Internet Safety Tips

Nancy Schimelpfening, M.S.

Nancy Schimelpfening is the founder of Depression Sanctuary. Unless otherwise stated, all of the content on Depression Sanctuary is written by and maintained by Nancy. Nancy has a master’s degree in community health education from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She was the About.com (now Verywell.com) expert on depression from 1998 – 2016. She has also written for other online publications, including Healthline and Health Digest.

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depression chat rooms

Please read through our Internet Safety Tips. We do our very best to keep our chat room safe, but it is important that you follow these safety tips anytime you are on the Internet.

You can safely click on URLs we have posted on our website, but we can’t guarantee that URLs posted from chatters are safe.

  1. Avoid posting any personal information online, like your address, email address or phone number.
  2. Before you click on a URL, check what the URL says. Be sure that it is a URL from a domain you can trust, or use a tool to check if the domain is safe.
  3. Never give your password to anyone. No matter if it’s a friend or a family member.
  4. Be careful when posting pictures or videos of yourself online. Once a picture is uploaded to the Internet, it will stay there forever.
  5. Don’t befriend people you don’t know on social media, like Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.
  6. Remember that not everyone online is who they say they are. Always be careful about trusting people you don’t know online.
  7. If someone is making you uncomfortable online, block the person or leave the website. Our chat room has an ignore function that you can use to block members who are making you feel unsafe.
  8. You can contact one of our hosts if someone makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, or you can contact us through email.
  9. Think before opening email attachments. Do not open email attachments from people you don’t know, or companies you don’t trust.
  10. If something sounds too be good to be true, it probably is.

If you get an email from Depression Sanctuary, make sure that the email domain is @depressionsanctuary.org. We will never send you an email from any other domain.

Useful websites

Snopes.com – A fact checker website.

Scamadviser.com – Check if a website is safe.

Whois.com – Let you find out who owns a domain

Facebook.com/safety – Facebook’s Safety Center

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