Given my misgivings about virtual worlds in general and Travian in particular expressed in my post the other day, I found this blog post rather interesting.

In a nutshell, a father was playing the Travian game along with his son. His son received mail via the game that requested real life e-mail contact information. This would move the game from being a virtual and anonymous world to being a more public one where potentially creepy people have your contact information.

The father used the message to teach his son about online safety, but as a teacher this message makes me nervous.  It’s one kids might easily respond to without you ever knowing about it, and might give away information that is simply not safe. I guess I’m still really nervous about the potential harm of virtual worlds while still coveting the very cool things you could do in one if your could ever find a safe world.