THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU TAKE THAT TAG ONLINE, YOU MAY BE WALKING INTO TROUBLE!!

Online friendships have caught on in a huge way. With most people glued to their laptops, they find this a convenient way of not just staying in touch with old friends but also forming new bonds. Now you have Facebook, which helps you track down long lost friends, there's Hi5, a social community network started by DJ Suketu, Zorpia.com etc.
Besides making friends, you can enroll in a host of online communities depending on your interests. But like all good things in life, there is a downside to all this bonding. It's not uncommon for people to be accosted by overfriendly strangers looking at adding more names to their list of online buddies.
That's where the problem begins. Many people have no qualms about choosing random names on the Internet and sending detailed profiles about themselves in the hope that this could culminate into a friendship. Often they don't bother checking on the names, age group or even whether they have anything in common with the other person and randomly send out friendly letters.
There are others who try to get extra friendly and hound users with syrupy messages just for time pass. "This happens with me all the time. I keep getting these random messages from people I don't know at all. Sometimes even acquaintances send me jokes as forwards and I don't respond to those either. The best response in such instances is silence. One obviously doesn't know the background of these people and why get friendly with strangers? Unless I have specifically asked someone to contact me via email, I do not respond at all and that's what I would advice people to do," says etiquette expert Chaya Momaya.
Media personality Shobha De is very particular about only responding online to people that she has specifically asked to get in touch with her. So, even if you catch her online, unless you're a close friend or an acquaintance, she will not respond to you.
Many celebs like her are vary of being 'tagged' or hounded by star struck fans so some of them like Suzzane Khan, actor Hrithik Roshan's wife, even resort to using fictitious email ids to keep unwarranted attention at bay.
Says Kolkota-based psychologist Subarna Sen, "Many youngsters today like the idea of making friends and this need stems from an unfulfilled childhood. These children did not bond adequately with friends during their childhood and therefore feel the need to shoot in the dark. They hope that through the process of trial and error, they might end up making online friends." People who feel the need to befriend strangers often don't know what they really want and therefore hound anyone who seems interesting enough online.

(Courtesy: Deccan Chronicle)