Grandparents Raising Children Support Group

Every once in a while I get a friend request from someone (male or female) who, it's quite obvious, wants some sort of romantic relationship. Creeps me out -- of course I ignore them!

There is nothing romantic about this. He says he is 19 years old and reaching out to people in other countries. Sounded innocent enough and I didn't want to be mean. I asked him to tell me about his country and he answered back that if I wanted to know more about him, I s/email to a different address,not under his name. I also have been getting strange people trying to sign on to my yahoo messenger since this person contacted me. Of course I have blocked them. I am afraid these people are trying to get into ds for purposes of identity theft. Of course I do not intend to respond any more but wanted to caution others.

I have gotten quite a few friend requests who wants nothing but a sexual encounter as they message me pics of male genitals. I have never added any of these to my friends list and just simply ignore them. So it is not only you two.

I have often wanted why a 14 year old boy would want to be my friends with a old lady like we have a lot in common. I just ignore them and know that it just is creapy.

There was nothing sexual in any way in the emails. He claimed to be a young man of 19 who lives in Africa who saw an opportunity to meet people from other parts of the world online. I had an experience two years ago that has made me very cautious and that is why I wanted to pass it on. I was selling a valuable painting through an online art gallery that used precautions to avoid any problems. When we returned home from vacation I had an email from a young womany who said she lived in Atlanta, was pregnant and moving to London where she thought the painting would go very well. She offered to pay me full price if I accepted her offer right away as she wanted it shipped asap. I was so happy to have a buyer, I cautiously moved forward giving her my address and cell phone number. Shipping art is expensive and I got estimates of $600/700 just to ship it. When I emailed her back with that info, she did not respond. After a few days, I realized I had been dupped. I called my bank and explained (thought I had not given her any account numbers). While they felt confident my identity had not been breached, they suggested I close our accounts and open new ones, which I did. About a week after doing so, I received another email from another young woman, same story, different name so I knew there was a problem. I contacted Yahoo who investigated and found that it was a group of young people working in Korea, trying to steal identities while at their work computers. It is difficult when you are trying to interact with people on the web and you don't know who you can trust. I make it a point not to give out personal information but I have given my personal email on daily strength, trusting the site was secure. I now question that. I believe there may be a breach in the chat room they are posting for our use. I am going to report this to ds and definitely will be more careful in the future. The sex ones are blatantly false and you know to block them but the ones seeking identify theft are more clever and attempt to get you to believe they are nice people you should trust. Never again!

I also received a message from a young man from Africa...seemed very odd and it gave me the chills...so I ignored it....it creeped me out actually...*ugh*

Report it to ds. At the bottom of the page, you will see the words: report abuse. I did and they blocked the guy trying to get to me. You really have to be careful on the internet today. I believe the problem is with the ds iM (Meebo) and I am staying off it.

This is part of the Meebo privacy policy. I do not believe it is safe.

Meebo may receive information about you from the Third Party IM Services that you access through Meebo. This information could include your username, password, friends list, status, profile information and demographic information (described below). Meebo may use this information in accordance with this Privacy Policy when it provides services to you.

I have received the same email. I responded by asking him exactly how much money he wanted.... why beat around the bush. He had some response, whatever, and I asked him why a 14-year-old would beon this web site. All he has to do is send it to 1000 people, and get ONE to respond.

Be careful about responding. I just found out that last week a company identified us by my IP address and withdrew money from our checking account stating my husband's signature authorization was on file with them. About two years ago I electronically signed something online and that is what they are using to charge for things like ID protection and several others scams. I have had to change all of our accounts to protect us. I am stopping payments, etc on line for now until I can clean up our contacts, etc.