Friend or enemy?

I am one of Yahoo Messenger(YM) user. One of the benefits of YM that I love is I can chat with anyone that in my contact list no matter where they are. Whenever I knew someone new from a social network site such as Facebook or Myspace, I’ll add them to my YM contact list and wait for them to approve me. This is an advantage of YM that I like. It’s connect me to my new friends without cost me an arm. However, recently I read an article about scam using YM.

Brandon De Hoyos’s article Falling In Love with a Scam Artist are basically about how scammers use fake identity on YM and try to scam for money from the victims. Most of the YM users thought YM are a safe site. Little that they know, not all the new friends they have approved on the contact list are real. Alison Boyer says that 60 percent of the identity thieves are people that you don’t know. That means, around 40 percent are people that you know (2008). It can be your family members, you co-worker or even you friends.

The scammers will use fake name and put up a fake picture for the account. they will try to have the victim to believe in them and trust them. After that, they will try to ask for money and offer you thousand of sweet promises. They will try to look for potential victim at online dating side. It is because they try to make the victim believe that both of them are after the same thing; a relationship.

YM is a great tool to connect with friends and meet new people. But, we have to always be careful and take pre-conscious step. Why wait until we are one of the victim to be aware of the crime? Why give chance of others to take advantage of us? What can we do to stop the crime?

Never trust any conversation you have online. It might say your friends’ friend, but how sure are you? Never give out personal information online. No mather how good it might sound or how honest the conversation looks like, it is not! The recipients are not the only one that will know. Anyone with the skills of hacking can get the information.

It’s good to have new friends, but always becareful in what you sharing. A little awareness won’t do any harm. In fact, it do us good!

Teenagers and Instant Messenger.

I was a teenager before...and I also one of those who get excited learning about the new technology such as e-mail and instant messenger . I must admit, back in my teen years, instant messenger was my second choice of communication medium after the cell phone. Why you may ask? It’s faster connectivity, less cost, friendly user and many more benefits. One of the popular instant messenger is Yahoo Messenger (YM).

Lindy Keffer in her article Right Now: Teens and Instant Messenger, highlight about teenagers and instant messenger nowadays. In the article, Lindy mentioned that percentage of teens using the technology is 20% more than adults did. According to her, instant messenger are the communication using two free software that allow two internet users to exchanged typed messages in factually. We can say that YM are more alike texting. The difference is YM using computer and internet as the technology and texting or SMS using cell phone as the technology.

Social interaction has changed its way. Teens have more option in communicating with others. The instant messenging has been the better alternative to e-mail as it faster connectivity with others. Teenagers are tend to treat cyberspace as a social place for meeting others and interacting with people (O’Brien, 2010). Why would teenagers prefer to interacting through cyberspace, you may ask. I did a little reading on Jodi O’Brien 2010 book and find the reason.

The first one would be that teenagers are the category that full of curiosity. They are at their transaction from childhood to adulthood. They are eager to find out more about new things. Cyberspace offer them the need to feed the curiosity. They are tend to find the needs somewhere outside their home. However, due to some obstacle such as parent permission, they cannot leave home. Therefore, cyberspace would be the choice to learn about the new things.

Second, teenagers perceive the cyberspace as a safer place to find and meet new friend. They have the curiosity to meet new people and learn new things from them. However, the insecurity lead them to fear. They are insecure on how they looks like and how others will judge them. They are also feel embarrassed meeting a stranger face to face. In Lindy Keffer’s article, 43% of the teenagers use instant messenger to avoid awkward face to face conversation.

The third reason are the teenagers are looking for’ soulmate’. Having conversation online can make them easily related. We often hear that someone describe their new online friend as their best friend, even better than friends they have know quite sometimes.

The instant messenging make the teenagers easily ‘connect’ to the world. Without leaving home, they are able to feed their curiosity and learn new things and meet new people. Parents should aware of how their teenagers child use the technology. Keffer try to emphasis on how the teenagers can relate to the instant messengers nowadays.

references:
O'Brien, J. (2010). The Production of Reality: Essay and Readings on Social Interaction. United States: Pine Forge Press.