Rebuffing the Skype stalkers
As part of the whole transparent lifestyle, I publish my real name, my age and my gender on my Skype profile. Unfortunately, some morons take the “female” indicator as an invitation to start a chat with me that they think is going to lead to some sort of hot IM conversation. I allow chat messages from people who are not on my buddy list, since that’s a good way for people to make initial contact with me, but I had to disallow inbound phone calls from anyone not on my list because of the many unsolicited (and unanswered) calls coming in.
Since my first name is gender-neutral, I could just leave my gender unspecified, but it’s kind of funny to see how, within hours after setting it to “female”, the unsolicited chats start. If I turn it off, they stop. Back on, they start. Like Pavlov’s dog.
Here’s a few from a 6-day span last month:
firatveli47m says: 
[which pretty much makes me want to barf]
[name deleted] says: “does this work?” [his brain, I assume, and the answer is "no"] [The owner of this Skype name recently contacted me and said that he was just trying out Skype, and picked me at random to send a test message. Personally, I wouldn't recommend that practice, but I'm letting him off the hook.]
batmisho9 says: “hi” [twice, 30 minutes apart], to which I reply “do you have a valid reason for contacting me? i’m not available for chatting with strangers, i use skype mostly for business.” He disappears after that.
versace_74 says: “hi” [yeah, that's original]
sourito (tanger 2007) says: “hollllllllllllllllllla” [okay, at least that's original]
farido771 says: “212063 80 39 87″ [weird, I assume that's a phone number?]
kingmoon6 says: “hi” [a couple of times, starting to get annoying], to which I reply “who are you and why do you want to exchange details?” he says “am froom toronto” [oh, great, a rocket scientist], and I say “so?” he indignantly replies “SO ? SO”, and I block his ID.
romantic206 (Sameer) says “hi” [the usual couple of times], and I give my now-standard reply, “who are you and why do you want to exchange contact details?” He says “hi” a couple more times, then “how r u”, twice. He then follows with “your name plz”, “do you have time to see you today”, then the ever-barfable before I block him.
I cleared my gender indicator for a while to ponder this, then I saw the description on Alec Saunders‘ Skype profile: “Please be specific in your contact requests. I do not accept blind contacts.”
My profile now says:
Please be specific in your contact requests. I do not accept blind contacts, especially from idiots who think that because my profile says “female”, it means “skype me”.
All quiet on the Skype stalker front since then.
Posts
[...] In response to my earlier post about Skype stalkers, and I’ve had a request from Skype’s PR company to help find someone to interview for Valentine’s Day tomorrow. The gist of the story is how Skype can help long-distance lovers keep in touch, especially on Valentine’s Day. [...]
Sandy, thanks for posting this. As a guy, I had no idea this kind of thing was happening. I love most how you handled it. Instead of recoiling, you stand up tall and strong and say f-you, this is my internet too!
You rock.
[...] spite of my modified Skype description that has stopped most of the unsolicited requests for contact, there’s still a few morons who [...]
Mark, I feel that it’s time for women to stop being as afraid on the internet as they might be on a dark city street. Here, we can fight back using the same tools that make it so easy for the snakes to find us online in the first place: transparency.
Thanks for posting this! I have been having the same issue and it’s nice to know I’m not the only one. Sandy’s comment reminded me of a webcomic on the issue of women being afraid of the internet because of the jerks: http://xkcd.com/322/
I saw that xkcd comic when it published recently, loved it!
I still get one or two Skype idiots per week asking to connect or sending me inappropriate notes, and sometimes I think about removing the gender flag from my profile but don’t like the idea of having to hide that on the internet. I’m still not at the point where I respond back to them to tell them why what they’re doing isn’t appropriate; I’m looking for the perfect standard answer that I can send to them that will shut them down permanently.
Thanks for posting this. I was just harassed on Skype when I changed my status to “skype me” accidentally. I had no idea why I started getting all these messages one after the other from men around the world. A guy from Algeria even said, “i respect you.” Wow, gee, thanks. He then tried calling me… ten times.
So ridiculous. I make sure I’m on invisible now.
No need to set your status to invisible — then your friends can’t find you. Better to limit inbound chats and calls to people who are already on your friends list.
I recently changed my profile to state (honestly): Happily married man, I do not chat with singles…” or something similar.
Now, almost every day, I get unsolicited chats from very attractive, decent girls who apparantly consider me the last honest guy on the planet, and whom are almost insistent to seemingly make me their man.
Oh, well.