Being Careful:

Bad things do sometimes result from internet contacts, so it is prudent to be cautious.   Do Not give out your name, address, phone number, or email address!   And yes, a sharpie with your email address can often trace you.     If you give out your ICQ#, be sure that your ICQ profile does not contain your address, email address, or IPN.   (If you don't know what an IPN is, just find it and erase it anyway.)    But even with these precautions, ICQ can leak information.   don't give out your number freely.     We all make friends here, and eventually you may wish closer contact with someone.   Just take it slow.   There's a time-dilation effect in VP that makes times seem longer than they are.   So when it seems as though you've known somebody for months, notice that it's really been only weeks.   Oh, and if he or she asks you to give info as a proof of "trust", take that as a signal!     If you do take a Master and agree to meet him irl, read "Dark Realities" and heed the cautions there about first meetings.   Be aware that subs die each year at the hands of persons presenting themselves as Dominants.

Basic Tools:

In many sticky or annoying VP situations it's nice to have a record of what was said.   That is, you want to save the dialog from a room or tour or IM box.   The steps are: right-click on the dialog text that you want to save. choose Save As from the pop-up menu. save the file where you'll be able to find it. On a PC under Windows 9x the resulting .txt file may be read using Notepad, or Wordpad, or any word processor program.   On my own PC I have a folder "Chats", set up to store saved VP dialogs.     If you need some good directions for elementary PC operations like file saving and copying, making directories, etc. them, see Graymask's site Gray Haven.   There are lots of other good links there too.

Coping With Nasties:

Can anything be done about nasties who show obscene AVs or spout insults and pick fights?     Just put them on Ignore.   Right click on either the AV or their name in the list at right, and then click on Ignore.   If everyone just Ignores a pest, he will tire of it and go away.   Ignore: turns his AV into a black-box face blocks his room speeches from reaching you prevents him from coupling AVs with yours blocks his IMs to (or from) you What if he isn't in the room?     Call up his ID card with Locate and click on the Ignore box. See also:  Blocking Unwanted IMs.