Safety In Meeting Online Friends In Real Life?

[funrun]

Because of the recent incident about Ultradoug—myself, ninthdoc, truth, and others—hope no one has been scared away from meeting other 'scapers in the future. Just as we Americans have responded to terrorist attacks not by becoming recluses in our homes, but by being smarter about the world around us, so I hope we Heroscapers also become smarter about talking to others online and meeting them in person.

After 9 months of secrets, I would now like to tell all that the incident that ninthdoc refered to for the first time publicly today in his safety post here

Originally Posted by ninthdoc

The first time was on heroscapehq.com. Using only methods that were available to anyone who knew where to look online, I discovered that one of our members, who had been attending events at which children were present, was to attend a court session as a defendant in a case in which he had been accused of sexual assault of a child.

actually was brought to ninthdoc's attention because I suspected something was wrong with someone here and asked ninthdoc for help (as I recommend anyone should do.) My very first intuition of this person was that they were a sexual creep, but everyone here gets to know each other and pretty soon it feels like a big family, then months later I found out I was initially more right than I cared to know.

I will also add that Ultradoug had given me a few orange warning flags over my months of knowing him, and for this reason amongst many others, I purposely avoided giving UD my name, a photo of my face, my IM name, or any email address of mine (even the junk one). Now I find out that these little hints were once again more correct than I cared to know. (Given this alarming track record I seem to have going, I will add that no one else here has made me feel the way I did about these two.)

Now comes the interesting part I want all to note—this first incident happened 9 months ago, before I had ever met any Heroscapers in person or given any of them any personal info about me. One would think that as a young female online, one who was initially so cautious of what she thought was a stereotypical creepy internet gamer group that she didn't even have an avatar for her first month as a member (), would slink into a hole and not want to talk to anyone here again, much less meet anyone in person.

No, instead I felt empowered by what had happened. I was glad to know I should trust my instincts, but I also took more precautions in the future, especially considering every scaper I have met I was always going by myself to meet the group. Since this first incident snafu, I have met more scapers in real life than perhaps anyone here, and most certainly I have met more across the US than anyone else. By this I mean not just people from across the country, but I mean I literally met them in their own states. Every scaper I have met (I got lucky and barely missed meeting UD) has made sure that I had fun and felt safe in doing so. I would like to commend these groups for that by mentioning them here: Denver, Dallas, and Ohio.

My point to all of this is that I have had tons of fun in all my travels with all of the 'scapers I have met. I just encourage everyone to be more careful about their privacy. Just because you are male does not mean you are safe, and I am not just talking about sexual predators, but you never know who is wanting to steal something from you or even take your identity, whether it is your online persona or your wallet as you sit at the gaming table. I look forward to meeting many more of you in the future.

Sincerely,
funrun

(hehe, did you think after all of that I would actually give out my real name?)