Extreme naïveté

I have had this problem since I was a small boy. I tended (tent?) to not only interpret everything literally, I also trusted in everyone and believed that everyone was 100% right and 100% trustworthy.

When someone told me something, I had to believe it, because I believed that what everyone said was fact. It also got me into trouble.

When I was around age 6, somehow some strangers found out my address as well as found out that my family and I were going on holiday, and thus the house would be left vacant. They rang the house phone when my parents were away, and I answered. They knew my name somehow, and asked me when we were going to leave the house for our holiday, which dates exactly and at what time. I told them all of those details, because I trusted strangers 100%. I later told my parents and they were furious that I had answered the phone to a stranger and given these details. My parents had to change the locks of our home and get some relatives to oversee our house when we went on holiday. But I never thought to myself that people could be malicious. I just answered questions automatically like a robot.

This repeated itself in different ways, but regarding my thread on virginity and single, whenever people asked me, I would answer them honestly and automatically that I was still a virgin and single. This caused them to get information on me, and spread gossip as well as judge me negatively. I had big problems getting out of this naïve mindset, I just seemed like I had to trust and believe in complete strangers no matter what.

Another example is when I played computer games, some random person would send me a PM saying that they were an administrator and that they needed the password to my game account immediately. I gave it to them, believing them 100%. Then suddenly I could not log back onto my account. It took me more than a month to figure out that that person just took advantage of my naïveté to log onto my account.

Imagine if someone had asked me my credit card number or something when I was this naïve.

Now I am very paranoid and cannot trust people at all. The other extreme. I feel like everyone is trying to get information from me, and I no longer consider many people acquaintances or friends. Anytime someone asks me a question, I get suspicious if they are going to try to squeeze information from me and then spread it all over. I feel now like basically everyone is just trying to screw me over.

Is this related to Asperger's, and is there a way to get rid of this naïveté without becoming paranoid?

Thanks for sharing this. When I was young I was naïve as well. I don't know if this has anything to do with Asperger's Syndrome (which I don't have) or if it's just a result of lack of "worldly experience" which it what I think it was in my case. It took me many years... decades really... to reach the point where I don't trust anyone. And, even now, I sometimes will catch myself starting to give someone who doesn't deserve it the benefit of the doubt. Old habits die hard...