Because of how easy it is to be anonymous on the internet, and how prevalent anonymity is on the web, i am baffled by the overwhelming number of children and teens, especially young girls who are willing to divulge personal information to strangers. Obviously visual images and sound are eliminated when talking to someone online. Apparently there are kids who do not take this into account when chatting with new people on the internet. Unfortunately there are dangerous individuals who come up with fake identities and fool the people they chat with into thinking they are someone they are not. It would be extremely easy for a middle aged man to pretend to be a 14 year old girl. In doing so, he can meet other "girls his age." From that point, the real danger evolves when they can set up a time to meet face to face. Because of this phenomena, information like age, physical appearance, and even addresses are naively given out by unsuspecting kids, and their personal statistics are used to aid in abductions, and or rapes. I feel that if someone is going to participate in a chat room, they need to go in with the mind set that nobody they meet there can truly be trusted, and they must chat with caution. When i was in elementary school, we had police officers and authority figures come in and speak about what to do if a stranger approaches you on your walk from home, and things of that nature. Im not sure if they have revised those talks for the current grade school students, but i think it would be a good idea to include presentations on how to be safe while on the internet as well.
According to Wallace's definitions for online space, i would assume these scenario usually takes place in synchronous spaces, including chat rooms and instant messages. Perhaps an abductor could take advantage of the "virtual reality" environments as well, like the Multi-User Dungeons or MUDS. I think anyone who uses the internet regularly and takes advantage of all its benefits, just needs to be aware of the dangers as well.