A Cyber Family? What, are you crazy?
Spending time in chat rooms and basically communicating through the internet, I guess you meet up with people on a regular basis and things develop from there. You come to care deeply for certain people you may call your 'internet family', you may even come across the girl / guy you have intimate feelings for.
Yes but isn't the internet full of weirdoes and psychos?
I know, there are many many weirdoes, psychos, paedophiles and generally unless people out there on the internet. But these people are merely people of the 'Real World'.
The internet is a dangerous place, you don't know who you're talking to. They could be a serial murderer for all you know!
As for the internet being a 'dangerous' place with weirdoes lurking around everywhere, yes there are a lot of these people on the internet. But, this is not a reason why the internet should be branded as an unsafe environment. OK, so maybe the person you are talking toy in a chat room is a serial murderer, what is s/he going to hunt you down and kill you? I don't think so some how.
Can people find out your home address and telephone number?
Why of course they can! I mean think about it, all of your bank details, national insurance, telephone directory, personal details and so on are all stored on computers. People can also find out your details by tracing your internet connection and trace it back to your ISP (internet service provider - the people who let you come online have all your details stored on their servers) and find out your exact location, address, telephone number and so on. You also have hackers who access your PC via programs related to Netbus where they can see what you're doing (on your PC) and control your PC - your mouse, delete files, format your HD and so on.
So basically, what I'm trying to say is that the internet is not a life-threatening place where murderers are looking for their next victim, where the sexually frustrated release their frustration, where the stressed unleash their stress. The cyberspace is an entirely separate entity in itself. It is based more on emotional and psychological involvement than physical interaction (physical as in body language, speech, touch).
