U.K. Comedian Calls Police Following Online Threats about His Children Online

(U.K.) Comedian Dom Joly has called the police after a Twitter account was set up by an internet 'troll' abusing his two children.

The 43-year-old star of Trigger Happy TV, who has an 11-year-old daughter Parker and seven-year-old son Jackson, was sent the string of abusive tweets about his children's appearance and claiming they had serious illnesses.

He has now warned the account holder, who set up @deathtojolykids, that he faces a spell in prison for 'trolling.' The comic, who is married to Stacey and now lives in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, said on Twitter on Wednesday: 'This one crossed the line and I'm going to police.'

The account has now been suspended by Twitter.

The 'troll' who set up the account reportedly called himself Mickey McChin and his personal Twitter account is @Mr-McChin. However, @Mr-McChin insisted he had nothing do with the account and has said that the IP addresses will not match up when Twitter releases them.

Earlier this week, 'troller' Sean Duffy, 25, from Reading, was jailed for 18 weeks after posted vile abuse on Facebook and memorial sites dedicated to dead children.



And, last month Dragons' Den star Duncan Bannatyne told how he was 'living in a nightmare' after a Twitter stalker, calling himself Russian Yuri Vasilyev, issued death threats against him and his 25-year-old daughter Hollie.

In a string of tweets this week Mr Joly tweeted: '@MetPoliceUk I would like to report a death threat to my kids - this is the twitter account set up- @deathtojolykids.'

He then warned the account holder, telling him on Twitter: '@deathtojolykids report just gone to met police...enjoy.



Mr Joly, who has an 11-year-old daughter Parker and seven-year-old son Jackson, was sent the string of abusive tweets about his children

'Police have been contacted, I have screen grabs, I'll let u know what happens - you can arrest someone who issues a death threat - which you have. I will have you arrested, trust me.

'He said it was 'very easy to trace his IP address' and warned the troller 'You need to read the news my friend - up to 16 months prison'.

He added: 'OK formal report made to police- can't wait until they track him down.'



'Already had reply from police and crime ref number re @deathtojolykids very impressed with Cirencester police, more news soon.' Mr Joly added: 'It's c**ts like @Mr-McChin who go on about this sort of stuff being 'banter' that encourage people making death threats to kids.'

A spokesman for Gloucestershire Police said yesterday: 'We can confirm that we were contacted at 6.30pm on Wednesday night about threats made on Twitter. 'Local officers are due to follow this up and visit the complainant to set the wheels in motion.'

original article here

Jailed for Cyber-Inviting Men to Girl's Home for Anonymous Sex

(Warwickshire, U.K.) A jilted boyfriend has been jailed for using the web to invite men to his ex-girlfriend’s home for sex and “rape fantasies”.

Khalid Hussain created bogus profiles on dating and swinging websites and posed as his victim, asking for no-strings sex.

Over six months last year, the court heard more than 100 men knocked on her door for sessions they thought she had arranged. One thought he had been invited to take part in a rape role play. He hit the victim in the face and began to grab her before ­realising something was wrong.

Hussain, 30, was jailed for two years and nine months after he admitted harassment.

Judge Paul Farrer QC told him: “You carried out a campaign of ­humiliation and terror. Your behaviour was persistent, calculated and sinister.”

Warwick crown court heard Hussain met his victim on a dating website in October 2009. They had a brief relationship but she dumped him soon after. Soon, he posed as another man to get risque photos from her and posted them on Facebook.

He also bombarded her with 500 abusive emails and texts, including one saying: “I’m going to have fun now. Wait and see, you’ll get knocks on your door.”

Prosecutor Robert Hodgkinson said: “She received over 100 visits at night from men who knocked on her door saying they had been conversing with her by email and were responding to invitations by her to visit for sex. One had been led to believe that she wanted to be ‘raped’ and when he arrived, in accordance with instructions, he hit her in the face and went to grab her.

“Clearly he quickly realised everything was not as he had expected and after she remonstrated with him, he drove off."

Hussain also made a hoax call to police claiming his victim was running a drug factory from her Warwickshire home. And he called the RSPCA claiming the woman’s daughter mistreated her pet dog.

In a statement, she said: “It has been a living nightmare for me having strangers knocking at my door and opening it to be greeted by angry men who think it is me who has been setting them up.”

Hussain, of Walsall, was given a restraining order and also made to serve six months of an earlier suspended sentence.

original article here
At least one of our exposed cyberpaths tried to do this to his victim on MySpace.

Let this article warn:
1. Online Dating is NOT safe.
2. Sending 'naughty' pictures to someone, even if you think you can trust them, is NOT a good idea.

- EOPC

Probation for Man Posting Fake Orgy on Craigslist

Connecticut, USA - A Connecticut man has been sentenced to probation for posting a bogus ad about an orgy at the house of a neighbor with whom he had been feuding.

Court records show 44-year-old Philip Conran pleaded guilty to risk of injury to a
child last week in Hartford Superior Court.

He has been sentenced to three years of probation and 200 hours of community
service. He also has been ordered to pay for the West Hartford neighbor's house
alarm system.

Police say Conran posted the Craigslist ad in April 2010 and that several strangers
knocked on the neighbor's door. One man went to the wrong home, groped a teenage girl and was arrested.

Conran's attorney, Michael Georgetti, says his client regrets his actions.

original article here

Chatroulette

Disturbing: A girl tries out Chatroulette and is linked to a man
who immediately starts unzipping his trousers

Is new website the most disturbing internet craze yet?

By Olivia Lichtenstein

When this writer's daughter told her about a 'cool' new teen website, she decided to investigate. What she found was the most worrying internet craze to date.
~~~~~

Late on a weekday afternoon and I'm sitting at my computer. On the screen in front of me are two small boxes - little video streams - one above the other. My face is in the bottom box. The face and bare torso of a man is in the one on top. Let's call him Gerry.

Beside Gerry's face is a box into which we can type, so that we can chat to one another. So he types hello and then asks where I come from. I say hello back and tell him I am from London.

Our exchange has lasted barely seconds, but suddenly another message pops up. He's asking me if I will remove my top so he can see my breasts.

He is a complete stranger, and one of the many crude and deviant men I have encountered in the past 30 minutes.

I quickly click a button to have him removed from my screen.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the world of Chatroulette - an internet site that is turning into something of a phenomenon.

It was my 16-year- old daughter who told me about Chatroulette, a 'cool' new site she and her friends recently started using.

It's the fast-growing, latest fad among teenagers - a quick and easy way to communicate online with people from all over the world.

It works literally like roulette. Users log on, press a big button labelled 'Next' and it then randomly connects you to any one of a number of people across the world currently logged on. The gimmick is the fact that all of the users have webcams - so they can 'meet' the random strangers.

It was the idea of 17-year-old Russian schoolboy Andrey Ternovskiy. He launched it in November last year and his business quickly grew virally from 50 users to 50,000 in its first month.

One million people now visit it each day. However, what may have started as the innocent game of a Moscow schoolboy has quickly become a potential tailor-made portal for perverts and paedophiles - proving once again that the internet is putting the lives of our vulnerable teenagers (and adults) in jeopardy.

And believe me, after you've seen it, you'll never complain about your teen's obsession with texting their friends again.

For this, the latest Frankenstein monster spawned by the internet is, as with so much web-based activity, impossible to monitor, restrict or control.

After my daughter first told me about it a few weeks ago, I decided to investigate the site for myself - and, even for a technophobe like me, the ease with which I was able to access it was terrifying.

It doesn't require you to log in or register (despite the fact that the site states it is for over-16s only) and all you need is a computer with a webcam. It's entirely free and once you've clicked a button to allow the site to access your webcam, your face appears in one of two boxes.

In fact, it's so disturbingly easy that even primary school children, with basic computer skills, could access it.

Once you're plugged in, the site immediately starts searching for a 'partner' and within seconds you find yourself jettisoned into a stranger's bedroom, living room, or, all too often, trousers.

The webpage is unsophisticated and states only the following rules: '16+, clothes, report button.' More often than not, though, as I discovered, 'unclothed' was the order of the day.

And the button which allows you to report unseemly behaviour is all very well, but the perpetrator's punishment is a tame warning and 40 minutes suspension from the site. Hardly a deterrent. During my time on Chatroulette, the users I encountered were men and women from Germany, Holland, Turkey, Spain, America and Britain. To begin, you click a button marked 'New game'.

If you don't like the look of the person you have been connected to, you click a button marked 'Next' and somebody else instantly pops up at random. They can be any age, any sex and hail from Manchester to Moscow - although the site's lingua franca is English.

Many of the people on this site are exhibitionists who are free to display themselves to total strangers. Mostly, the people I chatted to were men. Some of them showed their faces - others angled the computer in such a way as to mask their identities and, all too often, to reveal their genitals.

At least one out of every five of the strangers I was connected to was a man with the camera pointed directly at his private parts. Within the first few seconds of using the site, I was asked: 'Do you show boobs?'

This was a man from Ibiza, who had angled the computer in such a way that all I could see was his clothed lap. He could have been anything from 17 to 70.

A man from Germany whose face was masked with a scarf asked if I would like to watch him fondle himself. Another told me in graphic terms what he would like me to do to him.

Apart from a sweet but banal conversation with a Spanish student who wanted to improve his English, and a courteous Turkish architect, most of the encounters I experienced left me feeling that I had become the unwitting participant in a porn film.

The ability to parachute into the lives of strangers is simultaneously addictive and repellent. Just like pornography, it leaves the user feeling dirty and ashamed.

Most of the people I encountered were foreign - and while their English was often poor, they knew the words required to fulfill one purpose: to persuade young girls and women to undress.

Chatroulette may have been invented by a child, but it's clearly not appropriate for children - and it's anything but a game.

But, thanks to celebrity users such as Paris Hilton and Ashton Kutcher, teenagers are flocking to the site.

Indeed, if you swiftly 'next' your way through your matches, you will find that around 50 per cent of users appear to be younger than 20.

The fact that my daughter and her friends are not shocked by the site is shocking in itself - it's a further indication that such aberrant behaviour has been normalised.

'If you don't like something, you just click "next",' my daughter blithely told me. It saddens me that she has grown up in a society that makes it possible for her to be so worldly and resigned at such a young age.

But she is not alone. Even more depressingly, it seems that - thanks to the internet - such sexualised behaviour is pervading all generations.

Just last week, a newspaper column related the story of a woman who had recently gone on a date with an unnamed parliamentary candidate. Their date went well, but - as the source revealed - the very next day she received an email containing a photograph of his genitals.

Shocking enough, but sadly not a unique occurrence. I have a number of middle-aged friends who are newly divorced or still single (sometimes still very married) and navigating the tricky minefield that is internet dating. They have found that conversations online all too quickly turn vulgar. And increasingly pornographic, too.

One told me of a man who, within minutes of meeting online, tried to engage her in dirty talk. Another had an online suitor who bombarded her with a series of naked pictures.

Of course, my friends did not participate. But one short afternoon on Chatroulette and you will find that there are a number of women who will. So what is it that is attracting so many modern men and women to such disturbing exhibitionism?

Dr Taly Weiss is a Jerusalem-based marketing trends researcher with a PhD in Social Psychology. She says that internet encounters, be they ones such as on Chatroulette or dating sites, or the sending of explicit photos, are about satisfying the feeling of excitement that comes when we are allowed inside private places and invite people into them too.

Chatroulette, in particular, where you are literally live in front of a total stranger, takes this to extremes.

I fear for what is going to happen next. For, when you think back to the creation of mobile phones, what started as a useful way of communicating quickly turned into sexting (sending explicit text messages).

Now, we face the worrying prospect that a growing number of men find it acceptable to expose themselves to strangers online - and the young girls watching them not only think it's normal, but some even agree to perform sex acts on themselves in return.

Will this soon become the perverted future of courtship?

Just think of the way that Ashley Cole threw away his marriage to Cheryl Cole by texting naked photos of himself to a stranger, before embarking on an alleged affair with her. 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall was raped and murdered by 26-year-old Peter Chapman, a man who had met and groomed her on Facebook.

Let us no longer pretend that this is all a 'bit of fun'. How long will it be before we hear of a similar Chatroulette tragedy?

Sarita Yardi, a PhD candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is studying the role of technology in teenagers' lives. She says that the idea of showing your face to strangers violates almost all social norms of the offline world.

'If someone walked up to you at a cocktail party, stared at you intensely, then simply walked away, you would feel confused and probably offended,' she says.

She advises parents to think carefully about what material is socially appropriate for their child and to weigh up the risks and rewards. 'It's like an online Lord Of The Flies,' she says.

'There are too many unacceptable cultural and moral boundaries that are crossed - like random and unpredictable exposure to nakedness - for it to persist in its present state. This brings up interesting questions of governance.' Indeed it does.

The startling lack of internet controls has been a cause of anxiety for parents for some time.

While users of other social networking sites are urged to check the identities of those they talk to, Chatroulette aficionados socially enter into conversation with random strangers who remain entirely anonymous.

'The fact that my daughter and her friends are not shocked by the site is shocking in itself'

Our children live in an age where the internet is all that they've ever known and they have access to all manner of images and information that we, as children, were not exposed to.

According to a recent Home Office report on the Sexualisation of Young People, 99 per cent of eight to 17-year-olds have access to the internet and 60 per cent of 12 to 15-year-olds say that they mostly use it on their own.

The study found that 49 per cent of children aged eight to 17 have an online profile on sites such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook and that girls report being under increasing pressure to display themselves in their underwear online.

Almost half of them say that their parents set no rules for the use of such sites. Chatroulette has taken social networking to the next level and provides a perfect forum for men to prey on vulnerable girls and women.

The images I encountered were shockingly pornographic, and it disturbs me profoundly to think that my 16-year-old has been exposed to them, even if she does have the street smarts to move swiftly on if she encounters anything unseemly.

The site is little more than a haven for exhibitionists and voyeurs.

It's not a game, it's porn, and pornography is addictive, corrosive and promotes unhealthy sexual stereotypes and behaviour for girls and boys. It undermines dignity and respect for others by making sexual intimacy into little more than a spectator sport without love, commitment or responsibility.

Depressingly, the business world has been quick to exploit the opportunities of this viral site, now worth an estimated £30 million, which has spread like bushfire around the world.

Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist with Union Square Ventures who has invested in dozens of dotcom companies, including Twitter, states on his blog: 'The internet is this huge network with over a billion people worldwide on it.

'Chatroulette feels like a cool way to take a quick trip around that network, meeting people and talking to them.'

But while the site's founder claims he built it so he and his friends could start doing things together online, like watching movies or making things, those aims have quickly been subverted.

And, as I discovered during my short venture into that world, it's yet another example of the pernicious sexual culture that threatens to corrupt the fibre of our children's innocence.

original article here

A Form of Partner Violence: Cyberstalking

Violence in intimate relationships is all too common -- just ask any cop who's responded to the calls. But younger generations who grew up with computer technology have more to worry about than a punch or slap. Cyberstalking is emerging as a form of partner violence that differs from traditional domestic abuse and is troubling in the ease in which it occurs.

Cyberbully stalking harassment In a study published this month, Kansas State University researcher Lisa A. Melander shines a light on how cyberstalking impacts college-age students. Gathering data in male-only or female-only focus groups, Melander found a range of cyber harassment, including sending unsolicited or threatening e-mails, posting hostile Internet messages and obtaining personal information about the victim without his or her consent.

The study found some differences in cyber harassment compared to face-to-face domestic violence. One, the conflict is quick and easy, so flare-ups occur in cyberspace when they might have blown over if people were only communicating in person. Two, matters that would typically be private become public very quickly -- meaning friends, relatives and others can be pulled into the situation and also suffer from the conflict. And, three, geographic location has no bearing on the situation. Victims can't always escape by changing their physical location.

Melander also found that, contrary to traditional violence where there is likely one abuser and one victim, cyberharassment can often involve both partners because of the back-and-forth that takes place. Moreover, when people communicate via computer they are less inhibited and don't have visual cues, such as facial expressions or tone of voice, to guide their interactions. That too can aggravate conflict that is being played out in cyberspace.

Melander concludes that computer technology "may change how relationship violence occurs among younger generations." A previous study suggested that about one-third of college students reported some form of computer-based harassment. But much more research is needed on the impact of the "darker side" of technology, she said.

The study is published in the June issue of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

-- Shari Roan

original article here

Thief Meets Woman Online, Uses Her for Getaway Car

by Tony Bassett

A mother-of-two had a 'first date from hell' after she was duped into becoming the getaway driver for a thief she met on Facebook.

Leah Gibbs, 23, had planned to spend an evening watching a DVD and getting to know 21-year-old Adam Minton. But instead, when she arrived at his home, he asked her to give him a lift - claiming he briefly had to visit a friend.

She drove him to a shopping area, where he left her for five minutes. When he returned in a panic he ordered her to: "Go, go, go!"

She drove back to his house, but as his personality had changed and he had become rude towards her, she decided the date was over. Just as he was trying to coax her into the house, the police arrived and they were both arrested.

Miss Gibbs was astonished to find police accusing him of robbing a betting shop at knife point, and her of being his accomplice.

She was forced to spend a night in a cell before police accepted her story and she was freed. Minton has now been jailed for four and a half years.

Miss Gibbs, from Tylorstown, South Wales, said: 'I thought I would be ending the night in Adam's arms. Instead, he had landed in the long arms of the law and I was facing jail.

'I'm not a bad person. I was duped. It could have happened to anyone.'

She was only freed when Minton convinced police she had not been involved and knew nothing about the robbery. She added: 'I'm grateful he told the police I knew nothing of the robbery, but still bitter he involved me.'

Minton had worn a black bandana and threatened a cashier with a large kitchen knife. He got away with £250. But the cashier was able to give police the car's registration number which led to the prompt arrests.

Merthyr Crown Court heard last month that Minton first told police he carried out the robbery because of a drug debt. He later claimed he had a gambling problem. The court also heard he had a record for violent offending. The incident is the latest ‘date from hell’ to emerge and follows Twitter users taking to the social media site to speak of their own experiences.

The tales were posted online this week after columnist Rhodri Marsden shared his own disastrous experience at a pub in Clapham.

He wrote on Twitter: 'I've just walked past the Firefly, where I went on a date in 2002 that was so bad I heard myself say "So, what's Wigan like, then?"'

He later explained: 'We had nothing in common, and nothing to say. The silences became excruciating. She was from Wigan, and I actually heard myself saying: "So, what's Wigan like, then?"'

The post led to hundreds of his 17,000 followers telling snippets in up to 140 characters.

UPDATE: DOUG BECKSTEAD - NAILED!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Technology Makes Stalking Too Easy

Beware of how technology can make it easier to track you
by Aimee Heckel

He e-mailed her a photo of himself holding a gun with a Google map of her house, she says.

He threatened to come to Colorado and rape her.

He threatened her kids, and called her son derogatory names.

That's when Amber decided to get a restraining order, wipe away her entire online presence and start over. Hopefully this time, she says, he won't find her.

But it's hard to erase all virtual footprints, says the 30-something local woman who asked to remain anonymous for her safety. After all, the man whom she accused of cyberstalking her found her address, phone number and boyfriend's e-mail address without her help. All she did was accept him as her Facebook friend; they never met in person, but he seemed friendly as he moderated a Facebook group that she joined.

She will never let a stranger into her life like that again, Amber says.

"I was scared for a minute, honestly, but then I was just pissed off," she says. "He touched a nerve, for sure."

As Americans become increasingly more plugged in, it has become easier for perpetrators to use that technology for nefarious purposes, according to law enforcement. For police, this changing face of partner violence demands innovation and constant training to keep up with the trends. But it can also open up new avenues to trap cyber-perps, and even help tech-savvy victims protect themselves and secure a stronger court case.

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates hundreds of thousands of people have been victims of cyberstalking.

One study found about one-third of college students reported some kind of computer-based harassment, but experts say more research is needed. Plus, harassment can just be a one-time incident, unlike stalking, which generally indicates a pattern of events.

Stalking becomes illegal -- beyond curious browsing through pics or Googling a lost love -- when the repeated contacts are coupled with a credible threat, or when they cause the victim "serious emotional distress."

Officials say cyberstalking cases are extremely underreported. Boulder County doesn't track cyberstalking specifically, but the district attorney's office reported 29 felony stalking arrests last year. Many of them involved technology.

Johnson conducts statewide trainings on tackling cyberstalking. He's considered one of the most computer-savvy DAs across the state.

"A lot of stalking is vested in power and control," Johnson says.

Unlike Amber's case and the high-profile news stories about delusional fans stalking celebs, Johnson says most cyberstalking cases don't involve strangers.

In February, a 37-year-old Boulder man was arrested on suspicion of breaking into his ex-girlfriend's apartment for several months and installing voice recorders in her home and spyware on her computer to monitor her.

One local man, a pilot for Frontier, was accused of stalking a flight attendant coworker, remotely accessing her e-mail, creating fake online personalities and hacking into her work account to learn her flight schedule. He was convicted and is currently serving a one-year sentence with 10 years probation, officials say.

Johnson is currently working on a case involving a City of Longmont employee who was arrested on suspicion of using an online dating site to find women and then stalk them, according to Johnson.

Johnson says the man dropped hints throughout the relationships about his roof-repair skills, and when the relationships went bad, he sabotaged their appliances and drilled holes in their roofs so they'd call him for help.

Johnson says it seems every cyberstalking case involves new and different kinds of technology.

One of the most popular techniques: installing a keystroke logger on a computer or cell phone to record what a person types, including passwords and e-mails. Some software can even turn on cameras and speakers remotely and monitor every phone call.

That's just the beginning.

Tracking devices, or GPSes, are another "favorite way to stalk," Johnson says. In one local case, a stalker bought a wristwatch embedded with a dime-sized GPS unit, designed to help parents keep track of their children. The man removed the device and sewed it into the lining of a woman's coat so he could follow her.

Often, GPS units installed on cars disrupt the vehicle's electrical system. In the past year, Johnson says Boulder County has seen five cases where people brought their cars in for service and the auto shop found a tracker on the car.

Then there are products like Spoofcard.com, a calling card that changes the phone number that shows up on caller ID, changes the caller's voice and records the calls.

From the Web site's testimonials:

"I've used the Spoof caller id when my boyfriend (during that time) was just ignoring my phone calls (even when i blocked my number) he still didn't answer. ... I called my exboyfriend with HIS house phone number and HE HAD ANSWERED the phone call without hesitating!! and he was just tripped out about it. he had thought that i was AT HIS HOUSE!! which i found quite exciting!!"

Although the number of stalking cases in Boulder County is down from 2006, authorities agree stalking isn't on the decline.

Without a doubt, it's increasing, says Tom Eskridge, a partner with the High Tech Crime Institute in Florida, which trains law enforcement and military in digital media investigation and forensics.

"More people are becoming comfortable with technology, and more software is sold under the guise of protecting your children," Eskridge says. "But 99 percent is sold to people who want to spy on the wife."

He says law enforcement has seen an increase in the number of "portal devices" (such as cell phones or laptops with wireless Internet access) seized and examined for civil cases, often involving someone stealing intellectual property from a company.

"The data mining that's available -- you don't have to waste money on LexisNexis anymore. You have Google. You can get most everything you need," Eskridge says. "The days of privacy are over."

A constant race
This leaves police in a constant race with ever-evolving technology. Boulder County has a dedicated unit for computer forensics. Instead of looking for floppy discs and bulky hard drives, investigators now search for thumb-sized SIM cards, MicroSD memory cards, international servers that complicate search warrants and muddle the laws or Internet-based storage, referred to as cloud computing.

"The law doesn't protect you internationally. I put it in the cloud, and you don't know where it's at. Now what are you going to do with your law?" Eskridge says. "There is no supergalactic Internet police."

But in the same way that technology makes it easier for stalkers to track victims, it can help police follow the trail of stalkers. Think back on the different devices that perpetrators use: GPSes, Spoofcards, spyware, fake e-mail addresses and Facebook pages. Police can use all of these, too, says Johnson.

"We're using technology to catch these guys. Although they might be savvy, there's so much on a computer that will trap you," Johnson says.

He refers to a local man was arrested on suspicion of stalking his girlfriend and her teenage daughter. The man was accused of taking compromising photos of the girl through a peephole in her wall, editing the photos to look vulgar and sending them to her friends.

But technology -- a court-ordered tracking device on his car -- ended up catching the man and helping the case against him, Johnson says. The man's sentencing is Sept. 3.

Victims can use technology to protect themselves, too, Johnson says. If you're being harassed, he recommends saving instant messages, e-mails and voice mails. Block calls and e-mails. Turn on your Web cam when you're gone if you think someone is sneaking into your house or installing stuff on your computer. Or pick up a night-vision, motion-activated wildlife camera at a sporting goods store, and mount it to your porch.

The easiest thing to do is change passwords and user names, and pay attention to what you do on your computer.

"If you're surfing online for a restaurant, and then you go and that person is there, make that connection," Johnson says.

The National Network to End Domestic Violence recommends stalking victims use public computers at a library or coffee shop to avoid keystroke-capturing.

And although it might be impossible to prevent, make it more difficult to be stalked, advises Eskridge. Don't put personal info on your Facebook or Twitter, like your birthday, e-mail address or your live location, which just broadcasts that your house is empty.

"You've got people who put so much personal info about themselves, pics of themselves, and some weirdo happens upon your site and falls in love with you. Now, Houston, we've got a problem. And a lot of it is our own doing," Eskridge says. "Let's step back and think: What did we gain by putting that info on the Internet?"

original article here

AND UNFORTUNATELY MANY POLICE, ATTORNEYS, JUDGES, OFFICIALS and OTHERS - do not take this seriously; believe they will 'just go away' and ignore pleas for help. - EOPC

Woman Loses Job Thanks to "Poison EMailer"

by GERRY LOUGHRAN

(U.K.) Poison pen letters used to be a staple of crime fiction. Hand-written but unsigned, they would circulate around a closed community such as a small village, spreading poisonous lies about some innocent person until the writer was unmasked by a clever amateur detective.

Usually the culprit was the vicar’s wife. I thought that sort of thing had died out, both in fiction and, if it existed to any extent, in real life.

I forgot about the Internet. There you can be both anonymous and poisonous, and you don’t even have to pay postage. Claire Chirnside, 23, says she is the victim of a poison emailer, whose lies have already cost her her job.

Back in April, Claire was working as a temporary administrative assistant at a children’s centre in Wilmslow, Cheshire, when an email was sent to her managers claiming she was a con artist and had a criminal past.

The centre launched an internal investigation. Claire was subjected to an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau check and asked to provide a credit report. Nothing detrimental was found and she was cleared to continue work. When the temporary position ended, Claire returned to her native northeast with her fiance, Lee North, and they settled in Northumberland.

Within weeks, she had secured a permanent job at the Royal Institute of British Architects in Newcastle, where she was praised for her customer service skills.

But within two months, the cyber stalker traced her and fired off a vindictive email to her new employers. Claire protested her innocence and explained about the previous incident, but she was sacked anyway.

It happened just three weeks before her planned wedding. “Someone out there is stalking me and spreading these rumours and it’s devastating,” she said.

“For the rest of my life, I am going to wonder if people I work for will get an anonymous email and I will be investigated over and over again.”

Claire said she will appeal against the architects’ decision. “What do I say next time I go for a job? Whoever is doing this could make me unemployable.”

Police in Cheshire and Northumberland confirmed they are carrying out investigations into reports of the anonymous emails.


original article

Ex-Blocker Helps You in the Aftermath

by Amanda Lily

While we used to simply look through old photos or listen to sappy love songs after a break-up, we can now spend hours online, scrolling through old memories, or more importantly, checking up on what new memories our ex may be creating post-"us."

To help eliminate the painful practice of Facebook-stalking the former-love-of-our-lives, creative agency JESS3, with inspiration from "Stuff Hipsters Hate," has developed the "Ex-Blocker" (http://blockyourex.com). This plug-in for Firefox or Chrome essentially erases any trace of our ex (or exes) from the Internet. Simply type in the culprit's first and last name, and your browser will block his or her Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as eliminate them from your overall www browsing experience.

In case there is more than one skeleton in your closet, you can add up to five exes, thus swearing them off forever ... or at least until you uninstall the software if you guys ever get back together.

Sure, this software seems to imply that none of us have self-control, but in the immediate aftermath of having our hearts broken, it is easy for curiosity to get the best of us. The "Ex-Blocker" can simply play the part of our "digital best friend" and stop us from torturing ourselves with what once was.

original article here

Judge Spares Woman Jail After she Plotted Attack on Internet 'Troll'

Judge spares mother jail after she plotted attack on internet 'troll' who posted horrific comments about disabled daughter


by Chris Greenwood

A mother who joined a revenge attack on a man responsible for a vile campaign of internet abuse against her disabled daughter has been spared prison.

Sylvia Hooper, 52, was described as a ‘decent and law-abiding’ woman who dedicated her life to her seriously ill daughter Kim Arnold. But she snapped after looking on helplessly as a cowardly bully sent her daughter a series of appalling comments via Facebook.

Mrs Hooper faced a jail sentence after identifying Christopher Berwick and confronting him outside his home in Chatham, Kent.

But a judge – who labelled the messages ‘disgraceful and shameful’ – took pity on Mrs Hooper after hearing they were part of a long-term campaign.

The case is the latest evidence of the growing impact of online bullying and abuse through social networking sites. Known as ‘trolling’, it sees abusers, who often hide behind a veil of anonymity or false identities, deluging their victims with cruel taunts. Campaigners have repeatedly called for websites to take swifter action against the ‘trolls’.

Miss Arnold was sent a series of messages via a false Facebook account that left her deeply depressed, Maidstone Crown Court was told. One labelled her a cripple and said that Miss Arnold, who is a wheelchair user, should be left to ‘roll down a hill'.

A judge at Maidstone Crown Court labelled the messages 'shameful' and took pity on Mrs Hooper after hearing they were part of a long-term campaign.

Another message read: ‘Your mother should have had an abortion. She only had you because she felt sorry for you.’

Mrs Hooper realised the culprit was Mr Berwick, who lived nearby, and joined her son Robert and his friend Soloman Taylor outside his home. Mr Hooper, 19, punched Mr Berwick after his mother said ‘hit him’ and the bully was then taken back to the family home by car. He was forced to crawl inside and make a ‘grovelling apology’ to his victim while on all fours. At one point he was hit on the chin with a rolled up newspaper.

Prosecutor Neil Sandys said Mr Berwick originally tried to blame his then girlfriend but eventually admitted being responsible. He said the Facebook exchange was ‘low, mean, base and shameful’ and added that Mr Berwick admitted doing it before.

Mrs Hooper’s solicitor Catharine Donnelly said the comments were ‘beyond the pale’ and told the court ‘none of us would be here today’ without his actions.

Speaking about Mrs Hooper, she said: ‘She is a decent woman who has devoted herself to her daughter. She has led a decent and law-abiding life. It is clear she is a woman who will never trouble these courts again. She was an encourager, rather than a hitter.’

Danny Moore, for Mr Hooper, said Mr Berwick got a kick out of ‘playing mind games with a severely disabled young lady’.

He highlighted how police told the victims there was nothing they could do and the bully was not prosecuted for sending malicious messages.

All three admitted assault but denied false imprisonment and the judge ruled that not guilty verdicts should be entered.

Judge Richard Polden said it ‘troubled him’ that Mrs Hooper had said, ‘hit him’, but accepted that Mr Hooper was acting out of a ‘protective instinct’ to his sister. He said: ‘I sentence you on the basis that Mr Berwick sent messages that were wholly disgraceful and shameful but then tried to put the blame on his girlfriend.’

Mrs Hooper was given a conditional discharge.

The two men were given community orders which included voluntary work.


original article

8,000 Menacing Posts Tests Limits of Twitter Speech

By Somini Sengupta

Even the Buddha of compassion might have been distressed to be on the receiving end of the diatribes that William Lawrence Cassidy is accused of posting on Twitter.

They certainly rattled Alyce Zeoli, a Buddhist leader based in Maryland. Using an ever-changing series of pseudonyms, the authorities say, Mr. Cassidy published thousands of Twitter posts about Ms. Zeoli. Some were weird horror-movie descriptions of what would befall her; others were more along these lines: “Do the world a favor and go kill yourself. P.S. Have a nice day.”

Those relentless tweets landed Mr. Cassidy in jail on charges of online stalking and placed him at the center of an unusual federal case that asks the question: Is posting a public message on Twitter akin to speaking from an old-fashioned soapbox, or can it also be regarded as a means of direct personal communication, like a letter or phone call?

Twitter posts have fueled defamation suits in civil courts worldwide. But this is a criminal case, invoking a somewhat rarely used law on cyberstalking. And it straddles a new, thin line between online communications that can be upsetting — even frightening — and constitutional safeguards on freedom of expression.

Federal authorities say Mr. Cassidy’s Twitter messages caused Ms. Zeoli “substantial emotional distress” and made her fear for her life, so much so that she once did not leave home for 18 months and hired armed guards to protect her residence.

In a complaint filed in federal court in Maryland, the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that Mr. Cassidy had published 8,000 Twitter posts, almost all of them about Ms. Zeoli and her Buddhist group, along with similar posts on several blogs.

Mr. Cassidy’s lawyers with the federal public defender’s office argue that even offensive, emotionally distressing speech is protected by the First Amendment when it is conveyed on a public platform like Twitter. Legal scholars say the case is significant because it grapples with what can be said about a person, particularly a public person like a religious leader, versus what can be said to a person.

Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, offered an analogy: the difference between harassing telephone calls and ranting from a street-corner pulpit. “When the government restricts speech to one person, the speaker remains free to speak to the public at large,” Mr. Volokh argued.

Certainly Mr. Cassidy’s previous trespasses have not helped him. He has a record of assault, arson and domestic violence. According to the federal complaint, he was also convicted of carrying an unspecified “dangerous weapon” onto a plane in 1993.

But the defense has taken pains to point out that across the Internet, people post things that may cause emotional distress to others: an unkind review of a book on Amazon, even an unvarnished assessment by a college student on RateMyProfessors.com. They point out, moreover, that Mr. Cassidy lived across the country in California and is not accused of getting anywhere close to Ms. Zeoli. He is now in jail in Maryland pending trial.

In support of a defense motion to dismiss the case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group based in San Francisco, appealed to the court to protect online expression.

“While not all speech is protected by the First Amendment, the idea that the courts must police every inflammatory word spoken online not only chills freedom of speech but is unsupported by decades of First Amendment jurisprudence,” it wrote.

Born in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Ms. Zeoli is considered to be a reincarnated master in the Tibetan Buddhist religious tradition, and is known to her followers as Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. She is an avid Twitter user, with 23,000 followers. A representative for Ms. Zeoli said she declined to be interviewed for this article.

According to the F.B.I. and Ms. Zeoli’s lawyer, Mr. Cassidy also claimed to be a reincarnated Buddhist when he joined Ms. Zeoli’s organization, Kunzang Palyul Choling, in 2007. He signed up using a false name and claimed to have had lung cancer, they said. Ms. Zeoli’s organization cared for him and, briefly, even appointed him to its executive team. The relationship soured after they came to doubt his reincarnation credentials and found that his claims of cancer were false. Mr. Cassidy left. Then came the relentless tweets, they said.

“A thousand voices call out to (Victim 1) and she cannot shut off the silent scream,” read one in the summer of 2010, as redacted in the criminal complaint.

“Ya like haiku? Here’s one for ya. Long limb, sharp saw, hard drop,” read another.

Shanlon Wu, a former federal prosecutor who is representing Ms. Zeoli, likened the tweets to “handwritten notes.” Every time Ms. Zeoli blocked the messages, more appeared from a different Twitter account. Ms. Zeoli for some time stopped using Twitter altogether.

“She felt constantly attacked and monitored by these anonymous people, and the attacks went on whether or not she was online,” Mr. Wu said by e-mail.

Twitter, in response to a subpoena, revealed the Internet protocol address of the computer used to post the messages. The authorities found Mr. Cassidy at home in a small Southern California town called Lucerne Valley. Similar rants were posted on blogs that law enforcement authorities say they traced to him. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

The case is an example of the many ways in which the law is having to wrestle with behavior on new, rapidly changing modes of communication. Similar issues have come up in state courts: a boy who hacked into the Facebook account of an acquaintance was charged with felony identity theft, and a student who bombarded a professor with mean e-mail was accused of disturbing the peace.

“Technology creates new ways for people to interact with each other,” said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University in California. “You have to figure out if old law maps to new interactions.”

Twitter is an especially vexing new tool. It prompts ordinary people who use it to create public personas and it can put celebrities, including religious leaders, in direct contact with a large and sometimes unruly following, including some who insist on using pseudonyms.

“How do you cope with them?” Mr. Goldman wondered aloud. “Do you just block them? Or do you make a federal case out of it?”

original article here