Don't give your credit card details over the internet.

Nowadays people have them saved in their damn browser for convenience.

"Don't believe everything you read on the internet." -Abraham Lincoln

Social media, a gorilla getting shot, two US elections, and GenAI later, we have completely fallen off this one simple rule.

A/S/L should be replied when you join a chat room

the Internet never forgets

this one goes both ways, if someone is doxing you, it'll be online FOUR FUCKING EVER, but if it was a cool website/funny meme/ good software, it's probably on somebody's downloads folder, but it can easily disappear and you'll never see it again.

Basic forum etiquette. It's horrifying at work seeing teams "teams" (forums) used like chats, all the cross-posting and thread necromancy, people completely unable to keep topics confined to the appropriate sub-forum, etc

You should use the Internet to get info out of it, not put your info there. If you do want to put info, it should never be traceable to you.

I just don’t get why people want so much of their life online…

The rules for abbreviations.

IIRC YMMV bc IANAL

Netspeak fluency has generally given way to textspeak.

Don't talk to strangers.

Searching things is easy so don't post something without checking it. People now don't make the slightest effort to verify a rumor or conspiracy crap.

Then: Don't download applications and run executables you don't fully trust.

Now: Download everyone's new snazzy app just because and scan everything with your phone that contains all your most private information so you can unlock a surprise!

I learned as a kid playing star craft that there are noobs and newbs. Newbs are people new to a game who need help learning. And a noob is someone who has played for a while and refuses to learn and would rather troll.

When you share something cool, link back to the original creator or where you found it from.

Don't feed the trolls.

Of course nowadays its nearly impossible to tell whos spouting racial slurs to get folks mad and whos doing it because they're just an asshole.

Don't top post.

On the Internet I grew up on, pretty much anything was ok except to discuss (or even speculate about) the real-world identities of users who didn't very openly disclose them.

Now many people think the latter is ok.

Dont believe anyone on the internet.

When reading a long text, disconnect from the internet as soon as it has loaded so you don't pay for the time you spend reading.

As in real life, it's pretty sound advice to ignore, block or otherwise disengage from trolls and other forms of belligerents. Even in the '90s when I first started using the internet, the phrase of the day was "don't feed the trolls". But people just can't help themselves. They will even reply saying "I know you're a troll, but...".

The Steam forums are a great example, where every other thread is a fake "is this game woke??" screed. The fact that you can be rewarded for being a cunt there with jesters (which translate into points that can be spent to buy profile items) just makes it a thousand times worse. You get 'paid' to be a troll on Steam. It's insanity.

The only anti-troll weapon that works or is needed is oblivion. Let their steaming turd of a post curdle in solitude. Don't even downvote it. Being downvoted is a victory for them, an acknowledgement that they exist and that they've gotten your attention and that they've annoyed you. Shadowban them from your mind. Block them so that no future posts of theirs will infect your screen. Report them so mods can remove/ban them. Just don't engage directly with the post or the user. Don't say "blocked and reported" in the troll's thread/post. Just do it silently.

Don’t pick up the phone if someone is online… I’m old

Social media killed online aliases and I have a hard time deciding if we're all worse for it.

Instinctively I still stick by that, though, as you can tell by my anonymous profile with no bio, but when I volunteer any amount of personal info these days people are often confused that I'm not sharing openly who I am or where I'm from. Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.

I'm a faithful follower of never using your real name in social parts of the internet. We don't need to know and we don't want to know. The only ones who would want to know are scammers or people wanting to give you a shitty time. I only use my real name online for people and places in where it's required like talking to agents from my bank, insurance .etc And very few friends know my real name through FB and the circle anyways.

Don't send nudes online to anybody. I know of some communities where people happily are flaunting it one moment then they make a post later whining about them being exploited or that they thought they were crafty hiding the nudes from someone they're married with. They delete it but they're too naive to think that what's already out there, has most likely been saved by hundreds by now, so you're fucked either way.

Another is, is that if you want to be understood, then you need to use proper spelling and grammar. I miss the days when you got kicked at because you used 'u' in replacement of 'you'. It's just two fucking extra letters you lazy asshole. These days saying stupid shit like; 'yah fr u tha fam' is somehow a complete sentence. No, I'm going to give you shit for it and if you want me to bother caring with what you have to say, fucking make some sense. I don't even get offended by insults when they're poorly spelled, it just tells me what kind of an inept moron you are.

Most of them. Don't believe everything you see, don't give out personal information or real-life pictures... the usual.

I remember being taught in school to apply source criticism, and that seems to have largely died as a concept.

This was back in the early 2000s...

I was taught to cite websites by using the date the page was updated. Now I'm lucky if web pages even have a date on them.

Sticking around and "lurking" for a bit before you try to engage with a new community, to learn the local etiquette before you make an ass of yourself. Or at least reading the rules as a bare minimum.

Never trust anything you read on the internet