Cyber Thugs: Don’t Be a Victim of Online Stalking and Harassment

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Don A. Kruse, GoLocal Contributor

 

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Cyber bullying, or “online bullying” has been making headlines for more than a decade. Typically, the term has been used to describe youths bullying other youths. 

A much overlooked, underreported issue is adult cyber bullying, which is an unfortunate reality because some adults are never able to grow up. Often, cyber bullying intrinsically involves cyber stalking -- the disturbing practice of monitoring every move and update on a person or organization’s online channels. These attacks can come from an individual, may originate from members of an online group, or can come from a real world group engaged in an online harassment campaign. 

How to Handle Online Thugs

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Online bullying works a little differently than the combined physical and verbal “playground” bullying that we may have experienced as children. The key difference is when you’re being cyber bullied, you can’t push back and you can’t run away. But there are things you can do. 

Online services such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook all have processes in place to help protect their members who have been victimized by cyber bullies. Most other services either already have policies in effect, or policies are forthcoming. In most circumstances, there is somewhere to report the abuse, and someone on the other end who can help. 

Strategy 1: Do Nothing

For adults, most of the experts agree that the best action is more often than not to do nothing. This is not always the best option, but most of the time the experts agree that it is (frustrating as it may be to sit idly). 

This is because ultimately, the cyber bully is trying to hurt others in order to illicit a response. The bully’s reward comes when the victim pleads and begs for the bully to stop. 

Even the most reasonable and rational responses to bullies can spiral badly until the victim ends up sounding like a bully, too.  Unfortunately, in our modern connected world, attacks and harassment can continue at all hours and it doesn’t matter where you go to hide. The bully can be on your Facebook, Twitter, text messages, email, and other social media channels. Even if you aren’t paying attention to these, your friends, family, and co-workers who engage may also become victims or unwitting participants in the attacks.

Strategy 2: Do Something

If weeks or months go by and the harassment doesn’t stop, it’s time to take action. In truth, even by not reacting, you won’t have been sitting idly. Be a detective and gather evidence, right from the moment the online harassment begins. Take screen shots, save copies of web pages, text messages, emails and anything else. Take notes, keep track of the times, log usernames and email addresses. Save all of this onto a USB flash drive. If you have kids you don’t want them to stumble onto this information so keep it safe and secure. You may want to talk to your children about what is happening but that doesn’t mean they should see the gory details.

You should ask the bully to stop – unemotionally and carefully, ask up to two or three times. If you’ve done this and the bully hasn’t stopped stopped their abhorrent behavior, then you need to take action. The action you take depends on the circumstances: is this a workplace issue? Do you work at a school? Do you blog about breast-feeding and are being attacked by a mom who says you’re the crazy one?

A next step would be to report the abuse to the Internet service provider (ISP) or the online service (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, personal blog) that is functioning as the conduit for the attacks. All ISPs make sure that you can contact them regarding any abuse involving their service. 

The Role of Law Enforcement

Local law enforcement is typically not equipped or experienced to deal with the issue of cyber bullying, as it can extend across county and state lines. The FBI takes complaints through the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). I’ve met with FBI agents who deal directly with these complaints and it’s important to make them -- don’t assume it all goes into a black hole. Still, you should avoid making repeated complaints about the same person or group unless it is warranted. Someone else may be having trouble with the same person or group that you’re having trouble with, and if enough people complain, or the complaints reach a certain level of perceived threat, the FBI may take action to assist you.

If you’re certain you’ve identified the person or group attacking you, you may want to contact a lawyer to assist you. This gets tricky because you want to be sure you find a lawyer who is truly familiar with social media. If they aren’t experienced, they might make things worse. An important thing to keep in mind is to not skip any steps as this may do unintended damage to others. If your harassment problem is at work, you must tell your direct supervisor, then human resources, all the way up to the owner or CEO depending on where you work. In other words don’t skip all these steps and go straight to an attorney or to law enforcement. This doesn’t mean you should sit around and do nothing once you’ve told the appropriate people but you need to have covered all your bases and given those in a position of authority an opportunity to take action.

What About You?

The best way to manage your life when you are being bullied online is to live your life with respect for yourself and others. Be a digitally conscious adult. Don’t assume that your words and images disappear into an abyss when you post something potentially hurtful online. Someone may notice and react. Instead, assume your words and images will mean something to someone, so only post what you mean to say. Take a deep breath if you’re angry and think about how to get your message across without hurting someone. Combat cruelty with kindness and ignorance with intelligence.

Nerd Stuff

Learn to examine the full header information in an email message. This will tell you who really sent the message, and often where it really came from. Email can easily be spoofed which means that what you see as the “From” or “Reply-to” are not always the truth. You need to dig a little. Depending on the app or webmail you are using this will be called “View source,” “Display full headers,” or something similar. For example, a message may say that it’s from “Bank of America” but the truth is that it’s from “[email protected],” which is obviously not Bank of America. For extra credit learn to use “whois” to track down where a message was sent from:

whois 75.126.136.141

and then you would have found this:

RAbuseEmail:  [email protected]

Don is the Information Technology Director at the law firm of Stahancyk, Kent & Hook in Portland, Oregon. He is a member of the Portland FileMaker Pro User Group, an Apple Developer, and provides expert testimony for clients in Oregon and Southwest Washington. He enjoys social media, photography, providing technical support tips in web forums, talking long walks with his son, and riding his Ducati motorcycle. He can’t wait to share with you some of the new technology the firm is working on.

 

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