Facebook Cited as Reason for Rise of STDS in U.K.

Facebook has been linked to a resurgence of the sexually-transmitted disease syphilis.

The virus has increased fourfold in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside, the areas of Britain where the website is most popular.

Medics believe Facebook and other social networking sites make it easier for strangers to meet multiple partners for casual sexual encounters.

Professor Peter Kelly, director of public health in Teesside, said staff had found a link between the websites and the rise in cases, especially among young women.

‘Syphilis is a devastating disease. Anyone who has unprotected sex with casual partners is at high risk,’ he said.

‘There has been a fourfold increase in the number of syphilis cases detected with more young women being affected.

‘I don't get the names of people affected, just figures, and I saw that several of the people had met sexual partners through these sites.

‘Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex.

‘There is a rise in syphilis because people are having more sexual partners than 20 years ago and often do not use condoms.’

In Teesside there were 30 recorded cases of syphilis last year, but the true figures are expected to be much higher.

Syphilis cases in Britain fell due to the widespread use of condoms in the 1980s and '90s.

It can cause serious heart, respiratory tract and central nervous system damage.

But Health Protection Agency figures revealed there were 4,000 cases nationwide last year. And in 2008 there were 3,588 diagnosed cases.

The highest rates are in women aged 20 to 24 and men aged 25 to 34.

Research has shown that young people in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside were 25 per cent more likely to log onto social networking sites than those in the rest of Britain.

Studies have shown that adults are more likely to indulge in risky sexual behaviour with partners they meet on the internet.

Facebook denied members typically use the site to set up sexual encounters with strangers.

A spokesman said: 'While we have not had an opportunity to read this research, Facebook is not the place to meet people for casual sex, it is about connecting and sharing with your existing friends.'

original article here

Her Ex is Getting his Revenge - Online

Woman Says Her Name, Number Posted Online Inviting Sex

(MISSOURI, USA) She wanted him out of her life, but had no idea he would drag their breakup onto the Internet.

That’s what a Raytown woman said happened after she ended a relationship a month ago.

She said her former husband sent her a text message telling her to check out Craigslist. When she did, she found her name, address and phone number on the Internet site, inviting people to drop by her home for sex. (our cyberpath YidwithLid/Dunetz did this to his Target #1)

So many people responded that she was forced to change her phone number, leave her home and now she is seeking a permanent restraining order against the 44-year-old man.

KMBC's Bev Chapman reported that people who use Craigslist know that it's a place to buy, sell, trade and meet people. For this woman, it's apparently a vehicle for revenge.

"I think it's insane," she said. "I feel like I'm losing my mind over the whole deal. I'm not safe. I'm constantly looking around."

The woman, who did not want her identity revealed, said that she just learned of the posting last weekend. Her ex-husband's post was under the Kansas City list page, in the column for personals, in the casual encounters section.

The posting was crude and explicit. It described her as fit, disease and drug-free.

"Within 45 minutes, I had 17 to 18 texts and phone calls," she said. One man even showed up at her home while a police car was parked in the driveway.

This was not the first incident with her ex-husband in the more than five years since their divorce. The couple reunited for three months last year, and ended it again a month ago.

"He goes through cycles," she said. "He loves me, he hates me."

The post was removed from Craigslist. The site's operators sent a message that said they believed the post was clearly harassment.

A spokeswoman for the Jackson County Prosecutor's office said they have seen a few cases of Internet harassment, but they can do nothing for the woman without a police report.

SOURCE

A Slap in the Face(book)

By MARY TOOTHMAN

She had planned a life with him, she was devoted to his child. They had set up house together - she loved him.

But he ended the relationship. And there she was, alone and face-to-computer-screen with daily images of the man who broke her heart.

Once proudly listed for all of her Facebook friends to see as "in a relationship," Devon had to cope with a reality that failed-relationship victims have come to dread: the public Facebook status-change to "single."

There is certainly no shame in being single - but breakups in this age of fast-moving Internet updates involve a new spectrum of public involvement and awareness. Breaking up online, with an audience of hundreds, can intensify and prolong the agony.

The number of active members of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are increasing at an astounding rate, and the impact of personal, yet oh-so-public postings are taking a toll. Facebook, which reports about 400 million active users, is often the medium by which friends and family - and sometimes even those involved - find out about the end of a relationship.

Devon, a Lakeland office worker whose real name is not being used for privacy reasons, did not actually learn her boyfriend wanted out from looking at Facebook. But after their "it's over" talk, it was verified when he changed his status to "single," - for all of their friends and family members to see.

"The status change was hard to see when he did it," she said. "This entire situation has been hard. I am soon to be 26, and I just want to find the right guy to marry, have babies, and grow old with. Facebook has made it difficult, but I'm not sure it would have lessened the blow even if he wasn't on Facebook."

While touted by many as a wonderful resource for friendships, support, reunions of out-of-touch friends and family and an efficient and easy way to share photographs, videos and information, social networking clearly has its drawbacks.

Berney J. Wilkinson, an Internet-savvy therapist in Winter Haven, pays close attention to the impact social networking has on emotions and the overall well-being of the population. He encounters social networking-related issues regularly when working with patients, and recognizes the differences they bring in today's online society.

"In the age of social networking sites, what were once personal conversations are now publicly broadcast around the world," Wilkinson said. "Prior to sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and networking applications such as Twitter, relationships were confined to telephone calls and social engagements.

"Whenever a couple experienced a 'bump' in the relationship, they would talk it out over the phone or in person, and attempt to work out their differences," he said. "In fact, just the other day, I was talking with a patient about how we used to make mixed tapes after breakups, just to have a collection of songs that defined that time of our life."

Although it was painful, Devon could not stop herself from checking out information posted on the profile page of her ex-boyfriend after they split up.

"It is hard to see what other girls have to say now that it is public knowledge he is available again," she said. "One girl posted 'It's officially official!' It sucks to see that, but what can I do? I can't make him love me."

Society as a whole could stand to alter the way postings are made thoughtlessly - and so publicly, Wilkinson said.

"Today, information spreads way too fast, and social networking sites have become the 21st-century water cooler, where everything is discussed and made public."

People often quickly post remarks or comebacks on the sites that are misunderstood or hurtful, and words cannot be taken back once someone reads them. In many cases, relationships that might have previously been salvaged are irreparable once the process is publicly recorded, he said.

DOWNSIDES OF SOCIAL MEDIA
There are two major problems with the sites, said Wilkinson, who has nothing against them and, in fact, uses them himself.

Relationship issues are often handled poorly, and the personal touch is eliminated. People often impulsively change their relationship status too soon, he said, and sometimes the person who was left behind in a breakup has to view photos and reports about a new relationship.

Breakups have lost quite a bit of dignity with the Internet.

"Prior to social networking sites, breakups had to be done in person," Wilkinson said. "In fact, people were looked down upon if they ended a relationship by note or by phone. Today, people readily use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and texting to manage their relationships.

"This removes any remnants of the interpersonal relationship and often results in cold interactions that lack connotative affect," he said. "Because a person can break off a relationship via networking, they do not see the person's responses, effect or emotions. As such, messages come across as cold, hurtful, and impersonal, further damaging each other."

Even some of Devon's friends, who probably meant well, posted remarks on her Facebook page that were hurtful. While crying and grieving, it was difficult to read messages about her newly single status, such as "Good!" or "Now we can go out and party!" - when she really just needed support and for friends to listen.

ONLINE SUPPORT
Wilkinson said with precautions, the sites can be helpful.

"Facebook (and other social networking sites) can provide significant support for people following a breakup," he said. "Friends who might otherwise know nothing about one's situation may ask to spend time with them to help them recover. I think that this is a very positive role that the networking sites can play."

But users must take care to weigh words carefully, he said, and always remember who can read them - and how they might be interpreted.

"I spend a lot of time with teenagers, in particular, who are dealing with issues related to the sites," he said. "Our personal lives are now broadcast for the world to see. While they definitely can be used for good, sometimes people just do not understand how much is lost in the printed word."

He offers some advice for dealing with online breakups, although he recognizes many may have trouble sticking with it. "Take a break from the social networking site, or at least don't visit your ex's page," he said. "Too many times, emotions get the best of us and we end up saying, doing or feeling things that hurt us in the long run. As a result, I often recommend that people avoid as many situations as possible that can continue to create or maintain emotional wounds."

For those who are going to read anyway, he said, "You sort of have to know going into it that you are not going to like what you see."

Of particular importance, ironically, is a suggestion most unlikely to be followed - that people keep their personal lives more, well, personal.

"Take discussions offline," he said. "Do not get into arguments or try to fix things through posts or status updates. Discussions of this type create more problems.

"Texting and posting online removes personal touches, affects, and feeling in what you are trying to say. So much is left between the lines. So jump back to the '90s, and instead of texting the person with your phone, call them."

Devon said she was unable to stop cyberstalking her ex-boyfriend, and he finally blocked some of his content from her. But her friends and family members still have access, and she continues to check it out. Still, she said, she's determined to move on.

"I am working on letting go," she said. "I just keep telling myself something better will come along soon enough."

And when it does? Her friends are likely to find out when they see her Facebook status change - to "in a relationship."

original article here

Cybersex Chat Spirals Out of Control

Married 46-Year-Old Who Posed as Iraq-Bound Marine Says Online Relationship 'Became More Real to Me Than Real Life'

By JIM AVILA, GEOFF MARTZ and JOANNE NAPOLITANO

In the whirl of cyberspace, it was just one chance encounter...

"How r u doing"

"Hey tall, how r u"

A beautiful 18-year-old girl meets a handsome Iraq-bound Marine in a chat room. Who would have thought it would lead to a two-year affair, a love triangle and murder?

It would turn out that all was not quite as it seemed. That good-looking young Marine was actually balding 46-year old Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two. Montgomery said he was stuck in a dead-end job in Buffalo, N.Y., that was "slowly sucking the life out of me." And, he said, he and his wife were drifting apart.

Montgomery began spending a lot of time on the Internet. "I found it easier to talk to the people online than I could to my own wife," he told "20/20."

To this day, Montgomery can't quite explain what he was doing in a teen chat room on the popular game site "Pogo," in May 2005. But when a girl named "Talhotblond" started instant-messaging him, he decided to pretend he was 18 too.

"I kept thinking, well, we're never going to meet. ... I'll just play the game with her," he said.

Before long, the flirtation became a romance.

Talhotblond's instant messages revealed that her real name was Jessi, a softball-playing high school senior from West Virginia. She sent Montgomery photos that lived up to her screen name ... and then some.

"There were some ... very provocative poses," he said.

As they got to know each other, Montgomery asked for other photos: He wanted to see what she looked like at her graduation, or at that baseball game -- and Jessi would send them off to him. But in return, she wanted to see what he looked like too; so he sent her his photo from Marine boot camp.

The picture was 30 years out of date. Montgomery's screen name was Marinesniper, a nostalgic harkening back to the six years he spent in the military as a young man.

Today, he hints darkly of covert ops and dark deeds best unmentioned, but U.S. Marine records obtained by "20/20" show that although he qualified as a sharpshooter, he never trained as a sniper or saw action.

But for Jessi, he invented a younger, stronger, more virile version of himself, called "Tommy." "He was my height, 6 feet tall, had bright red hair," said Montgomery, "big shoulders, muscles and all that."

Cyberchat Consumes 'Marinesniper'
Instant messages recovered from his computer show that the online relationship began to consume Montgomery. He told "20/20" that this relationship "became more real to me than real life."

The feeling seemed to be mutual. Jessi and "Tommy" exchanged gifts, phone calls and love letters.

"I love you always and forever, Tommy," wrote Jessi.

"I have never felt this way," Montgomery responded.

Cyberspace Gets Complicated
In December 2005, the married 46-year old Tom Montgomery found himself proposing to Jessi, an 18-year old girl he had never actually met.

Jessi wrote back, "Yes, I will marry you Tommy.& Won't be long till it's Jessica Blair Montgomery."

Montgomery said he finally realized he was in way over his head. "I was panicking. ...The lies kept getting more and more."

He decided that his 18-year-old alter-ego -- now supposedly stationed in Iraq -- would have to die.

"I was going to kill him off. You know, say he was out on a routine patrol. ... But I couldn't do it," he said.

By that point, Montgomery said the relationship was more than a flirtation. "There was virtual sex going on in there between her and Tommy," he said.

While Montgomery said the virtual sex made him "feel kind of dirty," he was in too deep to sever ties with her.

"If I was smart, I would've just ended it, but it was like a, a drug that I needed every day," he said.

Montgomery seemed to be losing touch with reality. He wrote a note to himself: "On January 2, 2006 Tom Montgomery (46 years old) ceases to exist and is replaced by a 18-year old battle-scarred marine ... He is moving to West Virginia to be with the love of his life."

Online Fantasy World Crashes
Fate finally took a hand. In March 2006, Montgomery told "20/20" one of his daughters was using his computer when Jessi happened to instant message him. Montgomery's wife, alerted by her daughter, found a trove of love letters, photos and mementos from Jessi, including a pair of red panties. She sent Jessi a photo of her family and a letter.

"Let me introduce you to these people," she wrote. "The man in the center is Tom, my husband since 1989. ... He is 46 years old."

Montgomery said Jessi was horrified, and broke off the relationship immediately. "She sends me a text message and says, she hates me ... you should be put in jail for this," he told "20/20."

But Jessi also e-mails one of Montgomery's co-workers, a 22-year-old, good looking, part-time machinist named Brian Barrett, to see if it's really true.

Brian's screen name is "Beefcake" and as he consoled Jessi online, she seemed to find a better fit with him -- and perhaps a way to strike back at the combat Marine who wasn't.

Before long, Jessi was sending Brian her photos and the two had become a cyberitem. Marinesniper became consumed with jealousy -- and he wasn't about to take it lying down.

Marinesniper: Brian will pay in blood.

original article here

In the Clutches of a Cyberstalker

(our comments in DARK BLUE - Fighter)

The ‘gentle soul’ Jemma Rayner met through internet dating soon started menacing her with e-mails and calls. Days after his conviction, she reveals her chilling struggle to shake him off.


Anyone entering the pizzeria would have picked him out immediately as an arty middle-class type: shaven head, lanky body, green eyes. A gentle soul, I decided, after we’d talked for a few hours and he’d made me laugh with stories about his distant past in an anarchists’ commune. No, nothing alarming about him at all.

He was my first internet date and I had arranged to meet him in a public place - just as you’re supposed to do. It turned out he was a former theatre director, poet and landscape gardener who was now divorced and living in genteel impoverishment in north London. When he suggested a second date I was enthusiastic.

His profile on the Guardian Soulmates dating website - under the username Mystic - had caught my eye: he was “ethereal and sensate”, he had written, and naturally he claimed to have a mystical side. He loved America in midwinter, railroads and phones attached to walls. And, happily, he seemed to share my love of poetry and thrillers (declared on my own profile) and liked the fact that I was looking for a “fearless companion”.

But, in the psychopath’s woman however, excitement seeking may be seen as the liking of the “exciting edgy guy” or maybe just the outgoing lifestyle they both share. She doesn’t have to be a sky diver to have excitement seeking traits. She might simply like a guy who is powerful, dominant, and in control (which definitely describes the psychopath). She might like a guy who is equally as exploratory as she is, but the excitement seeking in him may be him riding a speeding motorcycle around curves of a mountain without a helmet just to feel the risk and the wind. She might find that “Johnny Depp” kind of guy “exhilarating” because he grabs life and runs with it.

Little does she know that this extraversion in him is not merely “edginess” or “adventurous” but is full blown pathology. People who are high in excitement seeking hate monotony. One thing is for sure in the psychopath’s women; just like they do not like a boring life, they do not like boring men. And as we know, psychopaths are anything but boring.

The attraction is sparked from shared extraversion. Psychopaths need (and seek) women who find their social dominance and extraversion sexy or desirable—because other women would only sense the extraversion as dangerous or overpowering. It takes a strong woman who wants to grab life and run with it, to find extraversion in a man non-threatening and even exciting!

We have explained why the issue of both of them being extraverts becomes two powerful magnets pointed towards each other. There is an undeniably strong pull. Although he is dominant, so is she. She tends to be an outgoing woman, which is also why she is confused about how someone as strong as herself ended up in a pathological relationship where she was dominated.

Women continually ask, “I’m so strong—why would I tolerate this?” Or “How could someone like me end up in a relationship like this?”

Sandra Brown, MA - WOMEN WHO LOVE PSYCHOPATHS

In retrospect, of course, I see the irony implicit in my romantic shopping list: Mystic was indeed fearless - to the point that it took two court cases finally to expel him from my life. The last one was on Wednesday, at Highbury Corner magistrates’ court in north London. I couldn’t bear to attend; I know the result only because a policeman called me to say Greg Downing had been found guilty of harassment and breach of a restraining order and conditional discharge.

It’s not that I was reckless. Before the second date with Mystic Greg I had tried to do some research on him - not easy, as he was American and had lived abroad for most of his adult life. All I discovered was that he had a job teaching adults; so the next time we met I asked him outright whether he had ever been convicted of a criminal offense.

He replied, in his mid-Atlantic drawl, “only for jay-walking” - and kissed me. And he said we could be each other’s muse. I took a deep breath, decided to trust him - and our relationship became, perhaps too quickly, more intimate.

To keep women from being able to think things through and to respond to red flags, the psychopath induces fast paced relationships, whirlwinds of dating intensity, and uses emotional suffocation techniques. Most women found themselves unable to slow down the race to the altar, to their beds, or into their homes. Since psychopaths are extraverts, they are likely to be persistent (if not forceful) in their pursuit of women.

While this may seem just “dream-like” to her, it’s pure manipulation and planning on his part. Couple his plan to fast-forward the relationship with his poor impulse control and you have a relationship rushing ahead at the speed of light.

Sandra Brown, MA - WOMEN WHO LOVE PSYCHOPATHS

Then, after we’d been seeing each other for a few weeks, little warning flags started to pop up. One day, over dinner, Greg announced that he wanted to retrain as a counsellor for people who’d been abducted by aliens. I nearly dropped my forkful of tofu curry (like me, he was a vegan).

Since psychopaths rarely behave in the beginning how they are going to behave later on, women get the positive behaviors up-front that they learned “works” when luring women into a new relationship. Psychopaths largely “learn” these skills through mirroring or mimicking since they are not part of their true emotional repertoire. Some psychopaths say they have learned how to lure... so they understand the linguistics (what to say to her), behaviors (how to act), and romantic gestures (what women like). Then he adds his own irresistible charm and vortex-like suction to draw her in.

Sandra Brown, MA - WOMEN WHO LOVE PSYCHOPATHS

Later, he told me 9/11 was a CIA conspiracy.

I have seen N's hold truly odd beliefs and base expectations on them, and become truly confused and shattered when those bizarre expectations do not come to pass. I knew an N who believed if she had certain thoughts for a certain amount of days she would win the lottery. ... I have seen N's fully expect jobs that they hadn't a chance of getting; expect whole careers to materialize without skills or practice; expect relationships with people they barely knew, etc. - and to be truly stunned when these things don't happen. This is all besides their penchant for paranoia and conspiracy theories and medical quackery and "unusual" religious practices/beliefs.

original

Having spent much of 2002 working on documentaries about the aftermath of that Al-Qaeda attack, I knew there was no way I could be involved with someone who peddled such a ridiculous theory. True, I had enjoyed getting to know Mystic Greg, but our views were incompatible. So I gave him the heave-ho.

I thought that was the end of it. First, there were e-mails regretting the end of our brief relationship. They pleaded for another chance, insisting we’d both regret it if we didn’t try again.

Foolishly, I responded, not wanting to be unkind.

Nothing I wrote gave him grounds for hope but the e-mails continued, gradually becoming stranger, darker, more sexual. One, written when he was strung out on caffeine (he said), wound its way through phone sex, obesity and voodoo. It frightened and disgusted me.

The psychopath is also likely to play mind-games with her about the trust and distrust issues. Even if she catches him, he is likely to allege she didn’t see what she saw, didn’t read what she read, and didn’t hear what she heard.

Sandra Brown, MA - WOMEN WHO LOVE PSYCHOPATHS

Then the phone calls started, several a day. I told him again and again that it was over. But he didn’t stop. There were frequent calls in the middle of the night from a withheld number. When I picked up, there was silence on the other end of the line. After four silent calls at two in the morning, I rang him at 8am and asked him what he thought he could achieve through this harassment.

“Closure,” he said, “I want closure. I need to meet.” I said that wasn’t possible. “Well, in that case,” he said, “I want you to buy me a gift subscription to Soulmates. I want to meet someone new. It’s the least you can do.”

I refused this extraordinary request and put the phone down. By then I was finding it impossible to concentrate on work. I had a bar put on the line so that nobody could call from a withheld number. I also called the police, who took my concerns seriously: within 10 minutes I had been contacted by the telephone investigation unit, who took a statement over the phone.

But as soon as I’d put it down, Greg called again and left the following message: “I have to speak to you - you can either call me or I am just going to come over. I am sorry, this is just the way things are. Get back to me if you want or I will come round in about two to three hours. I’ve said my piece and I will either talk to you or come over.”

Seriously alarmed, I phoned the police again who immediately warned him that if he came near me he would be arrested. Greg had agreed to “leave town” and not contact me, they told me. But on the same day he e-mailed and phoned - ostensibly to apologise.

What a narcissistically defended person seems to do instead of apologizing is to attempt a repair of the grandiose self in the guise of 'making reparation' with the object.

original

At this point I decided to let the website know what was going on. But whom should I contact? There was no name; no phone number; nothing at all on the website about its safety policy. I sent an e-mail to the only address I could find. No response. I sent another. Nothing. I sent a third.

At last: a reply dropped into my inbox from Guardian Soulmates Support. It thanked me for my three e-mails but said:

“We don’t generally get involved in offline disputes between members, simply because we have no way of establishing the truth of any allegations made.”

After more anxious e-mails from me, my anonymous Soulmates contact claimed that he had tried to call the police but hadn’t got through to the right officer.

For a week or so the calls ceased. I went to Wales with my family. Halfway through the holiday, on a fine August morning, Greg phoned seven times. Furious that he felt he had the right to disrupt my life, I cracked and dialed his number. I asked him to leave me alone. What he said chilled me: “You’re not at home, are you?” When I phoned the police again, the investigating officer ticked me off for contacting Greg and failing to report his earlier calls: “I don’t like it when they disrespect the police. Come in and give a statement.”

Back in London, the night before I went to the police station, Greg phoned me four times. After midnight the phone rang for 20 minutes. The next day he was arrested and apparently broke down under questioning - “blubbing like a baby”, as the officer put it - and admitted that he had been convicted of a similar offense in America some 10 years earlier and had been served with a restraining order.

Such was the efficiency of the community safety unit at Islington police station that Greg appeared in court a day later. He was found guilty of harassment, given a conditional discharge and served with a restraining order not to contact me. I contacted Soulmates, this time asking it to remove him from the dating website.

There was no answer for five days - during which Greg was able to contact other women who were unaware of his history.

When I e-mailed Soulmates yet again, my anonymous respondent asked for a crime reference number and said details would be checked with police.

I noticed that the subject line of my e-mail had been altered: “Harassment from another member” had been replaced with the anodyne “I had a bad experience on this site”.

Six days on I was given the name of the person who would be dealing with my complaint - but no phone number, despite numerous requests. Finally, more than two weeks after I had first told Soulmates that Greg had been found guilty of harassment, his details were taken off the website.

I then fired off a complaint about its negligent attitude to members’ safety. Seven weeks after I had first contacted the site about my concerns, a real person with a name and phone number finally contacted me. Kate Morgan Locke, MD of Guardian Ventures, was profusely apologetic: there had been “a catalogue of mistakes”, she admitted, and the website would be changed to include information on harassment and a page for reporting incidents.

When I asked why Greg hadn’t been suspended immediately, she told me: “There was no clear way for someone to flag up a more serious issue than a browser not working - and thus what happened to you wasn’t recognised as a serious incident.”

Thankfully, the website was indeed quickly revamped. So, several months later, reassured by all the security procedures that had been put in place, I decided to try my luck again. There were several immediate replies - one of them from a man with a blurry photograph who called himself “Serpentine” and said he was a foreign correspondent who had worked for both The Guardian and The Times. He described himself as “suffused with wit, intelligent, but never pedantic”.

I thought he sounded rather full of himself - especially when he described remodeling a friend’s garden Japanese-style - but I had worked with foreign correspondents before and found most of them to be great fun. So I gave Serpentine the benefit of the doubt and e-mailed him back.

Because of his work as a journalist, he said that was concealing his profile from “all but my favourites because I’d like to exercise a little discretion and not risk anyone who knows me reading my profile”. Fair enough, I thought, making a note of his real Christian name: Dominic. I was sufficiently intrigued to Google Dominics linked to The Guardian and The Times, but couldn’t find anyone who fitted his self-description.

Then his profile disappeared. A week or two later he was back as “Sirocco” - with his change of username explained away as a “technical hitch at Guardian headquarters”. He said he had been busy covering the American elections. I asked if Dominic was his real name. He e-mailed back, saying: “Today my name is Dominic; tomorrow my name is Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice” - at which point I decided he was a jerk and didn’t bother to reply.

Then came another e-mail, with a poem by Keats, saying he had been riding in the Forest of Dean. And more poems in e-mails that grew ever longer as mine became shorter. Eventually, tiring of his e-mails, I asked him to phone instead. He e-mailed to say that he was about to visit his sister in America: “She’s battling with stomach cancer and we’re all very, very concerned about her.”

(Just read some of the exposes here - Nathan Thomas, Ed Hicks, Gareth Rodger, Robert Darden... etc - to see how COMMON this sort of excuse (LIE) is to weasel out of something for a Cyberpath - Fighter)

Then, one Sunday, he phoned. “I’m calling from my sister’s place,” he said. I asked how she was and he said she was better. And he laughed - a slightly unhinged laugh that I thought I recognized. “Greg,” I said, “is this Greg?” There was a long silence before he replied: “No, my name is Dominic.”

He insisted that he was a well established journalist, now doing travel writing, gave me his surname and told me to Google him. (The name checked out; it was only later that I discovered he had assumed the name of a real and blameless travel writer.) But I had a sick feeling in my stomach. When I tried dialling 1471, Dominic’s number was withheld. Could Greg be back?

The next day I asked the head of security at Telecom Express (the company that handles safety issues for Soulmates) to check Sirocco’s billing address. A few hours later I had my answer: “Dominic” was Greg Downing. I felt violated. I was also horrified that he had invented a new identity to harass me again. He had evaded all the security procedures by giving a false name, false e-mail address and false photo. But he had used his real credit card. (William Michael Barber, yidwithlid and Ed Hicks did/ do this one -- as do others)

Greg was picked up the next morning, appeared in court and was granted bail. The police, again admirably efficient, came round within hours to install a panic alarm in my home. The fact that they considered this necessary frightened me more than anything that had gone before. When the case went ahead last Wednesday, he pleaded guilty; he will be sentenced on January 14.

I certainly hope he is no longer a menace to anyone: Soulmates has contacted all the other women whom Greg had e-mailed through the site to warn them about him.

But how many more Gregs are out there, creating false identities and then stalking their victims under the cover of dating websites?

Would I try internet dating again? Probably not. But, while I was being cyberstalked, through the same website I met someone else - and he seemed rather wonderful. Nothing has occurred since to change my mind. We’re offline now, we see each other regularly and our cyber identities no longer exist.

Jemma Rayner is a pseudonym

Small talk and online lies (between Jemma & Dominic)

2.25pm, November 8 2008
Dear Jemma, Dominic here. Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. My profile was twice wiped clean owing to a technical hitch, would you believe? In any case, the past few days have been frenzied. I was in the office covering the election on Tuesday and that extended over into Thursday with barely a breathing space. How are you?

2.43pm, November 8
Hi Dominic, I’m very well, thanks. Hope you are well too - must have been fun, covering the dawn of a new age. What a great man he seems to be.

Anyway, do get in touch soon - Jemma

2.55pm, November 8
Dear Jemma, I would have preferred a woman in office, but it is a landmark, no doubt about it. I look forward to Oprah standing in 2012.

3.20pm, November 8
Ah yes, but why not Condi? Is Dominic your real name, btw? Or is it an alias? I promise not to tell anybody - honest.

4.24pm, November 8
Dear Jemma, Why not Condi indeed? Though I see her as a little inflexible for high office

. . . Today my name is Dominic; tomorrow my name is Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice . . .

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Prostitute Held Hostage by Facebook Killer has Regrets

My guilt at letting that evil man walk free: Prostitute held hostage for 15 hours by Facebook killer speaks of regret

By James Slack and Paul Sims

A former prostitute who was held hostage by Facebook murderer Peter Chapman and repeatedly raped at knifepoint during a 15-hour ordeal has spoken of her bitter regret at allowing him to walk free.

The woman, who wishes to stay anonymous, was a 26-year-old drug addict when she was picked up in Liverpool's red light district by the serial sex attacker in 2003.

He took her to a squalid flat nearby where he raped her over and over again - threatening to kill her with a 12-inch knife if she refused to give in to his depraved demands.

Chapman, then 26, was already a high-risk sex offender. He was charged with kidnap and rape but when it came to a trial she could not bear to see his face again and the case collapsed.

In October last year the double rapist, who was jailed for seven years in 1996 for attacking two other prostitutes, lured 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall to her death after 'meeting' her on Facebook.

Chapman should have been monitored by the police but had been missing from his registered address in Liverpool for more than a year.

Yesterday, as Merseyside Police referred their supervision of Chapman to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, his earlier victim spoke of her regret at not being strong enough to face court. Had he been convicted it is likely he would still be in prison and Ashleigh still alive.

'I wish I'd gone through with the trial,' she told the Mail. 'When the police told me what he'd done my initial feeling was guilt. I felt I was kind of responsible for a young kid losing her life. I didn't deserve what happened to me, but at least I was an adult and I knew the dangers of what I was doing. She was a baby.'

'I'd come to see it as closure,' she said. 'I wanted to stand up in the witness box and look him in the eyes. That way he'd know that I was the one in control now.

'He's a horrible, twisted, evil little man who should never be let out again.'

When Chapman picked her up, they agreed a £60 fee for sex.

He drove her to a nearby block of flats. Once inside the shabby apartment he told her to undress. When she demanded payment first he pulled out a knife.

'He put silver-coloured duct tape over my mouth and tied my hands together with some more. I was crying and begging him not to do it, but he was so much stronger and taller than me. I was only about six-and-a-half stone then and wafer-thin.'

Within minutes he was raping her. Bizarrely, near the end of her ordeal he told her how sorry he was and that he had not meant to hurt her. He then raped her again.

Chapman forced his victim back into the car and dropped her off close to where he had picked her up.

Detectives were able to trace him from her description of the flat.

Chapman would later be downgraded from a high-risk sex offender to medium risk. He stayed in Liverpool and began a relationship with 25-year-old single mother Dyanne Littler.

Miss Littler, who has a son but not with Chapman, ended their relationship when she discovered he was on the sex offenders' register.

original article here

Online Dater Threatens to Rape Women

Cyberbully Nigel Wilson has been jailed for abusing women he met on a dating website.

A court heard Wilson identified vulnerable women, including several from the city and East Devon who cannot be named for legal reasons, who he then intimidated and abused over the internet and by phone.

Wilson had met and had brief flings with some of the five women and when they split up he poured "venom into their wounds" said a judge.

Wilson started a two-year jail term yesterday after he admitted one charge of harassment and four counts of sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent or menacing messages.

Prosecutor Ann Hampshire submitted a report to Exeter Crown Court which said Wilson "desired to have sex with the women" and felt jealous and possessive towards them, and that turned to "nastiness".

David Evans, in mitigation, said: "He went on the website, Plenty of Fish, searching for love and a relationship but found the reality fell far short of the picture he allowed himself to paint in his mind."

Wilson, from Winkebury, Hampshire, pestered the women and then "put them in fear" by making vile comments about "raping them, hoping their children would die" and describing the women using offensive terms. He asked a young victim if she had a "high sex drive" and whether she "liked a lot of sex". When she rejected his advances, he used a racially offensive term to describe her. The victim was in court and was in tears as she gave evidence.

He also abused another woman when their "fling" came to an end, threatening to "stab her" and "rape her" which left her extremely frightened.

Mrs Hampshire said all the victims were members of the Plenty of Fish dating website and Wilson used different usernames to dish out "appalling abuse".

Judge Stephen Wildblood QC jailed Wilson and also made a Sexual Offences Prevention Order and Restraining Order for an unlimited period.

original article here

New Facebook Friends? Might be the Feds!

by R. Lardner

The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.

U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.

Think you know who’s behind that “friend” request? Think again. Your new “friend” just might be the FBI.

The document, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, makes clear that U.S. agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target’s friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips.

Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects’ alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree — people posing with jewelry, guns or fancy cars — can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the Justice Department document when it sued the agency and five others in federal court. The 33-page document underscores the importance of social networking sites to U.S. authorities. The foundation said it would publish the document on its Web site on Tuesday.

With agents going undercover, state and local police coordinate their online activities with the Secret Service, FBI and other federal agencies in a strategy known as “deconfliction” to keep out of each other’s way.

“You could really mess up someone’s investigation because you’re investigating the same person and maybe doing things that are counterproductive to what another agency is doing,” said Detective Frank Dannahey of the Rocky Hill, Conn., Police Department, a veteran of dozens of undercover cases.

A decade ago, agents kept watch over AOL and MSN chat rooms to nab sexual predators. But those text-only chat services are old-school compared with today’s social media, which contain mountains of personal data, photographs, videos and audio clips — a potential treasure trove of evidence for cases of violent crime, financial fraud and much more.

The Justice Department document, part of a presentation given in August by top cybercrime officials, describes the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other services to government investigators. It does not describe in detail the boundaries for using them.

“It doesn’t really discuss any mechanisms for accountability or ensuring that government agents use those tools responsibly,” said Marcia Hoffman, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The group sued in Washington to force the government to disclose its policies for using social networking sites in investigations, data collection and surveillance.

The foundation also obtained an Internal Revenue Service document that instructs employees on how to use to use Internet tools — including social networking sites — to investigate taxpayers. The document states that IRS employees are barred from using deception or creating fake accounts to get information, a directive the group says is commendable.

Covert investigations on social-networking services are legal and governed by internal rules, according to Justice Department officials. But they would not say what those rules are.

The Justice Department document raises a legal question about a social-media bullying case in which U.S. prosecutors charged a Missouri woman with computer fraud for creating a fake MySpace account — effectively the same activity that undercover agents are doing, although for different purposes.

The woman, Lori Drew, helped create an account for a fictitious teen boy on MySpace and sent flirtatious messages to a 13-year-old neighborhood girl in his name. The girl hanged herself in October 2006, in a St. Louis suburb, after she received a message saying the world would be better without her.

A jury in California, where MySpace has its servers, convicted Drew of three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization because she was accused of violating MySpace’s rules against creating fake accounts. But last year a judge overturned the verdicts, citing the vagueness of the law.

“If agents violate terms of service, is that ’otherwise illegal activity’?” the document asks. It doesn’t provide an answer.

Facebook’s rules, for example, specify that users “will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.” Twitter’s rules prohibit its users from sending deceptive or false information. MySpace requires that information for accounts be “truthful and accurate.”

A former U.S. cybersecurity prosecutor, Marc Zwillinger, said investigators should be able to go undercover in the online world the same way they do in the real world, even if such conduct is barred by a company’s rules. But there have to be limits, he said.

In the face-to-face world, agents can’t impersonate a suspect’s spouse, child, parent or best friend. But online, behind the guise of a social-networking account, they can.

“This new situation presents a need for careful oversight so that law enforcement does not use social networking to intrude on some of our most personal relationships,” said Zwillinger, whose firm does legal work for Yahoo and MySpace.

Undercover operations aren’t necessary if the suspect is reckless. Federal authorities nabbed a man wanted on bank fraud charges after he started posting Facebook updates about the fun he was having in Mexico.

Maxi Sopo, a native of Cameroon living in the Seattle area, apparently slipped across the border into Mexico in a rented car last year after learning that federal agents were investigating the alleged scheme. The agents initially could find no trace of him on social media sites, and they were unable to pin down his exact location in Mexico. But they kept checking and eventually found Sopo on Facebook.

While Sopo’s online profile was private, his list of friends was not. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Scoville began going through the list and was able to learn where Sopo was living. Mexican authorities arrested Sopo in September. He is awaiting extradition to the U.S.

The Justice document describes how Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have interacted with federal investigators: Facebook is “often cooperative with emergency requests,” the government said. MySpace preserves information about its users indefinitely and even stores data from deleted accounts for one year. But Twitter’s lawyers tell prosecutors they need a warrant or subpoena before the company turns over customer information, the document says.

“Will not preserve data without legal process,” the document says under the heading, “Getting Info From Twitter ... the bad news.”

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The chief security officer for MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, said MySpace doesn’t want to be the company that stands in the way of an investigation. “That said, we also want to make sure that our users’ privacy is protected and any data that’s disclosed is done under proper legal process,” Nigam said.

MySpace requires a search warrant for private messages less than six months old, according to the company.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company has put together a handbook to help law enforcement officials understand “the proper ways to request information from Facebook to aid investigations.”

The Justice document includes sections about its own lawyers. For government attorneys taking cases to trial, social networks are a “valuable source of info on defense witnesses,” they said. “Knowledge is power. ... Research all witnesses on social networking sites.”

But the government warned prosecutors to advise their own witnesses not to discuss cases on social media sites and to “think carefully about what they post.”

It also cautioned federal law enforcement officials to think prudently before adding judges or defense counsel as “friends” on these services.

“Social networking and the courtroom can be a dangerous combination,” the government said.

original article here

Policeman Caught Stalking Ex-Girlfriend

(FLORIDA) A Bunnell police officer who was fired is facing charges of using his work-issued computer to stalk his ex-girlfriend.

The complaints about officer Russell Nasby began in October, according to an Internal Affairs report released by the Bunnell Police Department.

The report says an ex-girlfriend told a Flagler County deputy that Nasby was stalking her though e-mails, phone calls and Facebook.

The ex-girlfriend refused to press charges, but a subsequent investigation revealed that the veteran officer had performed background checks on his ex-girlfriend, her new boyfriend and the deputy who first investigated the stalking allegations, according to the report.

Deputies searched Nasby's work computer and concluded that 75 percent of his Internet activity was for his personal use, according to the report.

Document: Officer's Disciplinary Action Report

The report says that Nasby visited dating sites such as Match.com, pharmaceutical sites that sell Viagra, and gaming sites on FloridaLottery.com.

Nasby recorded more than 3,600 visits to personal and dating Web sites while in his patrol car, while he was suppose to be on duty, according to the report.

The reports says that Nasby admitted to going to improper Web sites while on patrol. He also confessed to contacting his ex-girlfriend after she had asked him to stop.

Nasby's stepfather, Bob Costello, said that his 46-year-old stepson moved out of the home his address was listed as two weeks ago.

"I don't know anything about (Nasby's termination)," Costello said.

original article here

Stalking Via Your Own Cellphone!

(slightly off-topic but important information! EOPC)

Woman's Ex-Boyfriend Stalked Her for Years Using Software on Her Cell Phone

By LISA FLETCHER and COLE KAZDIN

Technology makes it easier to connect with the people in your life, but it can also enable others to connect to you without your knowledge.

People can learn all about your private life through your cell phone, and one woman said she was stalked for three years because of it. Susan, who asked that her real name be kept private because of worry over her safety, said her ex-boyfriend tormented her using only her cell phone to do it.

"He knew where I was all the time," Susan said. "If I was at dinner somewhere. He would text me and ask me how dinner was. I had no idea how he knew where I was."

Most people know that the GPS in a cell phone can track your every move, but that's just the beginning. Widely available software that can be installed on almost any cell phone can track not just your whereabouts but also your private conversations and personal information.

"I thought I was going crazy," Susan said. "It's just unnerving knowing that somebody 24/7 knows where you're at, what you're talking about, what's going on, everything about you."

At the time, Susan didn't know that her ex-boyfriend installed spying software on her phone when she wasn't looking. Once installed, he could be anywhere -- even in a different state -- and follow her every move.

But what was worse, it didn't just track her whereabouts. He could listen in on her phone calls, read her text messages and turn her personal cell phone into a bugging device. From anywhere, he could activate her speaker phone and listen to everything she was doing.

"He would text me, 'How was dinner? Was the date good?'" she recalled.

Susan's ex-boyfriend would also show up places where she was. She feared for her life and called the police, who put her in protective custody. When her ex-boyfriend violated the restraining order, he was put in jail on felony stalking charges.

"He had every intention of killing me," she said. "Within 20 minutes of getting out of jail, he was outside my hotel room."

Security expert Robert Siciliano says he gets countless e-mails from victims of cell phone spying.

"When somebody remotely activates your phone, you're not going to know it and they can use that phone to monitor the conversations in the room you're in," he said. "Your phone could be sitting next to you while you are watching TV, and somebody can actually log into your phone and can actually watch what you are watching on television."

Cell Phone Spying Software Affordable, Powerful
A 2009 report from the Department of Justice found that one-quarter of the 3.4 million stalking victims in the U.S. reported cyberstalking, and GPS technology and other forms of electronic monitoring were used to stalk one in 13 victims.

"GMA" found thousands of sites promoting cell phone spying software, boasting products to "catch cheating spouses," "bug meeting rooms" or "track your kids." Basic cell phone spying software costs as little as $50, but for a higher price the software enables anyone to do exactly what Susan's ex-boyfriend did.

"Someone can easily install a spyware program on your phone that allows them to see every single thing you do all day long, via the phone's video camera," Siciliano said.

"GMA" spent $350 to get the features that remotely activate speaker phones, intercept live calls and instantly notify you every time a call is made.

We installed the software on a colleague's phone, with her permission, and sent her out to see how it worked. We were able to intercept and listen in to a live phone call without her knowledge, and she didn't even have to be on the phone for us to spy on her. We could also turn her phone into a remote listening device no matter where she was. If the phone was on, we heard everything she said.

"This is no sci-fi flick," Siciliano said. "This is the real thing and it's happening to people right now."

It's perfectly legal to sell the software but not necessarily legal to use it, although that's in the fine print.

For people like Susan, the laws, which vary from state to state, haven't caught up to the technology. Police say there aren't specific laws on the books to address this type of stalking, as opposed to the physical stalking that led to the restraining order.

When it comes to cell phone spying, "The cops kept telling me there's nothing we can do," Susan said. "He's not breaking the law."

Protect Yourself from Cell Phone Spying
Susan changed her number 10 times, but it didn't help because the spyware was on the phone itself.

"I'd go and change my number at the cell phone store, and he would be calling me on my way home on my new cell phone number."

After three terrifying years, Susan realized the software was on her phone. She got a new one and it seems the nightmare has ended.

"You're never the same after this," she said. "I think you become a lot more aware of your surroundings, you're not as trusting. You just make it day to day and keep living."

Safety experts say that if you believe you've been the target of cyberstalking, trust your instincts and ask for help.

Indications that spyware might be on your cell phone:

• The screen lights up for no reason
• The flash on the camera goes off when you're not taking a picture
• You notice ambient noise in the background when you're on a phone call
• You repeatedly get strange text messages from an unknown origin

Tips:
Never let your cell phone out of your control -- spyware can be installed on it in as little as a few minutes.

If you think spyware is on your phone, security expert Robert Siciliano says you have two options: Get a a new phone or call your cell phone service provider. They will tell you how to reinstall the operating system. Reinstalling the operating system should wipe out the spyware.

original article here

Man Arrested for Spam Threat

by Bruce Golding

Maybe he thought their slogan changed from the company you keep to the company you cheat.

A broke former New York Life employee was busted on charges he tried to extort $200,000 from the insurance firm by threatening to smear it with a spam attack of 6 million e-mails, the feds announced yesterday.

Anthony Digati, 52, allegedly vowed to use a "spam service" and his skills as a "huge social networker" to drag the company "through the muddiest waters imaginable."

The Chino, Calif., man also told his ex-employer that the price would go to $3 million if it failed to pay up by yesterday, according to a Manhattan federal court complaint.

Digati, who was declared bankrupt last year with more than $1.2 million in debts, allegedly targeted the company after becoming "dissatisfied" with the performance of his own universal life-insurance policy.

original article here

Facebook gives Murderer 'Motive'

A woman was stabbed repeatedly by her ex-lover after he saw a picture of her with her new boyfriend on Facebook.

Paul Bristol, 25, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering Camille Mathurasingh, 27, at her east London home in April 2009.

The IT technician, who lived in Trinidad and Tobago, flew to London within two weeks of seeing the picture and killed the accountant.

Bristol, who denied murder, is expected to be sentenced later this month.

The court heard he could not accept "it was over" and had come to "win" his girlfriend back.

Bristol, who worked for the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Administration, and Miss Mathurasingh met during the three years she worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

'He looked evil'
After her return to London in 2008 their relationship continued through emails and telephone calls, but last year she began having doubts about their future and decided to go out with her new boyfriend.

Simon Denison QC, prosecuting, said: "It would appear she tried to bring about the end of her relationship with this defendant gently and did not tell him about her new boyfriend.

"He found out when he saw pictures of them together on Facebook.

"He would say he could not accept it was over and he decided to come here to see if he could win her back."

The day before her murder, she told her sister Nadine that she had to flee her home as Bristol had arrived from Trinidad, but she saw him following her.

Nadine said of the conversation: "She said she looked into her rear-view mirror. She said he looked evil."

Metropolitan Police said they caught Bristol when he fled on foot after a collision between his car and a black cab in east London.

When stopped he had blood over his face and clothes and admitted killing his girlfriend. He claimed he committed manslaughter through provocation.

Following the verdict, the victim's mother Indra Mathurasingh said: "Justice has been served for Camille. She was snatched from us and we are empty without her."

original article here

Online revenge sites latest landmine in modern dating game

Online revenge sites latest landmine in modern dating game

Bad dates beware — all your misdeeds and misbehaviour are a click away for all to see.

If you have dumped someone unceremoniously, cheated, lied or otherwise been a sleaze or a stalker, read all about it on the Internet.

Posting dating and mating horror stories of wrongdoing is the latest way to exact revenge on exes in the modern dating game.

A website owned by two entrepreneurs was the latest venue to out bad boys and girls.

The site includes stories written by the jilted about their lovers’ wrongdoings and, in many cases, the photos and full names of the so-called players and psychos and their tales of torment.

The stories are nasty.

People are called out as promiscuous, as sexually-transmitted-infection spreaders, drug addicts, cheaters, deadbeat dads, con artists, broke bums, prostitutes, sleazebags, dirtbags, all manner of bags, cyberpaths or e-whores. (The latter two are newish terms — serial online daters who prey on the vulnerable via Lava Life, match.com, or plentyoffish.com, to name just three online dating sites.)

At these sites anyone can post a story with photos about someone they’ve loved, lusted and lost.

"It seems to me that the good outweighs the bad," says site co-owner.

Memberships are free, and so far 410 people from across Canada and the United States have signed up since May, when the site was launched. Both owners claim it’s getting 300,000 hits a day.
Those who post must sign an online agreement, vowing they will only post information that is true. Gordon admits they have no way of knowing if the 100 and counting posts are 100 per cent accurate.

"It would be great if there weren’t any jerks who abused our site but if there weren’t any jerks, there would be no need for our site," he says. "It’s a Catch-22."

However, these sites have the potential to do a lot of good helping singles find out about a bad date’s past.

Think of it as a high-tech way to weed out the weasels.

Stoptheact joins other revenge sites for the unlucky in love. At dontdatehimgirl.com and Liarscheatsandbastards, retaliation is also the special of the day.

Consider this e-scorning just one of the many perils of dating. No longer are your (alleged) misdeeds fodder for circles of friends and co-workers in the immediate vicinity. Instead, your questionable antics, true or otherwise, are posted for the world to see.

On some sites those who are outed can retort, right on the same page. Others can chime in, too — which they do, in droves.

Additionally, some posters have recently found their IP addresses and emails 'spoofed' so people who may have nothing to do with the posts are wrongly held responsible. This has created a real problem for the courts to track down who really posted what..

All of which makes for a weird, yet mildly entertaining back-and-forth read and, ultimately, compelling insight into contemporary dating.

One wonders how all this nastiness advances humanity in any way. I mean, how much name-calling and "he said, she said" can anyone take?

And what are the long-term consequences of all this kissing and e-telling?

Imagine, for example, an employer googling their prospective hire’s name and up pops "deadbeat dad with herpes," or "gold-digging whore."

It wouldn’t be pretty. Misdeeds may last one, maybe two minutes tops, but an e-trail is forever.

On the one hand, it can genuinely be a service. On the other, when you’re in a breakup and you’ve been hurt and wronged, you may lash out and regret it soon after, says the Toronto-based writer. And if you post something nasty, be prepared to be posted on yourself and expect the story to be worse, she warns.

"It’s a two-way street. It’s a very dangerous game."

Consider the story of Todd Hollis. Very unflattering stories about the Pittsburgh criminal lawyer were posted on dontdatehimgirl.com he claims were defamatory, according to a story by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. So three years ago, Hollis, then 38, filed a lawsuit against the site’s owner and operator, Tasha Joseph, then 33, a former Miami Herald columnist who started the site. (Hollis has also started his own website to fight back, classaction-dontdatehimgirl.com.) (Hollis' site is now defunct and his lawsuit was dismissed by the courts!)

original from Calgary Herald

(NOTE: EOPC is NOT a revenge site. It is an informational and educational site providing information, validation (important since all cyberpaths INSIST their victim is lying when they are caught) and hopefully a small bit of closure for those abused by cyberpaths. - THE TRUTH IS A 100% LEGAL DEFENSE TO CLAIMS OF DEFAMATION OR SLANDER - All our posters are legally liable for EVERYTHING POSTED as per their agreement; about their cyberpath. EOPC