Slashdot Mirror
Teens Share Passwords As a Form of Intimacy
nonprofiteer writes "The New York Times claims that the hot new trend among teenagers in love is to share passwords to their email and Facebook accounts, as the ultimate form of trust. According to Pew, 33% of teens surveyed say they do this. One expert says the pressure to share passwords is akin to the pressure to have sex. Forbes says don't do it! 'There is something pure and romantic about the idea of sharing everything, and having no secrets from one another. But it's romantic the same way that Romeo and Juliet is romantic, in a tragic, horrible, everyone-is-miserable-and-dies-at-the-end kind of way.' Sam Biddle at Gizmodo writes about which passwords are okay to share (like Netflix), but says to stay away from handing over email or Facebook passwords. 'We all need whatever scraps of privacy we have left, and your email is just that.'"
You're just a jealous bitch, mom! You don't understand that Daniel and me are going to last FOREVER!! I HATE YOU!!! I HATE YOU!!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wait, it's okay to share your Netflix password...?
I can think of at least three reasons why that's a bad idea.
Not sure why this is news. There's a reason your record is expunged when you turn 18. Perhaps the same should apply to online accounts.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Plus it's usually a thundering Terms of Service violation.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
XKCD covered this years ago http://xkcd.com/215/
And vice versa. He's a number guy, I'm a language person. So his passwords are long strings of numbers, and mine are long strings of words and symbols.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
This seems like a good trend in my opinion. After getting burned hardcore in relationships that go bad, maybe people will take password security more seriously by the time they get to the workforrce.
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
Ayn Rand
33%? Did they poll 3 teenagers?
My password is the same as my luggage combination.
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -George W. Bush
I remember countless moronic dramas of high school kids claiming that their MySpace had been "hacked". By which they mean, they'd shared the password with all their friends and acquaintances... and one of their 50 odd fellow schoolmates changed their profile and changed their password.
Surely, though, this should really be a prompt for people to have more intelligent permissions systems for web services. We handle shared bank accounts just fine, so why haven't websites and other online services come up with family accounts, sub-accounts and so on other than as an 'enterprise' feature? Proper security starts at home.
I'd much rather my kids be having sex than sharing passwords.
Pin code and the 3-digit CC security number?
Remember kiddies, using your ex-boyfriend's social networking password can be a felony!
Heck, even using your current boyfriend's passwords with his permission may be a felony in certain circumstances, especially if a financial transaction, medical-history-information, or intentional deception of anyone is involved.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And in other news...divorce continues skyrocketing,
Seriously kids, realize that your significant other can lock you out of your own accounts on breakup, and you can't recover everything via your phone #, pretty sure like... netflix, email providers that aren't google.
Sites should provide a way to allow joint access or multiple passwords. The joint password could have all the power of a regular password, except for the ability to change the master password. The trick is to figure out how to make it look like the joint password is a master password. You could present the holder of the joint password with a fake "change master password" screen, and inform the holder of the master password if they attempt to use it. Of course you'd only need to do this if the other person said something like, "No, give me your MASTER password. I really want to be close to you".
It's hard not to think of "electronic condoms" or "faking orgasms" here...
Teens do stupid shit!
News at 11.
'We all need an illusion of whatever scraps of privacy we have left, and your email is just that.'"
Because we sure as hell don't have any privacy left anymore.
Check your premises.
We will never be able to keep teenagers from sharing passwords with each other. It's hard wired into them. If you try to forbid it then they'll find creative ways to do so secretly.
The best method is to have Password Sharing Education, where you teach them safe practices regarding Password Sharing. We'll have a virus epidemic if we leave it up to chance.
Clearly Forbes is just too conservative and stuck in his ways. Password Sharing abstinence has never worked, and it never will. And why should he impose his morality on everyone else? Teenagers should be free to share their intimacy through Sharing Passwords, as long as they know the risks involved and have a proper perspective on the meaning of the act.
Giving your significant other power over your socialization and friendships on this level just seems like it is going to give even more power to those who abusively control the other partner in their relationships. Not to mention the wonders that will occur if you break up with someone and don't change your password before they upload not-so-flattering pictures and send them to all your friends.
Giving out your password as a demonstration of trust is just silly. I trust my boss with work-related things, but that doesn't mean I give him the passwords to all the servers at work. Why? He doesn't need them. I trust my mom, but I don't give her my bank PIN. Why? She doesn't need it. I trust my girlfriend but I don't give her my gmail password. Why? Because she has no use for it. The difference between strangers and people I trust is that I ~would~ give friends/family secret credentials, if there was a valid need (e.g. I was sick and needed my girlfriend to perform a financial transaction for me). But giving out the details just for fun is illogical, and insecure.
Moreover, it's more a manifestation of a lack of trust. I don't care that I don't know my girlfriend's Facebook password... because I trust her. The only boyfriends/girlfriends who want each other's passwords are those who don't trust each other: they want to check up on what the other one is posting/saying. They don't trust them enough to let them have privacy or private conversations. I've seen this happen (my sister once had a jealous boyfriend who thought she was cheating on him and thus demanded access to her email and Facebook passwords so that he could check for himself... the relationship did not last).
Overall, this whole "if you loved me you'd give me your password" is infantile. The appropriate response is: "If you respected me you wouldn't ask for it."
At least you can change the password... pretty hard to return virginity.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Who goes around thinking email is private? It goes across public networks in plain text. If you check your email at your significant other's house, everything you see goes through a network device controlled by them.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The most trusted name in passwords.
Just remember kids, before dumping someone, be sure to fill their account with illegal materials and lewd links!
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
If the Feds have access to it, you might as well give your girlfriend access. At least that leaves nothing for the Feds to blackmail you with.
It's a serious crime in TN! Don't get caught, lovers!
She wanted to monitor my email and everything. Very nosy. I refused and she bitched about not trusting me. Turns out she was a cheating whore and just assumed that I had to be getting some on the side as well. She needed to verify because she could not trust because she was herself untrustworthy and insecure about it. Sharing passwords does not show trust, it shows lack of trust.
All that eavesdropping, corporate and government spying, data sharing, and people are expected to keep their data away from their loved ones, friends et cetera ? The VERY people who actually have a right and a need to know those information ? And by keeping data away from our CLOSE circle, we are going to make up for the privacy all that eavesdropping, data mining has smoked ?
If you have the balls, as a security advisor/company/activist, take on the government and corporations. not joe joey and susan sue. leave them to share their password.
Read radical news here
As a result of this story, stealing passwords is now considered rape,
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Talking from personal experience sharing passwords doesn't help nor does it benefit anyone. It's better to trust the other person than to have them give you their password. Also if a person is untrustworthy and are for example cheating they can communicate with their other via means other than the account they've given you a password to. Also If a person has trust issues nothing will comfort them. In addition many people are just too vindictive, immature and such to handle this... relationships especially teenage ones are so fleeting I don't believe they should be doing this. It's bad enough they are sexting each other and when they break up post what they sent each other to get back at each other on the interwebs.
To this day I remember my ex's /. account password, and I logged in once a while ago to see if he changed it. He didn't.
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. - Nietzche
First no sharing needles, now no sharing passwords. Screw you Elmo.
Nevermind facebook, we need a site to enable better parenting online. Perhaps send a stream of syllable slapping packets to a child's phone, or sets up a PVP punishent flag on any of their WoW characters. Which is now owned by a Chinese panda gold farming ring due to sharing passwords.
Experience is the best (and sometimes only) teacher.
But since that's on a shared system, I can't really justify locking her out. Even with the root password, it's way harder to trash a Linux box than a Windows box.
You got to put this into perspective. It's not much worse than having a common bank account, or kids: in case of breakup, it can go horribly wrong. But the bottom line is that even in case of breakup, you trust the other one not to act like a total ass.
Of course here, we are talking about teenagers, so the problem is a bit different - in which relationships are much shorter and more passionate. The chances of the shit hitting the fan increases by orders of magnitude.
Yes, thanks Forbes. I'm sure all five of your teen readers will heed your sage advice
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Forbes knows no love.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
I won't even friend my lover on Facebook. She can get really jealous over crazy stuff.
The other day she said, casually, "Maybe I should get you to friend me on Facebook. Then I could see who all your friends are and which pretty ladies you're flirting with." ::sigh::
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
Ayn Rand
Sounds like that woman had a lot of issues. Hope everything worked out for her.
Nah, she died alone, like everyone else.
I'm 51, and I remember this going on back when I was in college - yes, we had computer accounts back then (one PDP 11/70 served the entire campus), along with those newfangled electric lights and horseless carriages.
Even back then it seemed like a bad idea.
#DeleteChrome
is there such thing as privacy outside of tor?
I was planning on reading Romeo and Juliet this winter.
Now it looks like I don't have to.
Assholes.
By the way, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, and Bruce Willis was dead for the whole movie.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I'll show you mine if you show me your's...
I'll go against the grain and say this might be a good thing. Isn't being a teenager about making stupid mistakes and suffering painful lessons while still in a somewhat protected environment? Public humiliation at the hands of a bitter ex will teach you more about online security (and relationships in general) than a hundred lectures.
well, now that adults have told them how dumb it is, the percentage is really going to spike, good job!
I shared my Facebook password with my wife before we got married, and it was no big deal. I don't do anything private on Facebook and if my page ever gets vandalized, it will be fairly obvious. Just explained that your account was hacked and move on.
Once we got married, we shared finances which brings the level of trust to a whole new level. Facebook passwords are nothing in comparison.
There are some good reasons to share a password with someone which are bad given how systems currently work. The Netflix example is perfect: it is very reasonable to have a relationship with someone (or multiple someones) who are not part of your household but who can put movies into your queue. And young people are likely going to be the first to think this way.
Anyone who says "there are other ways of doing that, like having them email you" is using the current way things work as an explanation for how they *should* work, but we should all know there's no necessary reason for that to be true.
But presently, almost all accounts are all-or-nothing access. There is very little "portions of accounts having private community together". As another example, suppose I wanted to allow my mother to withdraw up to $500 per month from my account, no questions asked, no advance notice given, but limit enforced. Can't do it. The closest I can get is having an account in her bank so I can quickly go online and transfer the money for her when she calls and ask, which works fine as long as I jump through additional hoops to avoid fees on that account which I use for nothing else, and make sure to check the (separate) account balance on a calendar-monthly basis to replenish it as appropriate.
The list of "weird" examples that are not one-size-fits-all continues indefinitely, but the common component is giving someone partial access to your account: you don't want them to be able to take control of it or repudiate your previous transactions/messages/items without limitation, you want them to be able to contribute within certain limits. I think even the teen facebook account-sharers aren't excited that their password-shared friends can change their phone number, contact email, and UI language when they do this.
Back in my day, we shared bodily fluids. And we liked it!
Now get off my lawn!
Good example.
My wife and I do this. I keep her passwords on a sheet of paper in the safe. She reads mine before going to bed every night (I believe she's on chapter 2, "Routers and Switches").
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
But that's just a matter of convenience, as are all things related to getting hitched (love? what's that?)
Possible future SOPA and PIPA violations:
This notice is inform the administration of Geeknet, Inc that the password of my account is Copyrighted. My password of course being 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. While I do not own the Copyright for the password I use, it would be in the best of interest of Geeknet to shut down Slashdot and any other sites they run, which I may have an account on.
I am very liberal with the sharing of my password and often give it to loved ones and the occasional one-night stand. I am not sure if I have slept with any of you, but it is better to err on the side of caution. If any of you have lived in or visited San Diego, Los Angeles, Charleston, Hilton Head Island, Branson, Orlando, Tallahassee, Miami, Tampa, Clearwater, Newark, Madison, New York, Buffalo, DC, Maggie Valley, or any of the immediate surrounding areas, in the last five years... There is a chance that I may have thought you were cute and/or slept with you and given you my passwords. It would be in your best interest to completely wipe your harddrives (first with 0's, than 1's, and then alternating patterns of both 1's and 0's), as they may contain some reference to my password.
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -George W. Bush
I gave all my passwords to my wife, and I have all hers. Neither of us demanded it; it just made sense.
But the spousal relationship is unique, ethically and legally. I wouldn't normally do that with any other person except as an exception, and I would change passwords afterwards.
they just keep gettin stupider
Everyone thinks they know everything except geniuses.
Who know for sure that they know everything ;-).
Share fluids, not passwords.
from Mygfisabitch1 to my Mygfisgreat1...
we know we know everything.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Most teens now are dumber then ever and rarely look at consequences outside of a week away or so.
I'd rather get a blowjob as a sign of intimacy than passwords. Who cares about passwords?
Honey Bunny: I love you, Pumpkin.
Pumpkin: hunter2
My wife manages a teen drop-in center. Oh, the crap I hear about... Anyway, their relationships average about a week, and their definition of "trust" is "stay away from the opposite sex or I will go publicly and aggressively crazy." This illustrates a need for classes about how to avoid codependency and what abuse and manipulation in a relationship looks like. But all the middle and high schools are almost solely focused on studying their students up for the standardized tests, so once again, thank Bush for fucking up society.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
You "trusting" your partner with your password because you do not mind sharing what you say is one thing. I'd suggest it's unwise, it's highly prone to misunderstandings and perhaps more an indication of lack of trust than actual trust (where sharing the password wouldn't be necessary). But, that's your prerogative.
But the thing is you're now breaching your trust with the people emailing you. You're sharing what THEY say, and you haven't even had the opportunity to make a judgement first.
Actually I'd say breaching your trust with others is about all you're doing. You know that you have given your partner access, so you're not going to write anything you would not want them to read. But other people emailing you do not necessarily know that, they think their correspondence is private. At an absolute minimum people trust you to use your judgement before you share their information with your partner.
When I was a teenager love was everything, and I totally would have done this. As an adult I'm far too sensible, which makes me sad if I think about it.
Holy crap teens want to do something to establish intimacy! WHATEVER IT IS IT MUST STOP!!!1!
For realz all of my account password resets point at my email account! Like banking! And billpay! And paypal! And my credit cards! These teens are setting themselves up to ruin their HUGE and HIGHLY INVOLVED financial structures that they don't have.
Whatevs. TFA has no actual criticism other than your messy breakup might be messy. Whoa drama in teen romance LOOK OUT.
If sharing passwords creates the intimacy and allows teens to forgo ACTUALLY DANGEROUS behavior then go for it. Beats the hell out of getting a tattoo. Just change your password when you break up. Before your SO changes it out from under you...
-- "Oh. This guy again."
Sharing email account passwords isn't nearly as big a deal as people here seem to think.
And I find the hostility to the idea of expressing trust and intimacy rather unsettling.
Passwords are, it is said, like underwear.
http://www.umflint.edu/its/units/initiatives/publicity/password.htm
If you are willing to share your underwear with a partner, why not your password?
In my case, I was dating a woman who had been cheated on and had trust issues. I made sure she had access to my email and a tracking location on my phone. She says she never checked up on me, but I hope the gesture was appreciated.
Did we skip ATM PIN sharing and go straight to social media passwords, or have we not gotten to that stage yet?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
1) Those who cheat and don't get caught.
2) Those who cheat and get caught.
3) Those who want to cheat but can't, because they can get caught.
I have been married for years and we don't even share passwords, nor do we have nay reason to do so. Why would someone want someone else's Facebook password unless they were trying to pose as that person? I don't even understand it.
If teens see their parents sharing the same bank account, mortgage, and trusting each other with 401K accounts and life savings, why wouldn't they view other forms of information sharing similarly?
I'm not going to fault adults for going on and on about how we should abstain from premarital sex and never share passwords and never write ridiculously sappy love poems to each other that could come back to embarrass the living shit out of us years later, but come on, get real, that's what we all do when the in-love endorphins kick in and turn us into floating nutballs.
Don't you know that's the best way to get a virus?! You must practice safe hex in your relationship!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Unprotected sex, and the schools give kids condoms. Oh no, they might have to start passing out black markers to stop unprotected passwords. Be one way to get school supplies.
The account provider/site has no authority to grant or deny permission to how I share my accounts
A bank generally only grants "authorized" access to accounts. In practice they won't come after me if my dad lends me his ATM card and PIN, but they could legally do so and in some circumstances they may be required to do so. For example, if I sign a check in my Dad's name, even with his permission, the bank is within its rights to say "the signature doesn't match the signature card, check rejected." Of course in practice they don't do that in most cases.
The one common exception I can think of is if the "other" party has power-of-attorney or some legal equivalent, such as being a guardian or spouse, in states where spouses have automatic rights to act on each others' behalf.
Don't forget, sometimes password-sharing amounts to financial fraud. If I pay a monthly fee to access The New York Times's paywall, and I share my password with my girlfriend, then it becomes fraud if she uses that password to access paywalled material instead of buying her own account.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Uh... Is it just me, or did they not think of the obvious? While you're together, you share your password. As soon as you break up, log in and change your passwords to something new that you haven't told that person. Problem solved? Was there even a problem?
I know, I know, TFA was more about the "dangers" of letting your significant other know all your secrets. I reject this too, I don't have any secrets. My friends and family can ask anything and I'll give an honest answer. 99% of the problems in this world come from people trying to defend their own ego and self-image, when you should really just accept that you are who you are and that is fine, people make mistakes, and we are each the result of our environments.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
I told my wife that my email password was kx8xay2m4knnh9tjgn4f5nzy, but surprisingly, she doesn't feel like it's a proof of trust!
If you catch it, you die from it, if you father it you pay for it/house it/feed it, you gave your little girlfriend your WHAT? you poor dumb bastard, that'll teach ya!
To quote my dad: "save yur money and keep yur drawers on"! OR "Don't believe anything ya hear and damn little ya see" AND "Ya think that's FUN? lemme tell ya what's fun, know'in where yer next meals comin from is FUN!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
It's really about time for web-applications to acknowlage the reality that an account doesn't necceserily equate one person and start supporting multiple users. This kind of password sharing is only one scenario. Collection managers really make more sense for a household, not a person, so let multiple accounts share a collection. Password managers should be able to push certain passwords to other users (yes, this is perfectly possible with assymetric encryption) and, optimally, provide secret sharing capabilities to enable password recovery in emergencies. Email may benefit from per-folder/per-tag shared access, so that someone can take over some of your correspondence as needed, without kludges like forwarding that just leave you with a ton of unread email that may or may not have been processed already. And so on.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
It's just like the rule of photography: any picture or video of you will find its way to the Internet, and it will go viral. If this would cause problems for you, then turn off the damn camera.
Applied to passwords: anyone to whom you give an account password will use it in a way that hurts you, emotionally, financially, or socially, at least once. They cannot be stopped from doing this, because in all likelihood they will not understand what exactly it is they are doing. If this would cause problems for you, then don't share the damn password.
use protection.....password protection with your partner
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Well, it's true, I know everything, except geniuses. Never been able to get close with a genius.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Now I understand the Cold War with all those missiles and red telephones. US<3SU 4EVER!
I've fallen in love numerous times, but even in the most desperate instances I have never wanted to share everything with the object of my infatuation. Isn't sharing passwords the equivalent of letting someone read your diary? Who does that? If you are like that, or used to be during puberty, please explain why. Is it a wish for desubjectivation?
All those parents who spy on their kids' online presence, cybernanny their computers, force them to reveal their passwords are to blame for this. Kids grow up thinking it is normal to share your intimate data with someone you love. Only when they rebel against family values (which mostly doesn't happen or doesn't go far enough) do people realize that privacy is inalienable.
If you really love someone you'll give them your bank PIN number.
How will the marketing corporations refine their targeting advertising when your loved ones pollute your history with their love-motivated actions?!
People need to control. When 'in love', they abandon all their individually because of the greatful love is. Its like the: "If you love me, we dont need condoms." Control, obsession and fear... Making your loving partner submitted is the best way to to fail in your life.
I'd rather share a toothbrush.
I've never shared my passwords with girlfriends, family or close friends. Not because I don't trust them, but because of the access my various accounts have on/to other systems that I look after. It's just not worth letting them have the password then have to answer questions later with all honesty if I don't know for 100% that it wasn't my account that was used to cause some damage.
I'll happily log people into stuff like facebook, and might even select the save password box if it's something like a video streaming site. But are they getting my password - hell no.
If I didn't work in IT or have access to other systems then the situation might be different.
Sharing login credentials as a sign of luuuuurve ? This reminds me of the time I spent handling support tickets as a GM on a private Ragnarok Online server.
If I were to guess the number of item recovery tickets I handled that were about people sharing their accounts with significant others and having all their stuff stolen, the answer might cause your head to explode.
It wasn't limited to real-world relationships either. I once handled a ticket where someone was ripped off by their in-game spouse. To make matters even more lulzy, I distinctly remember having processed a divorce request ticket for the thief earlier that day.
The thief's character name? Louise_Greed. (Not even kidding.) It took all my willpower not to ask the victim exactly what the hell he thought was going to happen.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
What I find a little creepy is adult couples who share one email account. My parents do this, and so do a few of my 30-something friends, all simply for convenience. I guess it isn't creepy if you just take it as a clear signal that those who do it tend not to think of email as a primary form of communication and would rather use a telephone or something else for anything but planning details and business communication. For me, email is my preferred medium (other than face to face) for intimate and social conversations. Knowing that a friend shares an email account with her husband means tend not to have those conversations with her. It isn't that I expect her to keep what I say secret from her husband - just that my friendship is not directly with the husband and I wouldn't talk in quite the same way to him myself. And I don't know who will read my emails first.
When studies tout numbers like '33%', I always suspect the sample size was something like 3. Or perhaps 6.
all my passwords are "correct battery horse staple" now. http://xkcd.com/936/
I have learned this same lesson but not quite as painfully.
A thief thinks everyone else steals.
A manipulator thinks everyone else manipulates.
An adulterer thinks everyone else cheats.
I'm sure the reason is part rationalization, part acting out whatever misbehavior caused them to develop those harmful habits.
Yeah, the underlying idea being "I will not be the only one to be taken advantage of, I want my share of what everyone else is getting". It speaks volumes of their growing up environment, confusion, insecurity, gullibility, ... crime doesn't make you stupid, stupidity makes you believe crime is higher justice.
I may not be a teenager anymore (havent been for a decade now). I sure as hell don't share my passwords with anyone, but my GF has access to both my personal email and facebook easily. Explorer remembers my passwords, and I stay logged in to both gmail and facebook on my laptop, so any time she uses it, she automatically get in to either account. I don't really care, since there is nothing in either account that I consider to be sensitive (at least for for her to see).
Work related information on the other hand, I never allow the computer to rememer passwords for, since it's not my personal information, but a clients.
Still, sharing passwords? WTF? of course, what do kids have that needs to be confidential? an email from mom asking what time the kid'll be home?
I was doing this back in the 90's with my GF's. Back then it was OK to do that, however today it is not. Sorry sweethearts, this ain't the 90's anymore! Find some other way to flirt.