Last week I received a strange, somewhat threatening, private message on a forum I frequent, which claimed the sender had paid 250 Euro for my medical and mobile phone records and was threatening to post them. Considering I have openly written about my fairly mundane medical problems and barely use my mobile, I really couldn’t give a toss who sees this information, but I must admit that the fact that someone would create an account just to send me these weird messages was a little freaky. They added to the freak factor by sending a further message with “proof” that they had my records, such as my middle name and details of local health authority.

As any of this information could have been found on old threads or public profiles I wasn’t convinced. I was however a little disturbed that someone had gone to the effort of creating an account just to mess with me and had spent that much time researching my personal details. Of course, if I didn’t share as much information, or spend as much time on the internet, this situation could not have come about. However, I would hate to let some anonymous oddball prevent me from sharing harmless information, or make me worry about being open on public sites or forums.

They were making the bizarre request that I resign as moderator of the forum or they would “tell the world what a wreck you are”. A odd request as I am far too busy (okay lazy) to do any moderation and I am fairly sure the world doesn’t care how wrecked I am. I decided to call their bluff, reported them, and started a thread explaining the situation (and that I didn’t give a crap if they wanted to share my details). I have not heard anything further since and arranged for account deletion.

At the moment I have no idea who it might have been, and depending on their level of sneakiness, I suspect we will never know. It might just be some random forum troll, who decided to pick on me after hearing that I was unwell, hoping it was something I wanted to hide. It might be someone I know well and have fallen out with, posting a nonsense threat in order to conceal their identity. It might be someone who mistakenly thinks I banned them, or deleted their posts. Most likely it’s a stupid joke from a forum user with too much time on their hands, who either hasn’t thought, or doesn’t care, about the consequences.

Whatever or whoever it is, I’m not going to waste much time worrying about it or change the way I interact with people on the web. While I couldn’t help finding the messages a little disturbing, the threats don’t worry me at all, as I have no deep dark secrets or hidden medical problems to reveal, and the only embarrassing truth to be found in my mobile phone records is the fact that I spend way too much of my credit entering the gadget show competition.

While I won’t claim to have enjoyed receiving such confusing threats, and wondering who sent them and why, I won’t let it reduce my trust in internet based friendships or interaction, as the benefits outweigh this silliness by a mile. The way all my friends reacted to this situation, and the way they have been supportive many other times, is all the proof I need that the good outweighs the bad.

I have been an avid internet user pretty much since it was available, and frequently enjoy forums, newsgroups. social networking sites like twitter or facebook, blogs and chatrooms. Over the years I have made a number of friends online, some of whom I have met and some I haven’t. Strangely this doesn’t matter as much as you might imagine and I consider some people that I have yet to meet (due to location), as close friends.

I have however, met up many internet friends over the years, some locally and many on trips to the US. When I have told family and friends that I am going to meet, or even stay with, people I have never actually met before, they are often confused or concerned. Sooner or later somebody will ask “but what if you hate them?” or even “what if they turn out to be murderers”. Of course I can’t guarantee that they won’t be (although it’s highly unlikely), just like I can’t guarantee the same thing for people I meet in normal life.

Of course these days social networking sites like facebook and twitter have made online interaction a more normal thing, but there is still some residue of suspicion and mistrust that lingers in people’s minds, sometimes just leading to silly assumptions like ‘there are no real women online’, but sometimes causing suspicion where there need not be any. Of course you have to use common sense online, just as you would in real life. You probably wouldn’t randomly invite complete strangers into your home, or lend money to someone you had no reason to trust, and it isn’t hard to use the same sort of logic and sensible reserve on the internet.

People may try to present on a false persona in the virtual world, but if you communicate with someone for long enough you will generally get a fairly accurate impression of who they are. The truth is, if you make friends with people on the internet you may encounter a few disturbed people or even just arseholes. Just as you might in the non-virtual world. Over the years I have been involved in a few difficult situations and have had to make the decision to avoid some people. Sometimes difficult people or relationships are easier to spot and avoid than others. There will always be unpleasant trolls on forums, who go out of their way to be hurtful to people. They can be tiresome but are ultimately unimportant, as they are easy enough to spot and ignore. Far less frequently I have considered someone to be a friend, only to discover that they have been untruthful, manipulative or just have the kind of needy or disturbed personality that leads to a bad friendship.

While it may be slightly easier to deceive online I no more blame the internet for this than I would blame the telephone when someone called me up with bad news. For whatever reason, most likely their own issues, some people will abuse friendships and hurt others. As sad and difficult to deal with as this might be, it’s not a good enough reason to avoid all the positive results of giving people your trust. If you are sensible and take your time you can make firm friendships, but even the best of us can make bad choices or misjudge people. However once you have realised that your trust in a person is misplaced it should be possible to maintain a polite distance or even block them totally in the virtual world.

So, while I has clearly brought the topic to mind, I won’t allow some silly anonymous threats, or any other unpleasant encounter to bother me too much. I will just try to avoid untrustworthy, malicious or overly dependant people as much as possible, but otherwise enjoy my current and future internet based friendships.