Worlds colliding (Swinging & vanilla websites)

[prettylady 221]

I was on the board the other day perving many of your profiles:facelick: when I came across something that made me feel a little uncomfortable.

I used a link to go from Swingers Board to one of the MySpace/Facebook profiles. When I got there I noticed a list of friends and some of them were clearly kids or atleast teenagers.

 

So as responcible adults should we not make certain that the young people who are our "friends" on the "vanilla" communities are kept safe?

 

The whole world is open for our youth these days, too open. We can't always rely on parents to be aware of what the kids are doing, it most certainly is NOT up to the administrators to "babysit" our kids. So what then?

 

I believe it should be parents at the front line protecting thier kids, but we all know that too many parents are not always there to monitor the computer activies of the kids. So, should we protect the young ones we call "friends". I have a 19 year old niece and a 16 year old nephew who are my friends and for that reason I do not link anything adult to or from my Facebook/MySpace.

 

If I was to want to have a MySpace/Facebook profile for my excapades then I would set it up so that the kids in my life can't google my name and find out what I do for entertainment.

 

This is not a critism for those who do not seperate these two lives. As an adult it is your choice how you handle your life. But I do believe that as adults we have a certain level of responcibility to those around us.

 

This could be a touchy subject so I would ask that every please keep their cool and respect what the others have to say.

 

Your slightly frightened friend,

Prettylady:kissface:

[lustylearning 705]

I'm wondering if there was some kind of link back to the sls profile. If not, I don't see what the issue is. I have adult non-vanilla friends who are friends on my myspace page, along with family and vanilla friends. I don't see this as a conflict unless you have dumb friends who post overly suggestive stuff on your myspace profile. And if you have a concern about that, you can control posts to your profile and even hide your friends list.

 

I guess what I'm really wondering is, what is it you perceive that you are protecting your younger myspace friends from?

[prettylady 221]

I guess what I'm really wondering is, what is it you perceive that you are protecting your younger myspace friends from?

 

This board is a classy place to hang out, I have little to no concern involving the people that I know here.

But not all sites can boast such a level of respect for others.

Lets for example suggest that I have a link from a sex based website to MySpace where you can then link to my nieces MySpace. Now my niece a drop dead beautiful and an up and coming model. She has photos of herself and her girlfriends all over her space.

 

I could unintentionally lead a less then acceptable person to my niece. How easy would it be for a predator to then become "friends" with my niece. You hear it more and more. Predators luring young people with the "safty" of the internet.

 

Like I said, so far everyone that I have encountered here are a class act. Doesn't mean everyone here or out there in othe adult sites are class acts.

My concern is VERY justified. As a parent I was uncomfortable by being linked from a sex based site to somewhere where I could then have access to several young girls or boys. One teenagers profile can give me access to several teenage profiles

 

Your friend,

Prettylady:kissface:

[sweet_tna 680]

I see where you're going with this, Prettylady. And as a mom, I'm very protective of my kidlets, too. That's the main reason for me getting the laptop--so my kids can use our pc and not stumble across any cookies/history left behind.

 

And I agree, things could get very tricky by linking your myspace on your sls page. I personally would not put that out there. If I actually used my site, the main reason for doing so would be for friends and family to view what's going on with my husband, kids, and me. That is not something I want "just anyone" from sls to see.

 

I would, however, give the url to sls friends that I knew and trusted well enough to meet my family/vanilla firiends.

 

=)

[fun4Ds 1,098]

 

This is an interesting thread PrettyLady, as allot of what you are saying is new to us.

 

We have our Identities separate as far as profile names go. Swinger, Family, and each of our own Work identities, are all separate. Its just been our preference.

 

If someone wants to share their info on any of the swinger related sites with a link to MySpace, 360, or live journals. We might check theirs out. From what we have seen, yes there are under age people as friends there. We just lurk and back out.

 

If we wanted to join in as their friends by that point. We would let them know we would like to use one of our vanilla profiles to join them, and share our e-mail from that point.

 

Thanks for posting this. Its something we have allot to learn from others. And thoughts and viewpoints would be well taken. We are the odd balls here.

[fun4Ds 1,098]

 

I would, however, give the url to sls friends that I knew and trusted well enough to meet my family/vanilla firiends.

 

But what If they use their swinger Identity on your family site ?

 

Thats what we feel we wouldn't want or fear. We would want our friends to use a more vanilla profile rather than a swinger profile on the 360 site we have tried. Unless we had a swinger my space profile.

 

That takes us back to being to complicated for us. We have separate accounts now. We don't want to create a new (swinger) my space. Not that we wont, we just need to sort it out, and justify something like this.

[Swingercast 91]

My concern is VERY justified.

 

Absolutely right. You can never be too cautious when it comes to kids and the internet.

 

We use myspace to promote so we "friend" a lot of people. I always look at profiles and if I see kids pics on there then I run the other way. I don't know if it is laziness or ignorance but some (very few) people do not separate their "vanilla" profiles from their "adult" profiles on myspace.

 

John

[sweet_tna 680]

 

 

 

But what If they use their swinger Identity on your family site ?

 

Thats what we feel we wouldn't want or fear. We would want our friends to use a more vanilla profile rather than a swinger profile on the 360 site we have tried. Unless we had a swinger my space profile.

 

That takes us back to being to complicated for us. We have separate accounts now. We don't want to create a new (swinger) my space. Not that we wont, we just need to sort it out, and justify something like this.

 

A valid point. IF I trusted them enough to give them the url, it would be because I trusted them to have the sense to use a totally separate account. That said, I don't do myspace anyway.

 

=)

[lustylearning 705]

Please don't misunderstand me. Of course the concern is justified. I'm a parent too and share that concern wholeheartedly. I would only point out that child predators are more likely to be roaming a site like myspace than they are a site like sls. But I know, believe me, I know - they are everywhere.

 

Oh, point of interest - sls, as a matter of course, takes steps to protect children by not letting pictures be posted that have children or photos of children in the background. Kudos to sls.

[VegasLee 1,486]

Something to remember when using Swingers Board. Even though all the people you "know" seem to be great people this board has 70,377 members. Willing to bet you really don't know more then 100 of them.

 

We have worked on the Internet since the days of BBS before the net. Have had dealings with the FBI and many child protection groups over the years helping them set up programs. No site is safe or should be considered excluded from the creeps. They are EVERYWHERE!

 

The "ugly people" are everywhere and will follow any and all links on your profiles here if they are in the mood to look.

 

We personally do not have anything in the "adult" world linked to anything dealing with our family. That is not for us to hide, everyone knows what we are, that is for the protection of our family.

 

We are not worried about Swingers, it is the other side we have to worry about.

[Tybee Swing 286]

I was on the board the other day perving many of your profiles:facelick: when I came across something that made me feel a little uncomfortable.

I used a link to go from Swingers Board to one of the MySpace/Facebook profiles. When I got there I noticed a list of friends and some of them were clearly kids or atleast teenagers.

 

So as responcible adults should we not make certain that the young people who are our "friends" on the "vanilla" communities are kept safe?

 

Another possibility is that the teens on that person's "friends" list weren't personal friends/relatives (like the niece & nephew you mentioned), but rather young people on MySpace/Facebook who ended up on their friends list some other way. Maybe the kid wandered into their page, or the person linked to this board wandered into theirs, and applied to be their "friend".

 

Your niece is of legal age (even though a teen), and a lot of older men, and even some couples, would think nothing of targeting a girl her age.

 

My daughter has a page on Facebook and tells me about all of the "old men" who are constantly writing her. (My daughter is of legal age, and still it's very creepy for her, and for me as her mom.) Like Lee said, there are many thousands of people here and we really don't know most of them.

 

I'm with you - I would never link anything to family. We have entirely separate accounts for swinging only (email, IM, everything).

[prettylady 221]

Your niece is of legal age.

 

NO SHE"S NOT!!!! she is still a kid, please tell me she's still a sweet inocent kid:sad:

Your friend,

Prettylady:kissface: (who has to start to face facts:()

[Tybee Swing 286]

Prettylady, it wouldn't hurt to talk to her about the creeps out there, and even if she rolls her eyes and says, "I know that stuff", it's still good to have somebody like you talk to her about ignoring those creepy emails and not responding to them. Actually, tell your 16-year-old nephew, too.

 

Hugs!!

[prettylady 221]

To be honest, I think my nephew is one of the creepy ones.

My sister is very pro active in her kids lives. She too is in the lifestyle, she posted here awhile back.

I think I could learn alot from my niece about whats "out there". She talks openly about everything from her sexual encounters to trying pot for the first time. I cringe and wish for the baby I use to hold on my lap, my sister talks frankly with her and if the occation calls for it even jokes.

I hope that my relationship with my kids is half as open as my sisters and her kids.

But thanks for the advice, open lines of communication arn't just for swingers.

Your friend,

Prettylady:kissface:

[havefuninsun 122]

I have a facebook account that is more work-related than anything else, and it is not provided to anyone else ... not even my son who is a teenager.

 

My son has a myspace account, and I perv it all the time (I have the password since I helped him set it up.. LOL!). He's smart enough to ignore people he doesn't know, and although the kids like to use bad words (the shame of it all) sometimes, his stuff is pretty harmless. But I'll keep perving it to make sure.

 

We don't mix stuff, and I'd never link anything that is lifestyle related to my non-lifestyle online persona -- I don't want to scar my kid for life (or for 10 minutes even ...).

 

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Prettygirl.

 

[JustAskJulie 2,595]

I definately see where your thoughts lie with this subject. I have a LiveJournal account where I post about my personal life and on that account I have both swinger friends and vanilla friends linked (friended) who read what I post. Keeping that in mind, I don't post about my swinger life there. Now, if someone wanted to go through my friends list and really pay attention to what my friends post, they might start to wonder about me.

 

On MySpace and on Yahoo 360 I have two different accounts, one that I use personally that I link only to people I know personally (i have a few of my swinger friends linked there as well but those few typically only use those sites for personal/family use not swinger use). THen I have a second account set up for the Swingers Board that I use to promote the Swingers Board. On that account there is nothing about me personally and I don't friend from my personal account to my SB account or link the two in any way. I seperate those two areas of my life. That's one thing I love about setting up the blog thing on here is that now I have a place to comfortably post about the swinger side of my life.

 

I do think it is a responsibility we have that if we are linking from wherever to a swinger or adult site that we make sure that it's not also a place where we have kids/minors linking into it.

 

I hadn't even thought about what PrettyLady said about the idea that if you link from HERE to your Myspace and your myspace has links to kids on it (even if your myspace has nothing adult or swinger oriented on it) you could be leading predators to those kids. I had thought of it from the other way around, of just make sure that you seperate the two sides so that a kid coming to your Myspace (or whatever profile) isn't then led here or to another adult oriented site.