Contacting travellers outside of Thorn Tree
A big part of planning your adventure is connecting with other travellers. On Thorn Tree you’ll meet travellers who are experts on a particular destination or topic and who are happy to help with big and small parts of your trip.
In some cases, you might want to take the conversation offline. Maybe you don’t want to hijack a thread, or you might have struck up a conversation that’s veering off-topic and want to keep it going.
At Lonely Planet we take your safety seriously, so we ask that you don’t share personal details with other posters on Thorn Tree or anywhere else on lonelyplanet.com. However, you can share your Skype or Twitter IDs via your Thorn Tree profile. This feature is optional, easy to set up and equally easy to remove via your profile settings.
If you choose to use this feature, we recommend adjusting settings on Skype so you cannot be called by anyone not on your contacts list. This is not the default setting. Once you have done so, you can then review contact requests and be sure you are happy to connect. Details of how to do this can be found here
The following suggestions should help you to connect safely with only those travellers you want to hear from.
- Never share your password or other security details.
- Familiarise yourself with the safety and security guidelines on Skype and Twitter before adding your details to your Thorn Tree profile.
- As noted above, adjust your privacy settings and review them often.
- We would ask anyone trying to contact another user via a third party service to bear in mind Lonely Planet’s Community Guidelines.
- If in doubt about the intentions of a contact request, decline it.
- We remind you that Thorn Tree is designed, suitable and intended for people who are 16 and over, and should not be used by anyone under this age.
See here for more hints and tips on meeting up with travellers.
The Lonely Planet team.
