Chat and Instant Messanger

Chat rooms can open up a whole new world to people connected to the Internet. Chat rooms are places on the Internet where you can talk to people “LIVE” in real time. You type in what you want to say and almost straight away it comes up on the screen so that everyone who is using that chat room can see what you have written and write back.    

Because people in chat rooms are anonymous, they might not be who they say they are.  Here are a few tips to make sure when you use chat rooms you can stay safe:

• Ensure the chat room you use lets you save conversations – which could be used as cyber evidence
• Question the truth of what other people say – does it match what you would expect from a person in the real world?
• Uncover other users IP addresses and ISPs – this information can be used to link a chat name to a person in the real world.
•  Interrogate and check that other users have not concealed or changed their IP address or ISP.
• Protect yourself by not giving out personal information that people could use to find you in the real world.
• If you want to meet someone from a chat room, you should take a trusted adult or a friend with you and meet them in a busy, public place.  This is to help protect you in case the person you are meeting is not who they say they are.

Choosing your chat room
There are hundreds of different chat rooms you can choose from on the Internet.  When choosing a chat room, you should look out for the following:

• How easy is it to save conversations?
• Is the chat room moderated?
• Is there an “ignore” button in the chat room? An “ignore” button will stop what someone is saying from appearing in the chat room.  This is useful if someone is being nasty or offensive.

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging (IM) is a form of private online chat between two or more people. Only people you add to your list of friends can join a chat session and sessions are not moderated. When you send an instant message it goes straight to the people you send it to and appears on their computer screen almost immediately.
Managing Instant Messenger buddy lists
 
It is recommended that you check you know everyone on your buddy list.  If you don’t you should check what information they have access to.  This is because not everyone online is who they say they are and they may use this information against you.  For example, if they have access to your email address, they could sign you up to receive spam messages, which may have viruses.  Or if they know the name of your school, they could follow you there.

Blocking Messages & Ignoring People

In most IM client programs the majority of the settings can be found under Tools>Options and this is usually the case for managing who you want to receive messages from. It is sensible to check any option that is marked ‘Only accept messages from people on my allow/buddy list.’ This way you cannot receive unsolicited messages via IM.

As in the real world, you may decide that you no longer wish to receive messages from particular senders. In this case you can often move the offender’s name or email address from the accepted list to a banned or ignored list.

Public vs. Private chat:
Contacts that begin in chat rooms can move into other areas such as email, instant messaging or text messaging on a mobile phone. Or, once you are in a chat room, you can be invited to have a one-to-one conversation with someone. These private, one-to-one conversations could be very dangerous because no one else can read what is being written.

In a public chat room there could be hundreds of people all chatting in the same window, which can become confusing as you try and follow all the different conversation threads. It’s sometimes preferable to chat privately with someone when public chat rooms are so congested. However, remember that in a private chat only the people you invite will see what is written. If you don’t like what someone is writing to you in a private chat you can always ignore or report them; you don’t have to chat with anyone if you don’t want to.
 
Unsuitable contacts:
The main area of risk when using chat is exposure to unsuitable contacts. Whilst contacts online may appear trustworthy, offline they may not be all what they seem.

If you make friends with someone in a chat room and want to meet them offline, ensure you take an adult or trusted friend with you and meet in a busy, well lit place in case the person is not who they said they are.

If things get out of hand in a chat-room:

• Stop and leave the Chat room
• Block the person who is making you uncomfortable so they can no longer contact you
• If it is really serious, then you can report them to the Chat host
• If you’re posting a profile, exert caution when including any information which could help to identify you offline – again that means your personal email address, mobile phone number, home or school address and also pictures of yourself.
• To report any sort of abuse, it’s really important to save as much information as you can. The more you have saved, the easier it will be to track down the people bothering you.