Here are some things you can do about online bullying.
If you receive threats to hurt you on your social page you can make a Police complaint. You will need to take a screenshot of the threats as evidence to your local police station. To take a screen shot make sure the threatening comments can be seen then press “Prnt Scr” (which is at the top right hand side of the keyboard), open a blank Word document and then paste (ctrl+v) into the blank document. Save the page in an accessible location.
Most social networking sites have terms and conditions which prohibit bullying and other abusive behaviours (including harassment, impersonation, identity theft and more). If you want to make a complaint, it is helpful to copy the terms and conditions which have been breached and also to add screenshots as evidence. Ways to report bullying abuse or harassment to Bebo, MySpace and Facebook are listed below:
Template Bebo reporting abuse email:
Bebo's Terms of Use (ToU).
http://www.bebo.com/TermsOfUse.jsp
You will see from the text below that nasty behaviour on Bebo breaches their Terms of Use.
"By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree NOT to:
- Defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others.
- Publish, distribute and/ or disseminate any harmful, obscene, indecent, unlawful, libelous, profane, defamatory, infringing, inappropriate, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable material or information.
- Use other Members' personal data for purposes other than establishing contact that is reasonably expected to be welcomed by such other Members."
- Cyberbullying behaviour can be reported to Bebo
If you go to the 'Contact Us' section, it tells you how you how to report abuse. Here's the link: http://www.bebo.com/ContactUs.jsp
Advice from Bebo " To report abuse such as inappropriate content please visit the violators homepage and click on the 'Report Abuse' link underneath their main photo. A member of staff will personally review all reported violations."
Template MySpace reporting abuse email:
You can check out MySpace’s Terms of Use here: http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Common/Page /TermsConditions.aspx
To report abuse, click on the link below and fill in the form: http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.contact&Mytoken=831FF6BF-424C-48D3-8D1D7EA7D0BC96754948046
Also, see MySpace’s cyberbullying page: http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Help/Pages/HelpCenter.aspx?Category=2&Question=6
MySpace also has a link about pages pretending to be you (or about you): http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Help/Pages/HelpCenter.aspx?Category=2&Question=26
Parents and Family Guide to understanding their teens use of Myspace: http://creative.myspace.com/cms/SafetySite/documents/MySpaceParentGuide.pdf
Facebook:
Facebook’s Code of Conduct protects users from sexual content, harassment and unwanted contact as well as other offensive acts.
Facebook members who want to report any abuse of guidelines have two options. First there is a ‘Report’ link on most Facebook pages. Secondly it is possible to email Facebook directly at abuse@facebook.com. Reports of offensive material will be responded to and the target informed of the steps that will be taken against the offender within 72 hours.
Facebook has a page on safety that may be useful:
http://www.facebook.com/help.php?safety
MSN
Most IM services have similar functions for reporting abuse.
Msn: you can block people who are harassing you on msn by simply pressing tools: options: block. This will block this person from knowing you are online or being able to talk to you.
Terms and conditions / terms of use
Most of these types of services will have terms and conditions. If you want to lay a complaint, it can be helpful to frame the complaint by stating how the behaviour has breached the services terms and conditions / terms of use. For example, your complaint may say:
Clause [7j] of [service in question]’s terms and conditions states that users will not use the service to:
Harass, bully, intimidate, or otherwise infringe on the enjoyment of other users.
A member of your service, username [username of the person] has made the following comments, which breach the above clause:
[Offending comments]
MSN terms and conditions are available on
http://help.live.com/help.aspx?project=tou&mkt=en-nz
School situations
If the bully and recipient are at the same school it is important to get the school involved by informing the deputy principal. Schools can also work together if the bully and recipient are at different schools.
Under the National Administration Guidelines for Schools (NAG 5) schools have a responsibility to ensure the emotional and physical wellbeing of all students.
Bullying and harassment can be distressing and serious and the recipient may benefit from seeing the school counsellor, or youth worker.
NetSafe can assist schools if they are unsure about how to deal with online issues.
Email
If you are harassed by email you can block that email from coming into your address. To do this simply have a look at your emails help section. If you want to do more than blocking the person from contacting you, you can report them to the email service provider. Forward the email to the abuse team at the email provider. If they are with Yahoo or Hotmail, then forward their email to abuse@yahoo.com or abuse@hotmail.com. If you do not know who the abuse team is for a particular provider then go to www.abuse.net/lookup.phtml
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