Much of the discussion of the dangers of the internet tends to be couched in terms of what "can" happen.  I'll be putting real life what did happen, or what does happen.

Unless otherwise noted, I either was directly involved in the story or (rarely)  heard it from a person directly involved.  In those cases, I know the people involved, and can gauge their level of accuracy.  In no case will I post a friend of a friend story, unless I explicitly say so.  The reason that I am obscuring sourcfes, is because I don't always have permission to reveal people's person stories, and in some cases, even with permission, it would be wrong of me to do it.

Who are you in contact with?

A teenager was sitting IM'ing with some her friends, fortunately with an adult occasionally looking over her shoulder.  At one point, a conversation came up that was clearly fishy.  The teen was totally oblivious of the problem, but it was obvious to her mentor that she'd gotten into conversation with either a missionary, or someone who had a problem with Judaism - and was fairly sophisticated about it.  In her great confidence in her knowledge, sophistication and debating skills (none of which were anywhere as great as she thought), she was extremely reluctant to cut the conversation short.  Fortunately she was convinced...

Who will see your information?

A few weeks before Pesach I received a phone call that was truly startling.  A woman I have never met was calling me for information about a man I have met exactly once for all of three minutes (if that).  He probably has no idea of my existence - I would shocked if he remembered our meeting.  So how did she get to me, and why did she have questions?  Because of two web sites!  She had (in her opinion) legitimate reason to search for information on this gentleman, and she came across a web site that his son had put up about his (now deceased) mother as a memorial.  Some of what she read caused her to be concerned about him, so, in addition to her other searches, she searched for information about the son.  In her search, she came across my work related web site, which had an outdated picture of our staff, which included the son.  This was enough information for her to track me down, and start asking me questions.

Realizing that the son almost certainly was not interested in creating the impression that the site was, in fact, making, I let him know what had happened.  He told me two very interesting things.  The first was that until a few days prior to our conversation, he had not even been aware that the site was still up - it was supposed to have been taken down about a year earlier.  The second thing was that a friend of his mother had accidentally found the site, and made contact with him. 

Brain Shutdown Syndrome

This is not specifically internet related, but it speakes to a real issues with computers. 

The news and web are replete with stories about people who follow their GPS systems, rather than than the evidence of their eyes, or common sense.

Reuters, for instance, has this story about a motorist who went onto a railroad track because his GPS told him to.  If you use a search engine using words like gps (or satnav), and motorist, you'll find more such stories.  But this article from a South African news site gives an astonishing view of the broadness of the problem.  In case anyone thinks that this problem is overstated (at least in Europe), if you look at this article with Later Follow-up, you will discover that the British are actually putting up signs warning people to ignore their navigation ssytems!