I agree that online contact can be very exciting. Some have said that you cannot know whether the other person is faking it unless you have met them IRL. However, I think online is a realm of fantasy anyway. Whilst I lack the technical facilities to engage in play in places like Erotic Labs or Shangrila, I know people who have had great fun using them. I think some of the issues depend on the nature of online relationships.
If you are sending orders to a sub who is a real person who will act on those commands in reality then you have to take as much care as if you were doing that f-2-f. There are hazards with follow-up commands being lost or forgotten about, I left my online sub dressed in a particular way all night because I forgot to send the follow-up email and that was a strong and never forgotten lesson to me. My approach now is to send complete 'packages', with all the activities from beginning to end in one package, so you know that the sub will end up restored to 'normality' by the end of it. This kind of online relationship needs the trust of a f-2-f one and has to be handled as carefully, in such an environment I believe safe words are as important as IRL and things should only progress when each side has emailed the turn on word and things stop immediately whenever either side has sent the switch off word. It is also handy to have an off topic word which does not end play but allows discussion of what is happening outside the play.
There is a different kind of online relationship if it is total fantasy at each end. You can be representing yourself as any gender or any species in any setting or time period and effectively together you are writing a kind of novel. This should be safer because there is no way my catman self can fall from that castle wall I have just vaulted in order to scale up to the chamber where the innocent princess waits to be abducted and ravaged and transformed into my catwoman lover. However, the online exchange can be very arousing and exciting and it does not really matter who is actually on each end or how they are dressed, etc. as long as long as they are imaginative and can write well. The only potential for harm is if the players move from just writing to trying to act out what is being described.
There can be total fantasy rooted in a less fantastical setting and with behavior which is more like what might happen in reality, for example I am picking up a slutty prostitute and taking her back to have fun with in a cheap motel room, but in this style of online contact it is unlikely that either party is going to act any of that out though there may be a greater risk, thus a need for greater care, than with more fantastical set activities which it would be impossible for them to do.
