Don't trust people from online, please!
I met this girl online a couple of years back. I was still in Bali then while she lived in West Jakarta.
I never met her (even till this day), but soon we became quite close and we shared a lot of stuff thru text messages.
Then one day, she asked me to open her Friendster account.
(The conversation below is in SMSes, but I've decided to rewrite it as a narrative as to make it more reader-friendly)
"Toshi, is there any internet access near you right now?"
"Hmm yeah, I'm home. Why?"
"I need you to check my Friendster message please... There is something I need to know"
"But how can I check the inside of your Friendster?"
To my surprise, she told me her Friendster password straightaway without any hesitance.
Instead of being happy to be entrusted such a confidential information, I scolded her, "Why on earth do you give your password for?! How do you know that I can be trusted??"
"Hahaha... doesn't matter T, I know you're a good guy! I trust you!"
I still had to tell her the truth.
"But you haven't met me in person... Oh please, for God sakes, don't you ever trust anyone else with your online passwords anymore, okay?"
"Well, okay"
She was just lucky that she had trusted the right person. I logged in to her Friendster account, did her the favour she asked for, and logged out.
But the thing is, things could just go wrong if I was a bad guy.
The same thing goes with all of you out there.
Do not -under any circumstances- entrust anyone from online with confidential informations, such as passwords or bank accounts... There are a lot of bad guys out here.
If you think that you have known the person for quite long enough (but never met him/her), think again. How do you know if the person's identity is not a bogus?
For you my blog readers, how can you tell if I really live in Jakarta and not Semarang?
How do you know if I really am an 18-year-old guy and not some wimp 50-year-old Grandpa looking for some naive preys to lure out?
The moral of the story today is, be careful with what you see online, what you could see in the pictures or stories may be fabricated in the first place. Scam artists are getting better everyday with their tricks, some even take their lengths as to steal someone else's identity (believe it or not, such cases exist aplenty in North America).
I can assure you, none of my personal stories in this blog have been fabricated. But again, I'm someone from online (and I know that 90% of you people have not met me in person).
If there is any personal recounts of mine that you think might have been too good to be true, it is totally up to you to take it as truth or crap.
Because even Jakartass (one of the most popular bloggers in Indonesia) called me a "putative student", gee-hee.
What a lucky girl? :)
Yes I agree, i think she was sloppy, took unnecessary risk like that. But maybe, she thinks that let someone knows her friendster account's password is not a big deal. If s/he ruins it, she still can create another new friendster account. Or maybe she wants to know what kind of person are you, are you really putative or not...if she meant so, congratulation, you passed her test. :)
hmm as a matter of fact, i've known her to be a naive person. So your first possibility is more likely, imho..
but she wasn't the last one to give me personal passwords though. in the end, i just feel glad when ppl give me such "integrity tests", which i could pass with ease :)