BEWARE - ONLINERS

I made my first mistake of site snooping, basically literary sites. Found one, in fact the largest one, and uploaded my first innocent post. A poem which I had posted in other sites too and received encouraging comments. Here also I did not have to wait for long and pat came the comments. All encouraging ones. I was, with every reason for being so, inflated. I posted more. I got more encouragements. While going through these comments, I found a reader following my posts steadfastly and eulogizing my work in flowery phrases. I made my second mistake of sending him a private message ( a provision allowed within the site itself) thanking him profusely for his positive comments and eulogy. His reply came promptly. He was curious to know more about me and my inspiration. I sent a limited reply back as I always found it difficult to talk/write about myself. He pursued my posts as well as private messages. I got a friendship request too which I foolishly affirmed as I, at that point of time, could not hazard a guess that these innocent exchanges would lead to such ignominous results. Soon the comments and the messages started changing colour and becoming more and more personalized as though the reader knew me for long. I could sense danger and wrote back to him to restrict his purview to literary exchanges alone. He apologized and withdrew quite politely promising me that he would keep on reading my poems but would refrain from commenting any further. So much so good. But soon after, hacking attempts were made on my g mail account from an unknown IP Server which after investigation was found to be situated somewhere in New York. Although, this gentleman was reportedly from Nepal and of course there was no proof to attribute the hacking attempts to him. But suspicion is a dangerous poison. Since, all these events or accidents were eerily coincidental too I could not help but be apprehensive about this man's intentions. Moreover, in one of his private messages he had wrote that his hobby was to read people's mind which, on hindsight, I feel is all the more dangerous if not evil. I write this to caution other on-line movers and shakers so that they are not misguided into such traps. I paid for my naivety, the others should not. Moreover, there are sites which allow the identities of users to remain undisclosed behind jabber names and "avatars" which allows such miscreants to have a field day without getting caught.

After this mishap, I have gradually withdrew from that particular site and so has my fan. Odd isn't it? Considering his membership history, he was an old timer.