Internet Advice, circa 1997
- Never tell anyone your full name. If you do, an internet stalker will find out where you live and hunt you down.
- Likewise, ensure you adopt a “screen name” for your email address @aol.com. It’s not as if you’ll give it out to anyone in real life, after all.
- Never put your age if under 25, unless you want to attract paedophile-stalkers.
- Never post a photo of yourself - your head *will* get badly pasted onto a naked body.
- Never reveal your place of work or study. (See #1 [and potentially #3] for reason… by doing so, you are practically spraypainting your personal details to a city centre wall.)
- Never, ever, ever enter your credit card details online. You *will* be robbed blind.
- Make sure you read some netiquette guidelines so you don’t offend anyone (see here for an excellent 1996 example)
- Always carry a book, so you can do something useful while the page loads.
- If you decide to venture into the field of internet-webpage design, be sure to include lots of flashing graphics, animated gifs, scrolling text, and a “Welcome to” sign.
- And, above all, don’t go online for more than a few minutes - kilobytes cost money, you know, and you’re hogging the phoneline!
Anything I’ve missed?
