Do you like to talk to strangers? There is a site very similar to Chatroulette called Omegle that allows you to video chat with random strangers. A few weeks back I was at a party and my friends were on the Omegle site. I didn’t know what it was, but later learned that you video chat with people you don’t know. I didn’t like the idea of it, so I tried to steer clear of it as much as possible.
Like I mentioned before, Omegle is a site where you can talk to random people online face to face. The site is free and it requires no registration whatsoever. Chats are completely anonymous, unless you feel like sharing personal information about yourself. You don’t choose who you get to chat with, Omegle does that for you. People usually use this site when they get bored, a lot of people who actually use Omegle tell me that it’s a good way to cure boredom. Also some people tell me that it’s a good way to talk to people without them judging you because they don’t know you so they have nothing to judge. You must be 13 years or older in order to be able to use Omegle. There is a moderated and an unmoderated section. The moderated section is for people 17 and under, unmoderated is for 18 and older. If you are looking to go into the unmoderated section then who knows what could happen. You also have the option to either message or video chat when you first get on the page. You can also type in what you feel like talking about and they will try and match you up with someone who wants to talk about the same topic.
Omegle can actually affect the safety of teens in various ways. Something some people don’t know is that somebody can save the chats. If you decide to message on Omegle, the stranger has the option of saving everything you said. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t like somebody saving my conversations. Be Web Smart says that “the time your chat began, your IP address, a randomly-generated ID tag assigned to your computer, your chat partner’s IP address, and your chat partner’s randomly-generated ID tag” are saved for 120 days. This is used for law enforcement to find spammers, but you are giving out this information willingly. Plus, what’s to stop a hacker from finding that IP address and tracing it back to your computer. On Qibly it said “currently, monitoring is only in a testing phase; but even when it is fully implemented, it will not be perfect, and you may still encounter misbehaving users in video chat.” This shows that even if you go into the monitored section, you still can come across things that may not be appropriate for teens. There have been multiple sex offenses on Omegle, not only on the adult section but as well on the section that is meant for teens. There have been people pranking on Omegle where they would pretend they are celebrities. This could be a way for sexual predators to get close to under aged girls. I wouldn’t like some random creep staging himself as Channing Tatum, then doing something really bad. The thing is that sometimes a few celebrities or even youtube stars go on there, you can never tell what is real anymore.
I have never liked the concept of Omegle. All our lives we have been told not to talk to strangers, but then here comes a site where you can chat face to face with some random person you don’t know. There are endless possibilities of what could happen on the other side of the chat! Somebody could be hacking into the Omegle system looking for your computer’s IP address. Somebody on the other side could be a sex offender and you would never know it. A person could do something that is not appropriate whatsoever, it doesn’t matter if you are in the moderated section or not. I went on this Omegle review site and this is why I think it is completely unsafe, the things I have mentioned has actually happened to people:
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/omegle/user-reviews
I know I don’t control people’s decisions, but I believe people have the right to know. I let people know my opinion about Omegle, but if you still feel like you want to do it, try to be safe, even though the safest way to go is not going on Omegle at all. Nothing can really stop you from ending up with some jerk who wants to send rude and highly inappropriate pictures to you. Something that I have found common among many reviews is strangers asking you what your asl is. I found out that asl stands for age, sex, and location. This is all things that somebody should not need to know. You should never tell a stranger any personal information because you never know what they are going to do with it. Also be aware of where you are doing the video chat from, don’t do it anywhere that can possibly give your location away to the stranger. Omegle in all is not a safe site, the safest you can be is staying away from it. You never know what can happen and I don’t believe these risks are worth anything.
I have decided to link a few websites so that you guys can read more about this website:
http://www.bewebsmart.com/internet-safety/what-is-omegle-is-it-okay-for-kids/
http://quib.ly/qu/are-omegle-cam-chats-monitored-by-police
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/omegle.com
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