Internet predators

In which Sarah shares her experience of a lying internet user.

As we all know, I spend a whole lot of time online. I'm not even going to pretend it's because I'm a Media student, it began way before that and I'm not going to deny it. It really began with my installing MSN back in 2004. I told my parents I was 'checking my email' because I didn't think they'd be too impressed that I was talking to people online. When the internet usage in our house went up, and they caught me at it, I convinced them that it was fine, because you only add people you know.

In 2005 I got MySpace, and although I'd had Bebo and possibly other previous social networking accounts, MySpace was new and exciting and there was music and you could write to people and they could write back, and it was all wonderful. There were occasions that I accepted random requests, but we all know that MySpace was a climb for the highest number of friends, and I didn't do it that often.

In 2006 I got Skype, and I did get a few random requests that I occasionally accepted for a while until they became creepy, then I deleted them. I thought I was pretty clever, and didn't really worry too much about my online safety. Nevertheless, I didn't give any personal details out, and never continued talking to someone if they had exceeded the creep factor.

In 2007 I was coerced into getting Facebook, and although I was not the biggest 'fan' to begin with, soon I began to 'like' it (see what I did there?), and just as my peers did, abandoned MySpace more and more.

In early 2007 Carly Ryan, a South Australian girl, was murdered by a 50-year-old pretending to be a 20-year-old.

And this brings me to the point of this blog: people pretending to be someone they're not on the internet.

In the midst of all the teenage angst, and the death of my boyfriend, and the drama that's associated with being sixteen, I joined a forum for Simple Plan (a Canadian band who I recently discovered are still making whiny music). I made some good friends on there - there were six of us: me, Alice (also from Australia), Annika (Germany), Allie & Bridget (USA - they were friends in real life before the forum (and still are haha)), and Paige (Canada). We all got on splendidly, and kept in contact long after the forum died and was eventually deleted.

In 2009, however, we discovered that Paige had been lying about... well, basically everything. Not forever, just for a little while - pretty much since we'd all abandoned MySpace, where her real photos were. She seemed to be pretending to be her friend, or perhaps just someone she admired, I'm not really sure. I don't know why she did it, and although we tried to be delicate about confronting her (difficult over Facebook), once she knew we knew, she deleted us all, and that profile. I don't know what's happened to her since.

The experience shook me. A lot. I thought I was smarter than to believe someone's lies, and it was really distressing to think about all the things I'd told her - we'd all told her. Thankfully nothing as terrible as what happened to Carly and countless others happened to us, but it was still a bit of a wake-up call, that actually, you can't trust everyone, there are liars out there. I don't think that Paige was lying to be malicious, probably just because she envied her friend's life and wanted to pretend to have a different life (because let's face it, who doesn't want that occasionally?).

Despite that experience, I'm still good friends with the other girls (I've stayed with Annika twice now), and I still spend a whole lot of time online, talking to people I just do not know.

It's kind of embarrassing to write about this all, I'll be honest. Not just that I was on a Simple Plan forum (though that is definitely embarrassing), but that I was tricked by someone I trusted, after thinking myself so clever and internet-savvy for so long. I was about to say that I'd never do anything stupid like meet someone whom I didn't know, but I have done that, and I'm sure I'll do it again.

I'm writing this now because I just watched a video from Carly's mum, saying that now that it's summer holidays and children are going to be spending more time online, there need to be more warnings going on and so on. Also, it happened a couple of years ago now, so I'm more willing to talk about it. I would also like to say how thankful I am that my parents raised me the way that they did, and that nothing worse than a lying girl in a foreign country has happened to me.

I know that you're all smart, but just... be careful.