Msn Email Address Swopping
There was an incident today, where one of the users of World of Chat was banned for constantly exchanging email addresses on this site after we had warned them not to do this, we would like to point out that we do not permit this at all over World of Chat or Wocchat.com; this includes messages private messages and messages in Wocchat email.
First of all let me say, if you do not agree with the above statement, then the answer is to not use our chat rooms, as World of Chat is a community site and not an email exchange program.
There are many messaging programs on the net, I am concentrating on Msn messenger in this article, but whatever you can do below applies to all messaging programs.
The problem with Msn Messenger and chat rooms is a culture thing, as people have done this for many years in other chat rooms that don’t have any rules, if you go into these chat rooms, they don’t have any conversation, it’s just people constantly putting their email on the main page, trying to get people to add them to their msn messenger.
We could have done this also, we could have let people just spam the rooms but we wanted people to be able to chat, without people pressuring people into giving others details, email addresses and phone numbers.
Why do we not allow this?
There are lots of very good reasons why we don’t allow this, the main reason is for security, yours mainly it also causes many problems between users like fights and arguments, and here is a list of common problems associated with email address swopping.
Identity Theft – If you give your email to people you don’t know, you can well risk the chance that someone might use any information you might divulge over the internet to steal your identity, this is a growing problem over every industry and the internet is rife with it, when you add someone to your msn sometimes you have your name in your email address, or you might have your name appear on the text when you type, any clues you give could be used against you.
Do you know who you are talking to – The chances are that you don’t really know who you are talking to when you add someone to your msn, after all you can’t see them, and someone could be using the persons email address you’re speaking to.
Do you really know how old someone is when you add them? - the answer to these questions is not always, I remember a long time ago when World of Chat first opened, we were not so strict about this, a member came into the chat room demanding to speak to Admin, as he had added a 13 year old girl to his msn and somehow blaming us for his mistake, he claimed at the time she had said she was 18, this is clearly a mistake on his behalf for exchanging his email address with someone he didn’t know and clearly could cause problems.
Picture Stealing – When you add someone to your Msn Messenger, you usually get a little window in which to put your picture, most people put their picture in this window to avoid sending their picture to someone else, as they don’t want strangers owning their pictures, sounds like a good idea right? WRONG, there are msn messenger tools that allow you to steal someone’s picture out of that little window, so it’s not safe and someone could easily get your picture via msn messenger.
Conversation stealing – There are also tools, that allow you to steal someone’s previous conversations over Msn Messenger, if you save your conversations you are at risk of this, if you have a webcam people can also view your webcam sessions, without you inviting them.
IP address privacy – Tools can be used to acquire your ip address over msn messenger, which in the wrong hands can cause you problems.
I could rant on about this for a long time and don’t get me wrong Msn Messenger is an amazing program, used in the right way, but giving your email to random strangers is not what it was designed for.
If you do exchange these details over World of Chat or Wocchat, you will be banned from both sites, and there will be no 2nd chances.
Admin
July 7th, 2008 |