I'm a bit confused about this process. May I ask a few questions?

1. Is it appropriate for someone to ask for your email address or a chat ID (e.g., Yahoo! chat) to talk with you? Or are these just spambots or whatever they're called?

2. Are there honestly a lot of deployed troops who post here looking for friends/potential relationships? I would love to correspond with soldiers and who knows, maybe meet one when he gets home, but some of these photos and messages just seem so ... I dunno, generic.

3. If you do chat with someone and they keep saying certain phrases (e.g., "that's good to know") over and over, could that be a spambot or is it just a shy person who doesn't know what else to say?

4. How big an idiot am I for asking these questions?

I'm just wondering.

Cheerio!

Often, they will try to get you off-site. Beware.


Use your best judgment, it can go either way.


Again, use your best judgment.


How will you know if you do not ask? :-)

Well, the good news is that you are not an idiot for asking.

The bad news is that you do need to beware and put your good judgment to use online.

1. I wouldn't give my personal information out easily. If you get to know someone well enough that you are comfortable doing so then it's not unheard of to do so. Personally, I'd like to have a few phone conversations with someone before meeting them, but wouldn't be comfortable giving out much other personal contact information until I know them in flesh and bone and still have a good feeling about their, hopefully non-stalker, personality.

2. Personally, I've not run into soldiers looking for friends here, but that sounds like a nice idea. I don't really talk to a lot of people who I don't know from the forums anyway though.

3. I don't know if repeating phrases is a sign of spambots or not. I do know a few people in the flesh for whom English is a second language who adopt certain well learned phrases that they use over and over...often inappropriately. But those are the phrases they are comfortable with and saying them makes them confident that they are showing their best understanding of the language.

Or they could just be really boring and not have anything of value to say. It happens.


BTW...welcome to Mingle. There is fun to be had in the forums. I'll look forward to seeing you around.

Thank you for your input! I would never give my phone number out anyway because I hate talking on the phone (I'm very shy about that). I wondered why anyone would need my email address when they can reach me here if they really want to.

Wayyy back in the early days of the Net being popular, I had a stalker. He found me in a chat room and the next thing I knew he was sending me messages with my home address and calling me (he'd found out my phone number). I've learned a bit about security since then but I wasn't sure how things had changed while I was out of circulation (HA! "in hibernation" would have been more like it but let's not go THERE...)

Anyway, thanks again. I'll probably end up coming back with more questions. I'm still a bit hesitant to leave it entirely to my own judgment. I wouldn't ask anyone to make decisions for me but sometimes I just want to know whether my gut feeling is overly cautious.

Miles of smiles to you!