friends" with people you don't know in real life!), not to go places they shouldn't be, etc. Honestly, as the mother of two teens, I have allowed them a lot of freedom online because even if I tried, I couldn't keep them from everything that's out there. I opted to educate instead. But that's just me.


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## marymane

Acadianartist said:


> I totally understand the concerns, but I wonder... is there really any way to avoid it these days? Schools also post pictures of team sports. Heck, my son's football team was regularly in my province's newspapers. My daughter was in the papers for winning a gold medal at the provincial science fair. Her riding barn posts pictures on Facebook of riders and horses pretty regularly. With social media today, very few people do not have an online presence. I'm not saying people (especially kids) shouldn't be careful, but I think that it's pretty hard to avoid altogether. Perhaps educating kids is the better path to being Internet safe - much like we didn't keep our kids off the streets to keep them safe, we taught them to be smart, not to talk to strangers (same should go for online! don't be "friends" with people you don't know in real life!), not to go places they shouldn't be, etc. Honestly, as the mother of two teens, I have allowed them a lot of freedom online because even if I tried, I couldn't keep them from everything that's out there. I opted to educate instead. But that's just me.


For sure, that's true. I don't think the answer is to have no online presence at all. For many of us that's already impossible whether we did it voluntarily or not. However with pages like, say, FB you do have the choice to make your profile and certain posts private. However, on forums such as this or some other sites there is no option to make yourself or your posts private. They're public to anyone at anytime whether you like it or not. Trying to be as anonymous as possible is really the only option here as far as trying to be private and not "an easy target" (it's not so much knowing that a girl is on a soccer team somewhere that's so much the danger as it is being able to privately message/talk directly to that girl and use information she's freely shared to get her to trust them...that's what's so scary). I really dislike FB for a lot of reasons but it's still possible to keep a "small circle" on there and control more or less who sees what you're posting. It isn't just that social media is a thing but that it opens up people to public view and encourages oversharing and there's a lot of people out there who take advantage of that in a myriad of ways (it isn't just that person finding you in person either, online harassment can happen too, falling into bad views due to online communities is also an issue up to and including cults, cyber bullying, etc. All things that I've seen first hand ruin the relationships and mental health of the people involved if they let it get bad enough).

I don't think the answer to internet safety is to say minors shouldn't use the internet (a lot of these dangers are present for adults as well anyway) but that they should be smart about it. Everyone should.

Since this is a moderated forum with rules everyone here behaves pretty great and the community here is nice but I've been on a lot of other sites and the people there can just be _awful_ in general. Sometimes with seemingly no reason or provocation. It's the worst and sadly quite common.


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## ApuetsoT

When you get into niche forums like this, it's not unreasonable that people you know IRL will also be browsing. While you may be very careful not to reveal details about your location, name, ect, what you do post can have enough details to identify you to someone who already knows you. I one found out who someone was from a different forum because they posted the same sale ad on the forum's classified and my local Facebook buy and sell.
It might not seem like a big deal if someone you know finds your profile, and it might not be, but people tend to be a little more open about certain opinions online. We've all read the posts about people complaining about their BOs or questioning their trainer's methods, ect. If you are posting inflammatory or critical things and someone sees it, that's going to have IRL consequences.


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## QtrBel

No one is saying don't post but watch what you share. We have a much greater percent of visitors than users. Who is to say how many of those are trolling. Who's to say they haven't found a target, joined and are friending them as PM ing. We have no control over some things. You come and share your age, location, interests and are found attractive - anyone can search your post history to tease out information.

There is one user here that posted one tiny piece to their bigger picture and out of all the millions of people in the world another person was able to locate them.

Web crawling uses information to piece all the little things together. Their are those that make that their life.


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## ksbowman

Just an FYI photos have a GPS co-ordinate hidden and can give people an accurate location on you. It can be turned off in your phone or camera. I learned about this 2-3 years ago on a hunting site and turned mine off so my private hunting areas are kept private as well as many members of that forum. It is very important to turn that function off so people can't locate where your children and grandchildren are located.


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## 4horses

I believe Facebook has access to any pictures you post and with facial recognition it is easy for a company or the government to track your movements... Or sell this information to law enforcement. 

This could be bad news if you are a journalist with enemies in Russia. Not sure how much the average person needs to worry. 

Good point about the GPS data in photos. Anything you post is no longer private. 

Cell phones store your gps data and can track your location. This is great if you lose your phone in the woods, or lose your horse with your phone... Not so great for privacy. Pictures you take on your phone can be automatically backed up in the cloud... Again great to not worry about losing your pictures. Not good if you think about who could access that information.


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## farmpony84

It's mostly just using your self awareness. It's really no different then parking under a street lamp and having your car keys already in your hand when you walk to your car at night. Making sure you are paying attention to your surroundings rather than looking at your phone. It's a matter of doing your best to be safe...


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