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Hi Guys.
Well, I’m [color=red]not[/color] a parent but I see a lot of talk around the forum with relation to Mxit.
I thought I’d share my story with you in the hopes of educating and informing about the potential dangers that come with the service.
Please note that I am not aiming to spread a negative word about the service, but merely sharing an experience which may indicate that the service (and other similar ones) and what may sprout from it, is not as safe, under most circumstances, as you’d be made to believe, regardless of the precautions you take.
Nowadays all an individual needs to gain access to your information, is a phone number and some really, really vague details. Kind-of common knowledge not to have anyone get their hands on this information, but services like Mxit makes it kind of hard, and here I can add some insight out of personal experience.
During last year I ventured onto the well-know cellphone chatsite. Sure, a lot of friends use it and it's cheap but lets be honest, the majority of people on there use it to meet new people, sometimes more tastefully than others. It is there that I met "Person X”.
We'd meet on mxit at random from time to time but it eventually developed into a "meet you on Mxit at 20:00 tonight" thing. She was apparently from Durban and planning on relocating to Pretoria at the time for work purposes. It was her suggestion for us to meet up sometime and by that time we've been talking via mxit, sms and voice calls almost daily for about two months so I had no problems with that. Plus, I’m 29 years old and know what’s safe and what isn’t, and how much information is too much. Clearly, I was wrong.
Her supposed move to Pretoria kept being postponed time and time again. Every time she had a different reason for postponing and honestly I started feeling a bit uncomfortable with the whole idea. Our nightly talks turned bi-nightly to weekly. During that time I also met a real person I took a lot of interest in. She still requested for me to meet her on mxit regularly but after a week or so I had enough and decided to put this “friendship” to rest, which I did by letting her know I wont be making contact anymore.
Two days after “breaking contact” I received a strongly worded sms from her [b]containing my I.D Nr, full home address and vehicle registration nr.[/b] Where she got it from is still a mystery to me as she only had a phone number, Name and Province to go on, but where there's will there's a way I guess.... I went to the police immediately, as well as notified mxit's staff. The police didn't appear to care and didn’t seem to want/be able to do anything about it. Mxit’s staff kept sending me back to the police to open a 205 docket before they could take it further but the police seemed to know nothing of such a document existing. I even spoke to the station manager who just laughed and asked me what I was smoking because “how can someone obtain that type of information without you telling them”. Needless to say my Mxit account has been dead since.
Sadly the Police (it appears) and general public (including myself at a time) are mostly uninformed about the means and ways that information about an individual can be obtained.
Now, what may or may not be news are that official networks exist where anyone, if they know the right person, can obtain details about basically anybody. A friend of mine works for lawyers and confirmed that, with a name alone, they can do legit background checks on anybody. Any additional information just makes it easier to sift through the list and pinpoint the correct individual.
Another friend in the IT industry refuses to open a Facebook account due to the fact that any piece of personal information you add on the site (school, job, even who your friends are) is a potential risk if in the wrong hands. Any piece of information can be used to learn more about a person in a negative, dangerous way if the user’s so inclined.
I guess what I’m aiming towards getting across is that services such as Mxit, The Grid (which alarmingly show’s the user’s logon location on a map) and even Facebook are potentially unsafe, even when approached with the utmost of caution.
Out of my experience I would like to offer the following tips to parents of techie teens if I may:
1. Know the risks, and ensure that your child know the risks. Explain that information is power and that in today’s day and age, it’s better to reveal as little about yourself as possible, if anything. Hell, even share my story if you want to! What is perceived as a little information can be more than you imagined.
2. If your child uses the Mxit (or similar) service, in most cases the numbers of users can be hidden. These settings can be found somewhere in the application. This way, nobody can see his/her number, even when new “friends” are added. If you have a Mxit-addict running around, encourage them to hide his/her number on Mxit.
3. The term of “Stranger Danger” is long old news, but on the internet and mobile networks, “Better safe than sorry” goes hand in hand with strangers. Remember that the anonymity of an individual on the internet or mobile network opens a door to say and show to your child whatever they want to, without consequence, or you even knowing. Will you feel comfortable with some old man saying “Hi sexy” to your 16 year old daughter when you are in earshot? Probably not. Now imagine what’s being said on the internet and chatrooms.
4. Mxit allows users to add a picture to their profile. Although cute (probably) it’s dangerous. This is a hard one to get around as people love putting their pictures on stuff and having others see them, especially when it comes to online interactions (think facebook…). But maybe encouraging your young ones to maybe use a favourite cartoon character or similar as their mxit profile pic is maybe not such a bad idea. Although it may come across as silly, they claim they only talk to friends, right? Well, a friend knows what you look like, right?
5. Speaking of pictures; inform your child that sending pictures of him/herself to any person that they have not at least physically met and know (like a school friend) is dangerous. I also think people tend to forget that a picture sent to one person can easily be forwarded to 100 others...
Well, that’s it. Please be careful guys.
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