Ethan was a shy, quiet 15 year old who didn't get along very well with the kids at his school. However, he did have many online friends whom he chatted with regularly. Some of Ethan's online friends had webcams, and Ethan eventually got a webcam of his own to help him meet new people. Setting up the webcam was easy - all he had to do was plug it in, install the software, and post his picture and contact information on an online directory of webcam users. Soon he started hearing from all sorts of people, although none of them were the teenagers he had hoped to meet.
One day Ethan got an email from somebody who said he would pay Ethan $50 to take off his shirt on camera. Ethan had been looking to upgrade the video card on his computer, so he was tempted. Figuring that he already took his shirt off in public whenever he went swimming, Ethan agreed to do what the man asked. The man told Ethan how to set up a Paypal account to receive the money, and indeed, $50 showed up in Ethan's account when he took off his shirt on camera.
Soon more requests were coming in to Ethan's email, and not just from the first man who had contacted him. Men were offering large amounts of money for Ethan to expose himself on camera, and each request asked Ethan to go just a little bit farther than before. Ethan was making lots of money, but he wasn't feeling very good about himself, and some of the people who were contacting him scared him. Eventually, Ethan unplugged his webcam and changed his email address. "It all seemed so innocent at first," says Ethan, "but after a while I was doing things I was really uncomfortable with. Unfortunately, all those pictures are still out there on the Internet."
To learn how to use webcams safely, see the article on The Dangers of Webcams
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