The Time I Befriended a 17 Year Old On Xbox Live When I Was 12
My kids will not play video games
This Isn’t Normal?
When I was 12, I became good friends with a 17-year-old guy on Xbox Live. Everything about him seemed normal, but, then again, he was a senior in high school playing Call of Duty with a 7th grader every day.
In retrospect, this guy clearly wasn’t all there and likely possessed substantial mental health issues, but I was 12 – I could barely tie my shoes, let alone discern between normal and peculiar behaviors in teenagers. I was just thrilled to finally speak to someone older than me who didn’t immediately dismiss me for having a voice as highly pitched as a first-grade girl screaming after seeing a mouse in her bedroom.
That said, I did suspect that something was off with him just by his aberrant idiosyncrasies and behaviors that even I could discern as unusual as a 12 year old.
Like with most friendships, the closer we became, the more intimate details we shared with one another.
Well, actually, I did all of the sharing.
I told him my birthday, hometown, number of siblings, and even gave him the password to one of my e-mail accounts when I didn’t have my computer. Meanwhile, he remained as confidential as a secret service agent and never even told me his name throughout the years we played online together.
Okay, perhaps that was an obvious red flag.
He ended up permanently changing the password to my email account after I entrusted him with it, so I blocked him with the intention of never speaking again.
This provoked him to create at least 50 different Xbox live accounts just so he could message me, and I proceeded to block him each time. I was becoming extremely creeped out because he was 19 at the time, and I recognized that this was extremely unusual behavior for someone his age, so I disabled a setting on the console that allowed people to send me friend requests or messages.
He’s gone for good. Right?
Fast forward six years to my junior year of college. I decided to revert my privacy settings because I wanted my friends from school to be able to send me friend requests; besides, it had been six years since I had last spoken to the weirdo, there was no way he would still be spamming me with friend requests, right?
Wrong.
Lo and behold, I woke up to a friend request from the guy a few months later. I should’ve deduced that he was still an utter weirdo as he was still trying to obtain my attention after all these years, but my curiosity unfortunately got the best of me, so I added him to see what he wanted.
He began by asking me the basic stuff: Hey, how’s it going? Are you in school? What school? Do you even lift, bro? Etc. I answered all of his seemingly innocuous questions and went on about my business. Then, each day after our initial correspondence, he sent me the most strange and random messages imaginable, reaffirming my suspicion that he was still a total weirdo. I told him that he needed help and blocked him for good.
The Longest Day Ever
The following morning, I woke up and couldn’t access my university email account or log in to my university's student portal. I contacted my school’s IT department, and they informed me that my passwords were changed in the middle of the night when I was sleeping.
Unfortunately, that was the least of my problems that day, because shortly thereafter I was informed that an email was sent on my behalf requesting that I drop out of school. I instantly knew that the creepy stalker guy from Xbox Live was responsible for everything, and informed IT that I had been hacked.
I called my university's financial aid department to explain my situation and re-enroll in classes while IT worked to regain access to my email. They told me that the hacker requested $100,000 worth of student loans the previous night and that they were in the process of sending it to me.
9 hours, 35,000 steps, and 50 conversations later, I was re-enrolled in school, my financial aid balance returned to zero, and I regained access to my email account.
As soon as I logged in, I saw an email from my school’s student conduct office requesting that I schedule an appointment with them immediately. Knowing that my psycho stalker was clearly responsible, I examined the sent mail tab to evaluate the extent of his damage. He forwarded them out-of-context answer keys to past exams and claimed that “I cheated on exams during my freshman year, ” “I felt extremely guilty for cheating,” and that “I wanted to come clean.”
I had a blast explaining this one.
White Collar Crimes
Because the creep impersonated me and requested loans on my behalf, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) got involved and launched a formal investigation. Turns out, the guy found my email address from my school’s student directory website, as that information was accessible to anyone given you knew the student’s first and last name. He then managed to hack into my account because I wasn’t enrolled in two-factor authentication.
The FBI agent I worked with called me about two months later and said that the district attorney declined to proceed with the investigation. The psycho got away unblemished, but the experience taught me invaluable lessons that my younger self likely wouldn’t pay much credence to.
Concerned, not controlling
No matter how well you think you know someone, never trust a stranger on the internet. Truthfully, you shouldn’t even trust most friends or close acquaintances with such sensitive information, because people are capable of turning on you more quickly than a light switch.
At 27, I clearly wouldn't have done what I did when I was 12, but I didn’t have the discernment and wisdom that is derived from life experience to know any better. Moreover, my parents (really grandparents) were in their sixties at the time, both working and dealing with health issues, so they didn’t have the energy to probe who I was spending my time with on Xbox Live after work. Frankly, they were frankly just happy that I mainly kept to myself and didn’t cause too much trouble.
If you have children, or younger family members that you see regularly, always monitor their online activity and discuss the dangers associated with talking to strangers on the internet. There are weirdos out there who will be more than glad to take advantage of them and ruin their life.
It’s easier to prevent a problem from occurring in the first place than it is to fix it after it's begun.
Is that John Cena? That's a red flag bro 🤣
I would have made up some story about the guy trying to get you to send naked pictures to him as a kid lol