Exposing Online Predators & Cyberpaths

ONLINE GRATIFICATION AS HARMFUL AS PHYSICAL BETRAYAL

2012-02-03T01:36:00.000-04:00

Online gratification can become just as harmful to a relationship as physical betrayal

BY MELENA Z. RYZIK

Remember Britain's uproar over soccer star David Beckham, who allegedly carried on an affair and sent sexy text messages to his lover.

When the Internet became popular in the early 1990s, it was hailed as a technological breakthrough. A decade later, easy access on the World Wide Web to images and information is causing an unprecedented number of breakups.

After all, titillating material is more available and visible than ever before. And whether it's online porn or Internet-enabled flings, a lot of relationships are feeling the strain.

Therapists, sociologists and even lawyers are waking up to the fact that online affairs and flirtations play as real a role in splitting up couples as offline romances do.

"Infidelity on the Internet is as devastating as infidelity offline," says Rona Subotnik, a marriage and family therapist and the author, with Dr. Marlene Maheu, of "Infidelity on the Internet: Virtual Relationships and Real Betrayal" (Sourcebooks, 2001).

"I think the Internet has been the single most significant factor in the accelerating divorce trend," says Robert Stephan Cohen, a top Manhattan-based divorce lawyer and author of "Reconcilable Differences: 7 Keys to Remaining Together from a Top Matrimonial Lawyer."

"It's amazing how many people come in here and say the Internet has been a source of things that go awry," he adds.

In a recent survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 62% of the respondents said that the Internet had played a "significant role" in the divorces they had handled in the previous year; 68% of those cases, a spouse had met a new love interest online, and 56% showed an obsessive interest in online porn.

Almost 80% of the lawyers surveyed said that incriminatory E-mails had been used as evidence in divorce proceedings.

With a few clicks and for little or no money, the Internet provides lots of anonymous temptations - and instant gratification. In the Internet age, being faithful is suddenly a lot more complex.

Like crack for sex addicts
Online porn is what nearly broke up Betsey's marriage of 20 years. (To protect sources' identities, all names and some identifying details have been changed.)

"My husband became hooked on Internet pornography as soon as he discovered it, about eight or nine years ago at work," the fiftysomething retired engineer and mother wrote in an E-mail. "He has an addiction - he is ashamed and secretive about his behavior; he is unable to stop regardless of the consequences to himself or anyone else. When he is in his addiction, his personality changes for the worse."

"The Internet is like crack cocaine for sex addicts," says a spokesman for Sexaholics Anonymous (who preferred to remain anonymous himself).

But even casual browsers can get hooked.

"They're are what we call the at-risk population," says Maheu. "They otherwise would not go out of their way to look into pornography because it would involve more forethought and planning. But when you're sitting at your computer alone at night, it's just a few clicks away."

Maheu estimates that as much as a quarter of the population falls into this easily targeted group, which runs the gamut from people who are mildly bored or curious to those dissatisfied with their relationships or generally depressed. "They don't have to use a lot of energy," she says. "They seek outlets that won't cause ripples in their work or home life."

Betsey's husband was always more than a casual user; he told her that he had "a problem" with pornography when they started dating. But the Internet made his problem worse.

"Internet porn is so there, just a keystroke away - at home, at work, anywhere," she wrote. And through pop-ups, cookies and spam, "once a person has gone to one of those sites, the porn pursues him."

Indeed, the number of adult Internet sites has ballooned in the last four years, expanding 17 times to encompass nearly 1.6 million sites, according to research by software firm Websense. Industry analyst Nielsen/NetRatings estimated that 34 million people - or one in four Internet users - visited one of those sites last year.

False intimacy
Digital smut is not the only trigger for relationship trouble. Online communication in general can create a false sense of intimacy, says Subotnik.

"There is a feeling that these are the only two people in the world connecting with each other. People will type things that they wouldn't say, and it happens much more quickly" than in real life.

"I have probably chatted with at least 500 women in some sort of mutual sexual way," says Harold, a 29-year-old Manhattan man in a serious relationship who still enjoys flirting online.

Though Harold admits he has "almost had relationships end because of it," he also claims to have started relationships through "either randomly [instant messaging] people in chat rooms or making sexual overtures to women I have had previous sexual relationships with or crushes on in the past."

Is flirting on the Net cheating? Only if your partner doesn't know you do it, insists Harold.

Finding out that a partner is involved in a virtual relationship can be just as traumatizing as actually finding him or her in bed with another person. "It's an emotional type of cheating," says Maheu.

"Online relationships have a profound impact on our emotional experience," Israeli philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Ze'ev writes in "Love Online: Emotions on the Internet" (Cambridge University Press, 2004). "Online relationships usually involve greater intimacy and emotional intensity."

Harold says his girlfriends find his habit "a minor annoyance," but not every partner is so understanding.

Time online=time apart
George, a married man in his 30s who lives outside New York, first turned to the Internet to research a condition he has called "gender dysphoria," in which a person feels he or she was born in the wrong gender. George lost his job and spent more and more time on the computer, becoming what he calls "obsessed."

"You invest yourself into this thing that has nothing to do with your spouse, when really you should be investing yourself into your marriage," he says. "It saps your emotional energy and takes you away.

"If you think of television of being addictive in a passive way," he adds, "the Internet is addictive in an active way."

Surfing the Net is a double whammy: There's potential for betrayal in both the content and in the diverted attention.

"The prospect of something newer and 'better' can turn any computer search into a time sink," writes Betsey. "For the porn addict, always in pursuit of more and different, minutes can become hours can become days." (A recent study classified people who spent 11 hours or more a week online looking at porn as sexual addicts.)

"Spouses say, 'I feel like you're not here with me,'" says Maheu. The absenteeism - whether literal or emotional - is often the first sign of a deeper problem.

"I was spending a couple of hours every other night online," says George, who's now going through a divorce. He wasn't hiding his being online from his wife, only the content, but the time spent apart "contributed to our disconnect," he says.

"I didn't have my eye on the relationship."

Problems in the sack?
If spending too much time online can cause an emotional disconnect, physical breakdowns may not be too far behind.

Paul, a twentysomething club promoter in Manhattan, calls himself "a wild and crazy guy" who has no trouble getting dates. Still, he likes going online for sexual gratification.

"It's such a liberating feeling," he says. "I can be totally selfish."

Stephen, a Brooklyn 30-year-old in a long-term relationship, argues that online gratification may make it easier for couples to stay faithful. He even believes it takes some sexual pressure off women.

But do the idealized women pictured online sour his expectations of his real-life sweetie?

Stephen shakes his head.

"It's like saying Bugs Bunny is going to change my expectations of the government."

When cybersex is safe
Maheu agrees that exploring sexual needs online isn't always a bad idea, but says couples have to agree about what is and isn't off-limits.

"When you talk about your relationship, you really ought to be going down the list and saying, 'Okay, what about lap dances?' 'What about looking at pornography - alone or together?'" she says. "You as a couple have to talk about it and make an agreement, and if you violate that agreement, then it's cheating."

For Betsey, dealing with her husband's addiction has been a long process; his betrayal affected her profoundly. "I doubted my own attractiveness. I doubted my own adequacy as a woman and a lover," she writes.

Her husband entered Sex Addicts Anonymous. Betsey also received counseling through a 12-step group, which helped her come to terms with his problem.

"I have experienced emotional intimacy with him when he has been able to maintain his sobriety, and I have totally fallen in love with him at those times," she writes. "I can see that he is committed to his recovery, and I can see that he is making progress."

George, meanwhile, is grateful that the information he found online led him to a better understanding of his own gender dysphoria.

"I'm sorry that my marriage was the price I had to pay, but without the Internet I could never have found a way to start dealing with this whole issue," he says. "That was the first step in accepting it for myself."

IF YOU LOVE ONE OF THESE, A BOOK OFFERS HELP

2012-02-02T01:55:00.000-04:00

By KRISTIN DIZON

Jerk. Witch. Creep.

You’ve probably used such names to describe a romantic partner gone bad, or maybe a few choice words of the four-letter variety.

But, there’s another name for the ones who are so self-absorbed and self-centered that all of their needs and wants come first: the narcissist.

He’s the boyfriend who begs you to leave your job, family and rent-controlled apartment to move to another state to be with him, only to discover, after moving, that he’s got another girlfriend he failed to tell you about.

She’s the girlfriend who creates a crisis out of every little situation so she can be the perpetual look-at-me center of attention and drama.

It’s the father who chose to play golf instead of help with his young son’s birthday party, despite his wife’s pleas. Then he arrived when the party was almost over, crushing his son’s feelings.

All of these are examples from flesh and blood people in the new book, “Help! I’m in Love With a Narcissist,” by relationship authors Julia Sokol and Steven Carter. (M. Evans and Co., 270 pages).

Previously, they wound up on the best-seller list for “Men Who Can’t Love,” in which they coined the now ubiquitous term, “commitmentphobia.” Now, they’re throwing our self-obsessed, me!, me!, me! approach to relationships under the microscope.

We live in narcissistic times. We observe every move of Paris Hilton and P. Diddy, and lavish attention upon arrogant business moguls like Donald Trump.

Reality is, most of us have some degree of narcissism and self-centeredness. But there's a big difference between garden-variety narcissistic tendencies and toxic narcissism.

Narcissists are often charming, adventurous people who entertain us with their interesting stories and grandiose sense of self. They are often very attentive and appreciative toward their partners for the first month or two, and are skilled at fanning the chemistry.

But, they also know how to demean, criticize and show no empathy for others. They're often controlling and have a needy side that asks frequently: Do you really love me? Will you leave me? Are you like all of the others?

Many have a history of troubled relationships and lots of emotional baggage.

They take, they demand, they expect. In return, they give very little, although many are good at delivering flowery words of love that suck us back in, especially after a fight or ultimatum.

But, how do you know if you're living with a narcissist? The bottom line is that if you're in a relationship that's dominated by the other person's wishes and priorities, without the normal give-and-take and compromise, you very well may be shacking up with a narcissist.

Sokol recently spoke with us from her Rhode Island home about living with and loving narcissists.

Who did you write this book for? And why the need for it?

"We're writing it for everybody who doesn't quite understand why they're getting stuck in the same relationship -- one that revolves around the other person. ... I think it's very widespread. And we also did this book to help readers understand their own narcissistic issues. That will help you understand the choices you make and why you're drawn to a particular type of person. Most of these people who get into these hideous, hideous relationships, one after another, complain that they were bored with other people."

What separates average narcissistic qualities from a true toxic narcissist?

"I guess it's how much pain that person is causing and how unable and completely incapable the toxic narcissist is to feel anything for another person. The narcissist is able to weave this terrific web of fantasy and illusion. It's fulfilling all your fantasies, all your dreams. You've always wanted to feel unique and special and the narcissist is able to make you feel that and that this is a unique and special relationship."

Why do people fall for narcissists?

"I think society places a value on narcissism and narcissistic values. We put an emphasis on the superficial. We put an emphasis on the people who sound as though they know what they're talking about, even when they don't. ... Narcissism forgives an awful lot that in an earlier time would have been considered obnoxious. Modesty is no longer a virtue in this country. Narcissists tend to tell you that they're wonderful and terrific and adorable. ... They tend to know how to sweep people off their feet. They are incredibly seductive. They know what you like to hear."

A lot of folks seem to believe that with enough love and hope and effort, the narcissist in their life can change. What do you think?

"After years of hearing these stories -- and we've heard thousands of them -- they don't ever seem to change."

How does one's upbringing tie into loving a narcissist or becoming one?

"Many people have parents who have all-about-me tendencies -- everything comes back to that person. The child is the audience, the support system, a part of this drama. And then they turn around and find partners who pull us in this way. It comes from our own weak sense of self. ... Some are so spoiled by parents that they turned into narcissists."

Why are narcissists so hard to leave?

"Narcissism is also about feelings of sadness and depression. So the classic narcissistic partner has this 'look-at-me' quality, but also has this 'oh poor me, I really need help.' They draw you in with stories of their sadness and the emptiness and you feel that somehow you can fill this void. And you tell yourself, he really loves me -- even though he's cheating on me every other night of the week."

What's your advice for people to get out of a narcissistic relationship and break the pattern?

"You have to understand what attracts you to this person. You start setting up boundaries that you're not going to let people cross. You really start believing in the things that you say are important. You stop focusing on perfection, you stop worrying about being bored. And you stop feeling that you can solve the other person's problems. ... The minute you feel you're in this kind of relationship or you've had more than one person like this in your life, a little professional help is not going to hurt."

You and Steven Carter coined the term commitmentphobia. Do you think narcissist will become part of the dating lexicon?

"I think it's starting to do that already. And it's about time, too. I think this is the relationship issue of our times. There's nothing to curb people like these. They're in a society that supports it."

KNOW A NARCISSIST?

Here are the signs of narcissism. It takes five or more before you can slap the label on someone:

1. An exaggerated or grandiose sense of self-importance that isn't supported by reality

2. A preoccupation with fantasies of extraordinary success, wealth, power, beauty and love

3. A belief that he/she is special and unique and can only be understood by other special people

4. An intense need for admiration

5. A sense of entitlement

6. A tendency to exploit others without guilt or remorse

7. An absence of meaningful empathy

8. A tendency to be envious or to assume that he/she is the object of others' envy

9. An arrogant attitude

SOURCE

Charged with Online Harassment

2012-02-01T01:16:00.004-04:00

(U.S.A.) Bridgeport man once again faces charges for stalking a woman in Fairfield, and this time police said he used a fake name and Facebook and Twitter accounts, police said.

Dawer Gilani, 32, of Atlantic Street, was taken into custody by Fairfield police Monday at his home and charged with 10 counts of violation of a protective order and violation of his conditions of release. He was held on a $250,000 bond and was scheduled to appear Tuesday in Bridgeport Superior Court.

Gilani was stalking the same woman he was charged with harassing previously, police said. She contacted police on Jan. 12 to report that Gilani was using the name Ali Umar and sending her friend requests on Facebook. While he apparently used a different name, he did not use a different photograph and the woman was able to identify him as Gilani. He also set up a Twitter account using that name, but police said the only person he was following on Twitter was the victim.

Police seized evidence from Gilani's car and home during the arrest.

Sgt. Suzanne Lussier said Gilani began stalking the victim at her place of employment last January when he was initially warned to stay away. The next month, he went to her office, and asked to speak with her, telling her co-workers that he knew her from the Planet Fitness gym in Trumbull. He was told to leave. In March, the victim found a note on her car, telling her not to call police. Afraid for her safety, she reported the incident to police.

In April, Gilani came to police headquarters asking if there was a legal way to contact the woman. Again, he was warned to refrain from contacting her in any way, and the woman was advised by police to obtain a restraining order.

Police spotted Gilani in May circling the parking lot of the Fairfield building where the woman works, and police said he admitted he was trying to find her car. Gilani was charged with stalking and criminal trespass in May and again in August. In June, Trumbull police also charged Gilani for repeatedly driving by the victim's home, while Bridgeport police have reportedly investigated five documented incidents involving Gilani stalking another woman in that city, police said.

According to court records, Gilani pleaded not guilty in August to threatening, harassment and disorderly conduct charges stemming from the Fairfield arrest and the case is awaiting disposition. He also pleaded not guilty to the Trumbull charges of stalking, breach of peace and violating conditions of release, and court records indicate that case is awaiting disposition. A third court case is blocked from the public with the notation that it is "statutorily sealed."

original article here

Stalker Sending Men to My House for Sex ...was my Ex!

2012-01-31T01:23:00.000-04:00

By NIKKI WATKINS

(U.K.) Amy Lees answered a knock at her front door and a man burst in, grabbed her by the throat and threatened to rape her. The sicko fantasist had been led to believe she was keen to take part in a sordid sex game. She fought him off — but he was just one of hundreds of strangers who kept turning up on her doorstep for months demanding that she had sex with them.

Traumatised Amy was the victim of a vicious internet stalker who had plastered her name, photos and home address on websites offering her up for weird role-play fantasies. And, shockingly, the stalker was her ex-boyfriend Khalid Hussain — who she had turned to for help when she felt besieged, scared and vulnerable in her home.

Amy has bravely waived her anonymity to tell her horrifying story to The Sun. She said: "For nine months I was stalked. It was the worst time of my life. I was trapped and frightened. I wouldn't wish that terror on my worst enemy. It was a truly horrifying experience."

Amy, a 31-year-old barmaid, first met care worker Hussain, 30, via a dating website in October 2009.

She said: "I had just come out of a relationship and wanted to have fun so I joined the site. I got chatting to Khalid. He seemed very kind and sweet. After a couple of weeks chatting on MSN and Facebook I invited him round for dinner. We chatted for hours and by the end of the evening we were a couple. He was very attentive and sent me bouquets of flowers every week."

But they began having arguments and split up quite regularly. Three months after their meeting, Amy ended the relationship. She said: "While we were apart I went on Facebook and noticed a friend request from a man called Simon. Although I didn't know him, I replied because I was flattered to get male attention. We started emailing and texting. He wanted a sexy picture so, stupidly, I sent him a picture of myself in underwear. As soon as I hit send, I regretted it."

The next day Simon put the picture on Amy's Facebook wall under the caption: "Here's my new girlfriend I'm going to f*** the a*** off her." Her voice shaking, Amy said: "I was shocked, took the photo down and texted Simon telling him to leave me alone. He texted back saying, 'I'm going to have my fun, you f***ing bitch, wait and see.' Seeking emotional support, I got back with Khalid and he was really supportive. I felt safer knowing he was there."

Days later Amy started getting texts from Simon calling her disgusting names. Amy said: "Things were terrible and I felt as if I needed somebody to be there for me — but Khalid was becoming very controlling. I knew I had to end things with him for good. "We parted as friends and stayed in touch. Every time I was contacted by Simon I'd tell Khalid, desperate for support."

Amy called the police about the harassment and they shut down her Facebook account while they investigated. But in February 2010 things took a menacing turn when men — often up to 20 a day — started arriving at her house wanting to have sex with her. Amy said: "When the first person came to the door asking me for sex I was so gobsmacked I just closed it in his face. But the second and third time it happened I knew it was probably down to Simon. I was so confused and vulnerable. I became petrified and would always check from my upstairs window who was at the door before I opened it. I kept a frying pan at hand, so I felt protected, and friends would stay over so I felt safer. The police were still involved but there seemed to be little they could do. I became a quivering wreck as the men knocked at the door and shouted obscenities through my letterbox. I hardly slept and every day became a battle. I became too weak and frightened to leave the house.

"About four months after the men started arriving, there was a knock on the door. I opened it a crack and saw a respectable-looking man in his forties. He grabbed me by the throat, said he was going to rape me and pushed me inside the house. I tried to fight him off and my friend, who was in my house at the time, ran to help me. The man realised his mistake and stepped away, whispering, 'I'm sorry. I thought I was talking to you on the internet. I thought this is what you wanted'.

"He ran out of the house and I managed to get his registration number and call the police. I put panic alarms supplied by the police all over the house and added a chain to the door. They also put a sign up on my door explaining that any internet directions to my house were a hoax."

The man was arrested but not charged because he had been talking to someone online who had set up a fake profile. That someone turned out to be Hussain — and he had set up many other profiles in her name. He had used photos from her Facebook account and given out her home address.

He was jailed for two years nine months in September last year after admitting harassment.

There were 53,000 cyber-stalking allegations recorded in 2009 and experts believe the actual number could be ten times this. New laws are set to be introduced to combat the crime.

Amy said: "The shock of knowing my ex-boyfriend was behind all of this left me feeling physically sick. He had written that I was into rape re-enactment along with numerous sordid sexual acts. It made me feel disgusted. He had seemed kind but all along he was evil and dangerous. I'm glad he is in jail and can't do that to anyone else — but if I had been the judge I would have given him life. I still find it very difficult to trust anyone. I sleep in the room with my four Staffordshire bull terriers and don't like going out on my own."

Amy is now making a fresh start, having found a new man. But she warned: "It is so important that cyber stalking is taken seriously because we are all at risk."

If you think you are being stalked, it is vital to act now.

For more information and to get help in the U.K. contact the Suzy Lamplugh Trust at suzylamplugh.org or 020 7091 0014

original article here

ADDICTED TO ONLINE PORN

2012-01-30T01:31:00.000-04:00

Experts fear rise in cybersex obsession
By Linda Carroll

With the explosion of pornographic sites on the Internet, some experts on sex and addiction are concerned that increasing numbers of unsuspecting users will become victims of an obsession that can ruin lives and relationships. While many people may be able to dabble in Net porn with no ill effects, some run the risk of developing a serious, and potentially dangerous, addiction to online erotica.

"MY SPECULATION, based on my work with other addictions, is that those with vulnerabilities may be swept into the Net - pun-intended - of compulsive sexual behavior," said Anna Rose Childress, an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s Treatment Research Center in Philadelphia.

"There may be a hapless subgroup here who would not have managed to develop a compulsive pursuit of... sexual behavior because of [societal] constraints and inconveniences. The Internet erases most of these, and the vulnerable subgroup is then at the mercy of their hardwiring."

A recent MSNBC.com survey found that as many as 80 percent of visitors to sex sites were spending so much time tracking down erotica on the computer that they were putting their real-life relationships and/or jobs at risk. Until they discovered cybersex, most of these people had no problems with sexual addition, according to the survey’s author, Al Cooper, a sex therapist at the San Jose Marital Services and Sexuality Center in San Jose, Calif.

Sex researchers are beginning to see people who have lost control.

"I've seen enough individuals in my clinic who have gotten hooked [on sex] on the Web to know that this is a significant development," said Dr. John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University. "I think this needs to be taken very seriously."

Bancroft and his colleagues plan a study to determine which people are most at risk of developing problems with online pornography.

BETTER SEX THROUGH ONLINE PORN?
But adult Web site owners play down the notion that there’s a problem.

Mark Kreloff, president and CEO of New Frontier Media, a Boulder, Colo., company that delivers adult content via the Internet, satellite and cable TV, defends Web pornography as educational, and says he doesn’t buy the concept of porn addiction.

"I think that aspect of our business is grossly blown out of proportion by people that don't like the business that we're in," Kreloff said. "I generally think that our programming leads to healthier sexual relationships. It certainly provides an educational base to people who are interested in their sexuality and the sexuality of people. I just really don’t find that it’s a real issue that we're facing."

Dr. Robert Hsiung agrees that there are healthy ways to use cybersex.

"I don't think that any involvement is bad," said Hsiung, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago. "If a couple surfs together and it turns them on and helps their sex life, I don't see any problem with that."

ROAD TO ADDICTION
So how can simple pornography become addictive?

"Sexual stimuli can be very powerful," Childress said. "There's a strong, imperative 'must look!' quality to them, the byproduct of an evolutionary premium on reproduction. And humans are great lookers, by nature."

Add in the special features of the Web and you've got a problem, according to Childress. "Usually looking, and the pleasurable arousal that accompanies it, has some constraints," she explained. Laws against peeping through people's windows and the social discomfort felt by buyers of porn magazines and renters of hard-core videos constrain many people.

But the Internet reduces these constraints considerably, Childress said. “There are few external regulations,” she said. "[People think] 'Who am I hurting?' And there are limitless, intense, overwhelming images to match any fantasy, and, with interactive programs, [there are] cyber-people who wish to be looked upon, talked to or aroused. This up-front sexuality can be novel, seductive and euphorogenic.

"As with other addictions, there is likely a vulnerable subgroup who now find themselves having trouble putting on the brakes, and cybersex begins to take up more and more of their time. They crave it. They find it beginning to interfere with other activities and relationships and that it resists attempts to stop or cut down. These are the hallmarks of addiction."

While it's not clear who the vulnerable people are, Bancroft suspects that the people most likely to be sucked into an unhealthy relationship with cybersex have some other underlying psychological problem. They are using the Web to self-medicate negative feelings such as anxiety, stress or depression, he suggests. "This is a quick and easy way to feel better," Bancroft said. "But it's a rather transient treatment."

What should you do if you think someone has an unhealthy involvement with Net sex? “Try to be open and discuss it with him or her,” Bancroft suggests. “Get it out on the table so it becomes a shared issue and not something that's hidden away.”

Linda Carroll is a health and medical writer based in New Jersey whose work has appeared in Newsday, the Chicago Sun Times, the Detroit Free Press and the Los Angeles Times.MSNBC’s Mike Brunker contributed to this report.

MSNBC
Original article here

How NOT to Apologize When You Have Seriously Messed Up

2012-01-29T01:11:00.000-04:00

FOR ANY CYBERPATHS & PREDATORS READING THIS SITE - THIS ARTICLE IS FOR YOU. (Everyone else, enjoy seeing how yours fits the profile!) - EOPC

Cyberpaths/Online Predators - RARELY, if ever, apologize once they are caught and the entire truth is out. Its always the 'fault' of the person who turns them in, exposes them. Some Predators have even turned to law enforcement to take out restraining orders on those who are exposing them - in order to make the PREDATOR look like the victim and turn attention away from themselves & their misdeeds. They have been 'set up' and the person who told the truth about them is called 'a liar.' It's already happened a couple times with this board - and its a fact of life on exposure sites. If you expose one & have told the truth, don't feel you need to defend yourself against their smear campaign.

Here is a great essay on how to NOT apologize - we think you will find it amusing & truthful - EOPC
~~~~~~~~~

by Annesthesia

1.) Apologize in email.
Hey, why should you actually have to FACE the person you harmed and DEAL with the real consequences of your actions - like the fact that they might still be hurt and upset? It's so much easier to do it from a distance - that way you can go around telling everyone how you made all this EFFORT to rectify things. If questioned on this, you can fall back on your old excuses about how the other person is just too scary to face in person. (People you have betrayed aren't usually very compliant).

Ignore the fact that this avoidance is completely contradicting any statements you might make about "taking responsibility" for your behavior (Ed Hicks and Beckstead did this one. YidwithLid even used the excuse that he had "been advised to stay away from" his victims until he "was stronger & could deal with them." As well, that communicating with his victims would 'hurt his wife & family' more. It was merely a ploy to run away)

2.) Make sure the "confession", er, apology comes MONTHS or years after the incident.
It's just too much work to actually own up immediately afterwards. Let's face it, you're not after any real resolution, and you are not offering any kind of restitution - you are looking to assuage your guilty conscience and buy absolution, and, if you play your cards right, you can get attention for your act of "bravery" in coming forward. If it's absolution you are looking for, why not join the Catholic church instead?

"Powerful and sneaky people use apologies as 'end runs' around repentance. They betray a trust; and, when they have been found out, they say they are sorry for "mistakes in judgement". They smile through their oily apologies when their crime calls for quakes of repentance. They get by only because we have lost our sense of the difference between repentance for wrong and apologies for bungling.... We should not let each other get away with it. A deep and unfair hurt is more than a mere faux pas. We cannot put up with everything from everyone; some things are intolerable. When someone hurts us deeply and unfairly [deliberately], an apology will not do the job; it only trivializes a wrong that should not be trifled with."
-- Lewis B. Smedes, "Forgive and Forget"

3.) Use generic sweeping statements, so that you don't have to own up to, or deal with any specifics.
This is a great way to avoid any REAL acknowledgement for the stunts you have pulled, while giving the appearance of sincerity. As Dr. Phil (C. McGraw) says:

"Acknowledgement is a no-kidding, unvarnished, bottom-line, truthful confrontation with yourself about what you are doing or not doing, or what you are putting up with in your life that is destructive. It's not some pious, phoney-baloney, half-hearted rendition of what you think they want to hear. Nor is it a watered-down, politically correct 'confession' that you think will buy you closure at the expense of truth. I mean brutal reality: slapping yourself in the face and admitting what you are doing to screw up your life. This also means admitting that you are getting payoffs for what you're doing, however sick or subtle those payoffs are."

And God knows, real acknowledgement and acceptance of responsibility is not what you were after or you wouldn't have apologized in email in the first place.

4.) Try to evoke sympathy for yourself as part of the apology.
Use worn-out lines like "It may not mean much to you now...". Thank the person for their past "support" of you in your (largely self-inflicted) trials and tribulations as a not-so-subtle reminder of how "rough" things have been for you.

You can also use this as a way to look magnanimous and introspective while avoiding taking any real action. Whine about how you are finally working on your issues" (never mind that you have been saying the same thing for years), as if that is supposed to mean something real. Avoid any discussion about what you are doing *specifically* to work on those issues.

After all, (despite your previous litany of lies) the person you are apologizing to should trust that you really mean what you say this time, right? Talk about how you are finally accepting responsibility for the consequences of your behavior, and then avoid making any effort to talk to the other person face to face. Talk about how you miss the fun you had with the other person (carefully avoiding any mention of the fun you had at that person's expense at the same time). See if there is still a chain left to be yanked.

Remember, this is all about assuaging your conscience and repairing your damaged image - not about doing real work or genuine caring for the other person, but nobody else needs to know that. With a little careful manipulation, you can use this apology to get sympathy and attention from other people as well. (Beckstead, Ed Hicks and even Julia Bish-whatever-her-name-is-now have tried this one)

5.) Don't give any reasons about why you have suddenly decided to extend this tremendous effort (writing an email) after so much time has passed.
It is equally important that you avoid replying to any questions they might ask about specifics. Remember, this isn't really about making amends, it's about making yourself feel better.

6.) Expect instant redemption and forgiveness.
Remember, no matter what you have done, a few words are supposed to magically wipe away all the pain of the past with no further work required by you. Now that you have made a token gesture, the other person should just "forgive and forget" so that you find it easier to sleep at night. (Brad Dorsky, Ed Hicks, YidwithLid, Beckstead, Gareth Rodger and Nathan E.B. Thomas, Jr - ALL expected their victims to be as emotionless as they are - and just move on. No respect for the trauma they caused or the pain they inflicted.
Except for their immediate families [wives, girlfriends, children, parents] - because these predators have to LIVE with [and leech off] those people, right?)

7.) Get upset when your trite "olive branch" isn't received with warmth and acceptance.
Go whining to whomever will listen, about how you made all this *EFFORT*, and how *HARD* it was for you to take that step (what with all your issues, and all), and how it was REJECTED because that awful person actually expected you to DO SOMETHING REAL. After all, you have ISSUES and such, and that means you should be exempted from behaving in a manner congruent to your words,and everyone should coddle you and praise even the smallest effort on your part.

(as we say - DO NOT LISTEN TO THEIR WORDS - WATCH THEIR ACTIONS!! Words are meaningless to an online predator - merely a means to an end. Their ACTIONS however or lack of them are everything!)

8.) Take no further action.
Use pat phrases like, "I'm doing my best to take responsiblity for the consequences of my behaviour", but don't actually DO anything beyond sending the email. It plays well, and you can always use that "doing my best" as your cop-out when you don't actually follow-through - it wasn't a REAL commitment to change, it was a "best-effort", and your emailed apology was a fine demonstration of how good THAT is.

I can't stress enough how important it is that you don't reply to any questions the other person might have about your email, especially ones that ask "why now?", "what specifically do you acknowledge was inappropriate?" and "what specifically you are doing to take responsibility?". After all, you don't owe them any explanation. Like I said, this isn't about doing anything for *them*, it's all about YOU. Indicate in your original apology that you still have some of the other person's belongings, but don't actually make any effort to RETURN them, or contact the other person in any way.

After all, once you've made your apology, you can wash your hands of the whole messy affair and wipe your conscience clean without having to dirty yourself with uncomfortable things like integrity, sincerity, action or actually facing the person you harmed.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

EVERYTHING AT HEARTLESS BITCHES IS WELL WORTH A READ!!

Another Revenge Site - Another Lawsuit

2012-01-28T01:08:00.002-04:00

by Anna North

A New York attorney is suing two of his exes for posting about him on the website liarscheatersrus.com. We took a look at the website he claims is ruining his career.

According to FindLaw, Matthew Couloute, Jr. is suing Stacey Blitsch and Amanda Ryncarz for posting on the site that he "Cheated on ALL of ex-girlfriends" and "lied and cheated his entire way through his 40 years of life." They also allegedly wrote, "BE FOREWARNED, HE'S SCUM. RUN FAR AWAY." Couloute is alleging that the posts have cost him clients, but FindLaw's Stephanie Rabiner writes that he probably doesn't have a case — she notes that "if true, these statements are not fraudulent misrepresentations or defamation." And Blitsch and Ryncarz are now suing Couloute with the help of Gloria Allred.

[A] review of some cached pages reveals an interesting — and disturbing — mix of rage, misery, and revenge. The homepage addresses infidelity victims directly:

Has anyone dated your spouse? Have you trusted and put yourself on the line for someone who turned out to be a player or a married person? Are you the victim of a home wrecker? You can not only find others that have been similarly victimized, but you can also report the perpetrators of these games to the world and save others from the heartache. Wouldn't you like to help others and prevent the people who cheated on you or tried to steal your husband and wife from doing it again?

Whether the posters on the site want to help others or simply vent is an open question. Some of the posts make serious allegations:

This man has cheated on his wife with more women than is humanly imaginable. His looks get him anything he wants, and he lies as easily as most of us breathe. He has beaten his wife, is currently incarcerated, but will be out in one year, doing it all over again…. So sad….

Some mix the serious with the trivial:

This man is the worst person I've ever met in my entire life. He lied from the day we met. He said he was 31 years old, but he is 38. He said he was a physician at a local hospital, and when I found out he wasn't, he lied and said it was my misunderstanding, and he was in medical school currently working as a PA while he's in school. He's really just a lab tech at a local hospital. He said he has been divorced for 2 years, and has one son. He is STILL married, and has 3 children with his wife of 14 years. He claims to be 6′ tall, but he's only 5'10″.

And some seem to speak to relationship problems that have nothing to do with lying or cheating:

He will come on strong, the complete charmer for the first 3 months. After he has made his score, he will back off and run. Then if you ever remind him of all the things he said or wrote to you about love, he will not remember. He will blame you for every single thing that is wrong in his life even if you have poured out 100% of your life to support his dreams and goals. I know because I did for year.

As Rabiner says, if these statements are true, they fall well within the bounds of free speech. But liarscheatersrus also seems like a great place to smear your ex, whether or not he or she actually did anything wrong. The site doesn't employ any obvious fact-checking, and so it has the potential to become a sort of "slut list" for grownups, a place where people can anonymously bash others without any proof.

Don't Date Him Girl has already mined this territory — and a lawsuit against that site was dismissed in 2007. Still, Rabiner notes that "even though Matthew Couloute may not prevail on this claim, keep in mind that, with slightly different facts, a posting on liarscheatersrus.com (or any other such site) could form the basis of a successful and costly lawsuit." And even if alleged liars and cheaters don't find legal recourse, posting anonymously on a website may not be a particularly good response to infidelity. In response to a woman wondering whether to tell her ex's new lady that he was in the closet, Slate's Emily Yoffe recently wrote,

Let's say you were the happy young woman engaged to the man of your dreams. Would you want his ex to come along and ruin everything by telling you that he is a closeted gay man who is secretly having promiscuous sex? I sure would! It's always easier in cases like this to just let adults make their own decisions and find out (or not) what's really going on.

That's doubly true if you're planning on posting incriminating (or false) information on the internet. It may feel good at the time, but it's unlikely to sway somebody who's intent on dating your nasty ex. And it might get you sued.

original article can be found here

ONLINE RELATIONSHIPS: THE ART OF MISPERCEPTION

2012-01-27T01:08:00.000-04:00

Is "real" love possible to attain via computer? There are many factors that come into play when two people fall in love. Some cannot be described in a definitive way; such as chemical attraction. Other factors are qualities that we find in another person that compliment our desires of a “perfect” mate. Honesty, integrity, loyalty, caring, a fun loving personality and good morals are just a few of these qualities. Many woman and men alike, have “fallen in love” over the internet. They have done so, without the possibility of truly seeing any of these qualities in the other person. So before we put our hearts on the line, we must ask ourselves; is it truly possible to love someone via computer?

The majority of people who believe they have discovered true love without actually meeting the other person, have done so by implementing a type of instant messenger or video conferencing. We will focus on this element, as the element of a webcam can be misleading. When two people find each other and begin to chat online, one of two things happens. Either they do not feel a connection or they do. If a connection is felt, this can quickly escalate into chatting every day. They believe they have discovered the excitement that one feels when meeting someone new. However, they have not really met, have they?

It is a fact that many people are lonely. This is not new to us, many single people are busy with work, single moms are busy with their children and it can be very daunting and difficult to find a meaningful relationship in the “real” world. With personal computers in the majority of every household, many people turn to this internet environment when they are lonely and wish for someone to talk to.

It is important to realize that the world inside a computer is not, and never can be, the real world. When craving acceptance, love, caring, attention and a relationship, one can easily be led astray into the art of misperception. Often, this misperception is not done on purpose. Both people involved in the online relationship do not even realize this is happening.

The truth of the matter is this: the key elements of a true and loving relationship cannot materialize through a computer. You may wish for them, daydream of them and tell yourself they exist, but they do not.

Starting with physical and chemical attraction: a person may feel they are attracted to the image on a webcam but this in no way is the actual person that exists. Anyone who owns a webcam surely understands that it is very easy to show yourself in a good light via cam. If you feel that you are completely attracted to the other person, ask yourself this: Do you entirely show your true self on your cam? Webcams are an image of you, a moving image and very far from what you are perceived as in person. If you are attracted to someone via cam, ask yourself, have you stood close to him or her and taken in the presence of his or her body? Do you love the fragrance of their cologne/ perfume? Do you love the feel of their kisses? When they hug you, is it done strongly or softy? Do you love those hugs? When you touch their hair, do you admire the feel of it? The smell of it? The answer, of course is no. You have no idea what this person is like in person nor how you feel physically and emotionally when touching them.

Qualities such as honesty, loyalty, integrity, caring and general overall mood are extremely important to a strong and loving relationship. If a person possesses these qualities, it can then free you to respect the person and set a ground for trust and a feeling of safety. Someone who is in love online, may debate that they have seen these qualities already. To this, I ask:

Are you there in the house when they get home from work and see what they do with all of their spare time?

Are you witness to their work ethics?

Do you sit around a table with their family and see the loving interaction?

Have you gotten in an argument and have seen if the other person stays to talk or walks out the door in anger?

Have you stood by them when they hear some unpleasant news and are witness to how they react?

Have you greeted them at the end of a long day, a day that tested their nerves, and then received a hug?

Did you cook and then burn dinner and they told you it does not matter, they love you for trying?

Did you forget to run an important errand that you promised you would, and they told you not to worry?

The list is endless. The conclusion is that there is no possible way to know of how this person will interact in a relationship without physically being with them.

Love can be confusing. Craving a relationship or marriage can send people in a blindness that prevents them from understanding the misperception that occurs online. Again, this misperception does not need be by intention. The mere fact that there is no actual “in person” interface is what causes this misperception to arise in the first place. A person can be intrigued, in lust, in "like", or in a false reality of love when online with another. Only in spending quality time face-to-face, will the true colors of the other surface.

It is at that time, that one should decide if they are in love.

Written by Alisa Chagnon

Online Dating Hunting Grounds for Romance Fraudster

2012-01-26T01:16:00.000-04:00

A Ghanaian man accused of posing as a US soldier on an online dating site has been arrested on suspicion of conning a British woman into sending £271,000 to Africa.

In what is thought to be the biggest case of its kind so far, police detained Maurice Asola Fadola, 31, who is thought to be behind a series of "romance frauds" – targeting women through dating sites, and fabricating an elaborate series of stories to convince them to send money to Ghana.

The British victim, who did not want to be named, struck up a relationship over the internet with a man she believed to be an American soldier serving in Iraq.

After several months of correspondance, in which he told of his life dodging bullets and bombs, he told her that he was leaving the army – and perhaps they could meet up. But while his luggage was being returned to the US, there were a series of "problems" which the British woman was enticed into helping out – to the eventual cost of £271,000.

The head of the Ghanaian Serious Fraud Office described Mr Fadola as a suspected "kingpin", and his arrest after months of painstaking intelligence gathering is the high point of a joint Ghanaian-British campaign against alleged romance frauds.

Last month officers from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) travelled to the Ghanaian capital of Accra to work alongside Ghanaian police in arresting Mr Fadola.

Officers had planned to mount a "sting" operation; setting traps for when he came to collect money they had sent to a money transfer service, or lying in wait for him to pick up a parcel of laptops or mobile phones from the Post Office.

Police froze his bank accounts, and when he came into the Serious Fraud Office in Accra to try and brazen his way into releasing the funds, he was arrested.

Mr Fadola, who lived in a luxurious mansion on the outskirts of Accra, is being held in custody and questioned over money laundering and passport offences, which carry a maximum sentence of 25 years.

Colin Woodcock, head of SOCA's fraud department, said that his team was working alongside Ghanaian authorities, sharing policing techniques with local forces to track down the fraudsters.

"At first we thought it was just people sending £50 here or there," he said, "but although the bulk are small frauds, now we know that some people are being robbed of hundreds of thousands.

"It's an international problem, involving police forces from across the globe working together to squeeze the criminals."

More and more cases of romance fraud are being discovered.

In August last year Philip Hunt, 58, threw himself under a train after losing £82,000 in a romance fraud. He had met a Nigerian girl on the internet, who convinced him to spend the money with promises of starting a life together.

"These people are out to get people when they are very vulnerable. They're in there like vultures," Lesley Smith, Mr Hunt's former partner, told the inquest into his death.

Mr Woodcock said: "The bottom line is: don't give anyone your money. Imagine you'd met someone in a pub for the first time, and they said I'd love to see you again but can you buy me a laptop?

"We're seeing an explosion in this. Everyone is on online dating nowadays, and criminals have cottoned onto it. These people destroy lives. It's loss on a catastrophic scale."

2 of EOPC's examples:
Nathan Ernest Burl Thomas, Jr.
Doug Beckstead

original article here

Crackdown on Facebook "Burn" Pages

2012-01-25T01:03:00.000-04:00

By Pamela Owen

(U.K.) Schoolchildren have been setting up special Facebook 'burn' pages to post vile and abusive messages about their peers.

Police have now said they are cracking down on the phenomenon and have warned pupils to start removing their names and comments - many of them sexual - off the pages.

Officers estimate as many as 700 students are involved in the sites - which are inspired by the cult film Mean Girls - in which students write hurtful and often fabricated gossip in a 'burn book'. So far eight of the pages in the Portsmouth area of Hampshire have been shut down after police and schools contacted Facebook.

However many, including Portsmouth Burn which has 712 friends, are still being used.

Police have warned pupils who continue to post messages on the pages that they could face investigation and prosecution.

At Park Community School in Leigh Park, near Havant, Hampshire, 50 students were members of a 'Hampshire burn' page.

Three students - a former male pupil, a year 11 boy and a year 10 girl - were victims of particularly depraved sexual comments.

Sue Walker, deputy head, said: 'Last week it came to my attention there were a number of 'burn' sites - 'Hampshire Burn', 'Leigh Park Burn' and others. I had 178 pages of the Hampshire Burn site downloaded and it was deeply unpleasant stuff. I knew immediately this was something that could get out of control and that we had to act quickly.'

Miss Walker called on schools officer PC Justine Lewis, who has since been talking to pupils about the consequences of being involved in such sites.

In particular, students could face charges of harassment and assault that could result in up to two years' imprisonment. PC Lewis said students had been given a short amnesty over the weekend to withdraw their names and comments.

'We don't want to criminalise children but if they don't take themselves off we will be calling them in individually, talking to their parents and considering criminal charges,' she said. 'This is a very difficult area to police but I'm really pleased schools have taken positive action and safer neighbourhood teams are working closely with them.'

A 'Purbrook Burn' site was taken down after the headteacher of Purbrook Park School, in Waterlooville, Hampshire, called a meeting with all 40 pupils who were members of the group.

Paul Foxley said a year 11 girl admitted to creating the page and took it down the same day. 'I made it very clear to the students that their online safety was extremely important to me - I will not tolerate any rude comments online or in person,' he said. 'As a result, a girl owned up to setting it up and it was gone in a day. She was very remorseful but we did give her a five-day internal exclusion as it was a very serious mistake on her part.'

A Facebook spokeswoman said anyone concerned about online bullying should contact the site immediately so their dedicated team can investigate and take down any offending sites immediately.

original article found here

Irish Student Crucified on the Internet

2012-01-24T01:33:00.003-04:00

By Warren Swords and Debbie Mccann

(U.K.) An innocent student who had his name blackened on the internet has comprehensively cleared his name – thanks to the Irish Mail on Sunday.

Dublin student Eoin McKeogh, accused of dodging a €50 taxi fare, has laid bare how the internet can destroy a blameless person's reputation in seconds and put people in the horrifying position of either leaving vile allegations in the public domain or pursuing a difficult and costly legal battle through the courts that will attract more attention from the media.

The entire episode has proven how social media such as Facebook and Twitter constitute something of a Wild West when it comes to laws of defamation, where anonymous users can accuse innocent people of crimes without any proof, in a spiralling nightmare of libel and slander.

Mr McKeogh's ordeal began in December when a taxi driver posted a video taken inside his cab on YouTube of a young man running from his taxi without paying the fare.

The video – dated November 13 – clearly shows the man's face and a friend can be heard calling him 'Eoin'.

Within hours, the video had spread to Facebook, Twitter and other internet forums. One anonymous viewer commented on YouTube – wrongly – that the culprit was Eoin McKeogh.

Soon, his name spread across the internet and social media sites and people began sending vitriolic messages to Mr McKeogh's Facebook page calling him a 'scumbag', a 'thief' and worse.

In January, he went to the gardaí twice to see what could be done, before taking legal advice. The matter came before the courts for the first time on January 10. During that hearing, Mr McKeogh provided the judge with his passport, which showed he had entered Japan on November 11 and left the Far East on November 22.

The video was filmed on November 13, while Mr McKeogh was studying in Japan.

'I was not and could not have been the person in the video,' he said in his affidavit to the court, where he is seeking an injunction to have the video permanently removed from the web.

Since the case was reported and he was named in certain newspapers, he is now also seeking an injunction to stop them naming him again.

His senior counsel, Pauline Whalley, told the court that on January 13, the taxi driver appeared in court and gave evidence that the taxi fare evader was not Eoin McKeogh and that he didn't even look like the culprit.

The driver apologised to Mr McKeogh for the trouble the video had caused, saying it was a 'terrible thing' to happen to him. 'He shook my hand and apologised,' said Mr McKeogh in his affidavit. The High Court granted him a temporary injunction on Tuesday against Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Google from hosting the video online for a week. A subsequent full hearing into his effort to gain injunctions against six newspapers began yesterday but was adjourned last night until today.

Mr McKeogh said he thought his nightmare was over but that he was still being accused online following court reports of the case.

'I was shocked to see all the postings [on the internet]. They all presumed I was guilty… and attempting to gag the media. I also had a fake Facebook page created.'

In a desperate attempt to clear his name, he even replied to tormentors online, sending them a photograph of himself and his boarding pass from his flight from Tokyo with his travel dates clearly visible.

One website, Broadsheet.ie, reproduced the photograph and a link to the video and told readers: 'You decide.'

According to his legal team, internet commentators continued to accuse Mr McKeogh and posted: 'Why the f*** do injunctions exist? I hope the f*** it blights his career.'

Yesterday afternoon in Court 45, Mr McKeogh asked for an injunction against several newspapers to stop them from printing his name in relation to the case and the video.

Barrister Miss Whalley was critical of the media for not reporting his innocence in the stories and argued against newspapers naming him again due to the public perception that there is no smoke without fire.

She said: 'People believe on a massive scale that he's guilty.'

In response, Mr Justice Michael Peart said: 'The smoke will remain thick – perhaps diluted, as it could not be and was not him.'

Mr Justice Peart said he would consider his decision overnight and make a ruling today at 2.30pm.

Despite offering incontrovertible proof in court that it wasn't him and successfully getting an injunction against YouTube showing the video, the footage was back on the website last night with users identifying him as the culprit, calling him a 'scumbag' and other highly derogatory comments.

The 22-year-old told the packed court yesterday how malicious allegations has ruined his life and could irreversibly damage his promising academic prospects.

Following the successful injunction, 95 per cent of the material posted online about Mr McKeogh was removed.

However, the following day, media organisations reported the court case and according to Miss Whalley 'it went viral again' with people 'saying he was guilty, he can pay high wages of lawyers but not a taxi fare.'

She said her client was not a Seán Quinn or a Seán FitzPatrick but 'an ordinary kid going through college and getting on with his life.

'With a few key strokes, you can destroy a person's reputation,' the barrister said.

Judge Peart described it as 'strange' that newspaper did not include the proof of his innocence in their reports.

original article here

Stop Trolling!! Married Means M-A-R-R-I-E-D

2012-01-23T01:52:00.000-04:00

(This gem was posted on Craigslist.com and was so good, we are reposting here for all the victims and spouses (even those in denial) of online cheaters & cyberpaths - EOPC)

Married means married, Moron

It's getting to the point where I can't even read those stupid personal ads anymore, not even for fun.

They're loaded with married people, bitching about their spouses, and looking for something "better".

I've got a few things to tell you:

1. "She" is not the reason your marriage sucks. YOU are.

If you spent half as much time paying attention to your wife as you do trolling CraigsList (or other sites) for sex, your marriage would be a whole lot better.

2. Yeah, yeah, we've all heard it a thousand times. You're in a sexless marriage.

First of all, that's probably a lie, because most cheaters are liars too. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, pal- if your wife isn't interested in sex, it's because you're not offering sex that's interesting. Married guys get awfully boring after a while. They do the same boring thing the same boring way every single time and then -- they expect you to scream like a porn star.

Seriously, you come home from work, totally ignore her while she chases the kids around for 4 hours, makes dinner, does the laundry, blah blah blah, and then you expect her to roll over with her legs open for another session of same-old same-old? When are you idiots going to learn that the best foreplay in the world for a woman is watching you take care of the kids, vacuum the floor, pick up the dog poo in the backyard. Or how about just listening when she talks? You know, it's not that hard to stop thinking about yourself for five minutes and hear what she has to say.

Think about it - way back when, when you were getting your brains ****ed out on a regular basis - what were YOU doing differently than you're doing now? Planning dates, telling her she looked nice, acting like you're happy to be with her? A thousand dollars says if you do that stuff again you'll get the same result.

3. Spare us. Your kids are NOT the reason you're staying married. If you were THAT miserable, you'd leave whether you had kids or not. If you're not getting a divorce it's because YOU DON'T WANT TO. For whatever reason.

At least be honest and don't try to feed people that tired line about staying married for the kids. Contrary to what you think, it doesn't make you look like a poor suffering but honorable victim. You obviously don't care enough about your kids to treat their mother with enough respect not to cheat on her, and you don't care about them enough to spend time with THEM instead of some vulnerable woman who falls for your carefully constructed lies, so cut it out with that crap. (BTW - did you even BOTHER to tell her you're MARRIED with KIDS?)

There is absolutely nothing honorable about putting your **** ahead of your kids. If you really really cared about them, you would get offline put ALL your time and effort and money into saving the one thing that means most to them in the whole world - your marriage and their family. Otherwise you're full of crap.

4. We all know how bored you are. Poor you, someone should really come along to entertain you.

What are you, 12 years old? If you're bored with your marriage, it's because YOU'RE BORING, and have you ever stopped to think that if you're bored, she probably is too? But instead of throwing a temper tantrum like a 2 year old, she's at home cleaning out the lint trap on the dryer and washing kool-aid off the kitchen floor. Yeah, she's having a riot washing your underwear and cleaning up cat puke.

Marriage is hard work. Heck, life is hard work. Grow up and take some responsibility for yourself. You supposedly have a brain, USE it. Put some thought into your marriage and some effort into your life and stop blaming her and being a baby because life isn't fun.

5. You're looking for someone "younger."

Sure you are. You think you look the same as you did when you got married? I'd bet not. Even if you do, you haven't spent the last 10 years having babies (the ones YOU wanted) and sacrificing your body for them. The next time you have to have someone stitch your ***hole together because you just pushed a watermelon out of your butt, then you can squawk. If you ever spend 9 months with your belly stretched to obscene proportions, and manage to look exactly the same as you used to 6 weeks later, then you can whine about how "she's not attractive anymore." Until then, shut the **** up.

You have no concept of what she has sacrificed to give you the children you "claim" to love. You really think she wants varicose veins and stretch marks and a distended belly and saggy boobs? Get real. What she wants is a man who understands and values WHY she has varicose veins and stretch marks and a distended belly and saggy boobs. She wants a man who loves her because she was willing to make those sacrifices with her own body because she loves HIM. Instead, you criticize and go running off with the first perky 25 year old who gives you the time of day. (or the first vulnerable woman who's being ignored by her man or is vulnerable enough in some way that her b.s. radar is damaged while you put the NLP whamma-jamma on her and say "I love you" just get her to spread her legs for you.) Ugh.

6. And finally, if you're cheating on your wife, there's something wrong with YOU.

If you're not happy with your marriage, exactly how do you think screwing some sl*t you barely know is going to fix that? Exactly how is that going to make anyone happy? Have you ever actually heard of adultery or an online affair working out really well for everyone involved? Are you actually stupid enough to think that you're going to be the exception to that rule? If so, you are delusional and you need professional help.

Affairs are disasters - not some of the time; not most of the time; ALL OF THE TIME. Your guilt and trying to cover your tracks will drive you crazy. Someone WILL find out. You will NOT be able to keep up the lies and the deception. And it will all lead up to a disaster of epic proportions, which leads me to Lucky #7.

7. Here‘s what you can expect in the wake of your little ****-fest:

Divorce - this is where you lose everything- your wife, your house, half your income and possessions, possibly your job if you're stupid enough to be screwing around with a co-worker, your kids - EVERYTHING. You will LOSE IT ALL.

Exposure - this is where everyone finds out what a scumbag you are. And they WILL find out. Your boss, your co-workers, your friends, your family, HER family, your neighbors, the parents of your kids‘ friends, everyone at your church. They WILL find out. Why? Because your now ex-wife and/ or ex-girlfriend(s) will tell them. She will probably tell everyone she knows, and everyone you know, and she will feel good doing it. Consider yourself lucky if she doesn't rent a billboard.

Oh, and DON'T try to paint yourself as the 'victim' of jealous or obsessed or scorned women. We all know that's a lie, too.

You lied to your wife and your probably lying to all your girlfriends as well as lying about one to the other. Otherwise, all bets are off. Be prepared.

Your Kids - this is where you totally lose the respect of your kids, and you deserve to lose it. They will realize in pretty short order that you didn't care enough about them to keep your pants on. They will see their mother cry and they will hate you for it. They will end up shuttling back and forth between their home and your apartment, and they will hate you for it. Every time they have to tell someone that their parents are divorced, they will hate you for it.

And God forbid you decide to "introduce" them to your shiny new soulmate/ ****buddy; they will REALLY hate you for that. If your kids are really young, you have a little time before all this hits the fan, but be warned, it's coming. They will forever see you as the moron who broke up or disrupted their family. Even if you stick around - they will know that you can't be trusted, that you are weak and immoral and selfish. And they'll figure it out all by themselves, even if you never talk to them about it. Because your kids are smarter than you are at this point.

And when your new "soulmate" figures out your real agenda, bend over and kiss it goodbye. If all she does is "expose you" after she finds out you ripped her heart out at the root - you should thank her not smear her. It's nothing less than what you asked for.

So, go ahead and whine your pathetic nonsense about how you're a victim and your wife is a horrible shrew. Do your best to convince yourself and everyone around you that you didn't have any choice and your wife "drove you to it." Start with the rationalizations and justifications now; you're going to need a lot of them.

Remember that the best defense is a good offense and start a mental list of all the ways your wife is deficient. Make sure to re-write the history of your marriage so that you can say that you were miserable from the first day. You should have married that OTHER girl (who probably dumped your sorry ***)

Be sure to tell your wife that you love her, you're just not "in love" with her anymore. Deal with your guilt by lashing out at everyone around you.

Above all, take ZERO responsibility for any problems YOU may have that caused you to be such a spineless loser in the first place.

Congratulations, you've just joined the Adulterers Club!

SOME OF THE INNER WORKINGS OF A CYBERPATH

2012-01-22T01:33:00.000-04:00

(extrapolated from the work of Lundy Bancroft)
- The cyberpath is controlling; he insists on having the last word in arguments and decision making (such as saying "it's over" and blocking the victim or saying "I will not read anything more she writes or listen to anything more she says"... mostly because the victim is telling the truth!)

- he may make rules for the victim about her movements and personal contacts, such as forbidding her to contact or to see certain friends online or off. He also forbids his friends and family from contacting you by painting a very negative picture of you to them.

- he is manipulative; he misleads people inside and outside of the family about his
abusiveness, he twists arguments around to make other people feel at fault, he changes times & dates to cover himself, and he turns into a sweet, sensitive person for extended periods of time when he feels that it is in his best interest to do so

- his public image usually contrasts sharply with the online reality (friends & family are clueless to the image he present to his targets/ victims)

- he is entitled; he considers himself to have special rights and privileges not applicable to other family members, friends or you

- he believes that his needs should be at the center of the target's agenda, and that everyone should focus on keeping him happy

- he typically believes that it is his sole prerogative to determine when and how sexual relations will take place, and denies his partner the right to refuse or to initiate sex/ cybersex

- he usually believes that work should be done for him, and that any contributions he makes to those efforts should earn him special appreciation and deference

- he is highly and often subtly demanding

- he is disrespectful; he considers his targets less competent, sensitive, and intelligent than he is, often treating her as though she were an inanimate object (because in his mind, she is "just an object")

- he communicates his sense of superiority in various ways

- after a break-up or negative event with the target, the cyberpath sometimes becomes quickly involved with a new partner whom he treats relatively well for a long period of time
- cyberpaths are not out of control, and therefore can be on "good" behavior for extended periods of time - even a few years - if they consider it in their best interest to do so

- the new target may insist, based on her experience with him, that the man is wonderful to her, and that any problems reported from the previous relationship must have been fabricated, or must result from bad relationship dynamics for which the cyberpath and a former target are mutually responsible. The cyberpath can thus use his new partner to create the impression that he is not a risk.

When caught:
- Cyberpaths increasingly use a tactic I call "preemptive strike," where he accuses the target of doing all the things that he has done. (projection)

- he will call his target a "predator too!"

- he was scour the net, her friends, etc for every little tidbit of information - spinning it into a damning web and making it look as if she had done something horrible by stringing together "facts"; this includes going after the target's family, friends, children, coworkers and so on

- he will say things like: "it was just fooling around, nothing serious", "it was all a game", "everyone does it" and "THE TARGET DID IT TOO AND KNEW WHAT THEY WERE GETTING INTO" (this last statement is a blatant lie believed only by the cyberpath & their 'buddies')

- he will say that his victim(s) was harassing him and his friends/family, that she was extremely "controlling" (adopting the language of domestic violence experts; even calling the victim a 'predator, psychopath, cyberpath' and so on), that she's a 'terrorist' or a 'scorned woman' and that she was unfaithful and also at fault. He will accuse her of being a cheater or a sex addict or a harasser herself

- he may go to law enforcement and try to take out protective order against the target or 'report' the target, manipulating everything with 'selective' or 'doctored' information to make it look as if she is the aggressor or abuser

- The cyberpath does the opposite of what they should, according to the situation. They will sometimes use all these concocted lies to cease communication with the traumatized target, never make amends or truly apologize and take any measures they feel necessary to silence their victims so they can target more unsuspecting targets.

- Or if the target tells the cyberpath to 'leave them / and their family alone' the cyberpath will become relentless in harassing their victims, online & off and trying to "tell their truth" (lies & spin) about the situation in a fit of narcissistic rage.

(We have used the male gender, your cyberpath may well be female - EOPC)

The Shadow of Fear

2012-01-21T01:46:00.000-04:00

The shadow of fear that stalkers leave on their victims

by Grace Hammond

Jennifer Aniston recently had a restraining order issued against 24-year-old Jayson Peyton, who staked out her home for eight days and was found to have duct tape, dvds of her films and a sharp object in his car.

The story made the headlines and saw the former Friends star join the likes of Halle Berry, Mel Gibson and Gwyneth Paltrow, who have all been victims of stalkers.

But it is not just Hollywood A-listers who suffer what can be a terrifying experience. More than 1.2 million women and 900,000 men are stalked in the UK every year and in the worst instances, stalking can lead to violence, criminal damage, rape or even murder.

One of the most chilling cases in recent years involved German office worker David Heiss who murdered British student Matthew Pyke in a sustained and savage stabbing attack after becoming obsessed with his Yorkshire girlfriend, who he had met in the chatroom of a war game website.

Thankfully, such horrific cases are rare but for anyone who has been the victim of stalking it can be a traumatic ordeal. "People think stalkers are strangers lurking in the bushes, but research shows 50 per cent of stalking cases involve ex-partners," says Jane Harvey, from the charity Network for Surviving Stalking. "Anybody who deals with the public is more at risk – I was speaking to a teacher recently who was being stalked by the mother of a pupil."

Ms Harvey says stalking can have a huge impact on lives – making people feel panicked, depressed and lonely.

"It affects your relationships, your ability to trust people and to function as a normal human being."

At present, the only law against stalking is The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and although the law in the UK doesn't define what stalking is, Harvey says it "could be someone phoning you repeatedly, emailing you, following you, sending you presents or other 'gifts'."

Experts believe the rise in reported stalking incidents over the last decade is, in part, down to the development of the internet and mobile phones which have made it easier for stalkers to prey on their victims. But while celebrity figures like Jennifer Aniston are quick to contact the police, research in the UK has shown that 77 per cent of victims didn't report they were being stalked until more than 100 incidents had happened.

The story of Jemma, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, makes for unsettling reading. She met a man on a dating website who shared her interests. She was excited but wary. "He was my first internet date and I'd arranged to meet him in a public place – just as you're supposed to do," she says.

After a couple of dates, she decided to end their relationship which is when the emails started. "They pleaded for another chance, saying we'd both regret it if we didn't try again, but the emails continued, becoming stranger and darker. It frightened me."

He kept phoning in the middle of the night and threatened to come round if she wouldn't meet him. It left her feeling vulnerable and frightened. "I was finding it impossible to concentrate on work."

She called the police and her stalker was finally arrested and given a restraining order. But the stalker posted a fake profile on the same dating site and got in touch with Jemma asking to meet. "I was horrified he'd invented a new identity to harass me again."

He was finally caught by police again and they fitted a panic alarm in her home. But the experience has left her shaken. "How many more people are out there, creating false identities and stalking their victims under the cover of websites?"

Jane Harvey says if someone is making you feel uncomfortable then you should trust your instincts and go to the police. "Victims themselves don't take stalking seriously. If someone walked up to you and punched you in the face, you'd go to the police. But stalking can happen more slowly, a few texts one day, a few the next week."

There are basic precautions that anyone can follow, such as limiting the amount of personal information they put on the internet and social network sites like Facebook.

But the advice is simple – never confront a stalker, and keep a record of any text messages, emails and letters as evidence to help the police.

For more advice and information in the U.K., visit the Network for Surviving Stalking, http://www.nss.org.uk

original article here

Jailed for Facebook Threats

2012-01-20T01:21:00.000-04:00

A Fort Myers man is accused of cyberstalking two former co-workers using Facebook – and threatening their lives. Lee County deputies say the suspect created several fake Facebook accounts to make the threats. One of the victims said she feared for her life.

Jacobe Swanson was arrested and charged with threatening to kill or injure two women. The written threats were made on a popular social networking site Facebook.

"He had been threatening me for a long time," said one of the victims.

She said Swanson began stalking her two years ago.

"We were coworkers and nothing more. He showed interest in me and I rejected him and he decided he would start harassing me because I wouldn't give him the time of day," the victim said.

Swanson allegedly left threatening notes on her car.

Then he allegedly began stalking her and another former female coworker online.

"There were pretty horrific threats made against them like they were going to die. They were afraid to go to work and now he's going to face the consequences for that," said Sergeant Stephanie Eller of the Lee County Sheriff's Office.

According to the arrest report, Swanson threatened to chop off the head of one of the victims with a machete, then kill everyone in her house.

Swanson allegedly threatened the other woman saying "She was going to die either at home or at her job" and that she would die soon.

Detectives subpoenaed Facebook for the I.P. address associated with the threatening messages.

That address came back to the Fort Myers home where Swanson lives with his mom.

No one answered the door at Swanson's home.

Swanson is still in jail, where his victims hope he will stay for a long time.

"I hope he gets time for it and I hope he gets some psychiatric help because I believe he needs it," the victim said.

Swanson has been charged with aggravated stalking, intimidation (write, send threat to kill or injure) and contempt of court (violation injunction).

original article here

SOPA / PIPA Information

2012-01-19T01:16:00.000-04:00

For our U.S. readers:

Must read: SOPA/PIPA READING LIST

by Brian Barrett

If you hadn't heard of SOPA before, you probably have by now: Some of the internet's most influential sites—Reddit and Wikipedia among them—are going dark to protest the much-maligned anti-piracy bill. But other than being a very bad thing, what is SOPA? And what will it mean for you if it passes?

SOPA is an anti-piracy bill working its way through Congress...

House Judiciary Committee Chair and Texas Republican Lamar Smith, along with 12 co-sponsors, introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act on October 26th of last year. Debate on H.R. 3261, as it's formally known, has consisted of one hearing on November 16th and a "mark-up period" on December 15th, which was designed to make the bill more agreeable to both parties. Its counterpart in the Senate is the Protect IP Act (S. 968). Also known by its cuter-but-still-deadly name: PIPA. There will likely be a vote on PIPA next Wednesday; SOPA discussions had been placed on hold but will resume in February of this year.

...that would grant content creators extraordinary power over the internet...

The beating heart of SOPA is the ability of intellectual property owners (read: movie studios and record labels) to effectively pull the plug on foreign sites against whom they have a copyright claim. If Warner Bros., for example, says that a site in Italy is torrenting a copy of The Dark Knight, the studio could demand that Google remove that site from its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from it, and—most dangerously—that the site's ISP prevent people from even going there.

...which would go almost comedically unchecked...

Perhaps the most galling thing about SOPA in its original construction is that it let IP owners take these actions without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off. All it required was a single letter claiming a "good faith belief" that the target site has infringed on its content. Once Google or PayPal or whoever received the quarantine notice, they would have five days to either abide or to challenge the claim in court. Rights holders still have the power to request that kind of blockade, but in the most recent version of the bill the five day window has softened, and companies now would need the court's permission.

The language in SOPA implies that it's aimed squarely at foreign offenders; that's why it focuses on cutting off sources of funding and traffic (generally US-based) rather than directly attacking a targeted site (which is outside of US legal jurisdiction) directly. But that's just part of it.

...to the point of potentially creating an "Internet Blacklist"...

Here's the other thing: Payment processors or content providers like Visa or YouTube don't even need a letter shut off a site's resources. The bill's "vigilante" provision gives broad immunity to any provider who proactively shutters sites it considers to be infringers. Which means the MPAA just needs to publicize one list of infringing sites to get those sites blacklisted from the internet.

Potential for abuse is rampant. As Public Knowledge points out, Google could easily take it upon itself to delist every viral video site on the internet with a "good faith belief" that they're hosting copyrighted material. Leaving YouTube as the only major video portal. Comcast (an ISP) owns NBC (a content provider). Think they might have an interest in shuttering some rival domains? Under SOPA, they can do it without even asking for permission.

...while exacting a huge cost from nearly every site you use daily...

SOPA also includes an "anti-circumvention" clause, which holds that telling people how to work around SOPA is nearly as bad as violating its main provisions. In other words: if your status update links to The Pirate Bay, Facebook would be legally obligated to remove it. Ditto tweets, YouTube videos, Tumblr or WordPress posts, or sites indexed by Google. And if Google, Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, etc. let it stand? They face a government "enjoinment." They could and would be shut down.

The resources it would take to self-police are monumental for established companies, and unattainable for start-ups. SOPA would censor every online social outlet you have, and prevent new ones from emerging.

...and potentially disappearing your entire digital life...

The party line on SOPA is that it only affects seedy off-shore torrent sites. That's false. As the big legal brains at Bricoleur point out, the potential collateral damage is huge. And it's you. Because while Facebook and Twitter have the financial wherewithal to stave off anti-circumvention shut down notices, the smaller sites you use to store your photos, your videos, and your thoughts may not. If the government decides any part of that site infringes on copyright and proves it in court? Poof. Your digital life is gone, and you can't get it back.

...while still managing to be both unnecessary and ineffective...

What's saddest about SOPA is that it's pointless on two fronts. In the US, the MPAA, and RIAA already have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to request that infringing material be taken down. We've all seen enough "video removed" messages to know that it works just fine.

As for the foreign operators, you might as well be throwing darts at a tse-tse fly. The poster child of overseas torrenting, Pirate Bay, has made it perfectly clear that they're not frightened in the least. And why should they be? Its proprietors have successfully evaded any technological attempt to shut them down so far. Its advertising partners aren't US-based, so they can't be choked out. But more important than Pirate Bay itself is the idea of Pirate Bay, and the hundreds or thousands of sites like it, as populous and resilient as mushrooms in a marsh. Forget the question of should SOPA succeed. It's incredibly unlikely that it could. At least at its stated goals.

...but stands a shockingly good chance of passing...

SOPA is, objectively, an unfeasible trainwreck of a bill, one that willfully misunderstands the nature of the internet and portends huge financial and cultural losses. The White House has come out strongly against it. As have hundreds of venture capitalists and dozens of the men and women who helped build the internet in the first place. In spite of all this, companies have already spent a lot of money pushing SOPA, and it remains popular in the House of Representatives.

That mark-up period on December 15th, the one that was supposed to transform the bill into something more manageable? Useless. Twenty sanity-fueled amendments were flat-out rejected. And while the bill's most controversial provision—mandatory DNS filtering—was thankfully taken off the table recently, in practice internet providers would almost certainly still use DNS as a tool to shut an accused site down.
...unless we do something about it.

The momentum behind the anti-SOPA movement has been slow to build, but we're finally at a saturation point. Wikipedia, BoingBoing, WordPress, TwitPic: they'll all be dark on January 18th. An anti-SOPA rally has been planned for tomorrow afternoon in New York. The list of companies supporting SOPA is long but shrinking, thanks in no small part to the emails and phone calls they've received in the last few months.

So keep calling. Keep emailing. Most of all, keep making it known that the internet was built on the same principles of freedom that this country was. It should be afforded to the same rights.

original article found here

Online Daters Burned by Lies

2012-01-18T01:21:00.000-04:00

ONLINE DATING CAN BE DANGEROUS

An estimated 40 million Americans use online dating services hoping to meet "the one." There are more than 1,400 Web sites in the $700 million a year business, but some question their safety.

Prosecutors say a Philadelphia nursing student was conning women on match.com. He was convicted in 2007 of assault, but the accusations don't end there. His victims, described as attractive, ambitious professionals say their lives will never be the same.

Prosecutors said Jeffrey Marsalis, 34, told some tall tales, pretending to be a doctor, an astronaut and even a spy to lure women on Internet dating sites.

"He faces up to 20 years in prison and he will have to register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life," said prosecutor Joe Khan.

Marsalis was convicted of sexual assault. However, he was acquitted of more serious charges that he drugged and then raped seven women in his apartment.

"You read about it, you see it on TV but you just don't think it can happen to you," one anonymous victim said.

She said she knows about tricksters like Jeffrey Marsalis and how easy it is to be duped online. According to her, a man she met on a Christian dating Web site was seeing 60 other women from 25 different Web sites. He pretended to be everything from a country music manager to a Pentagon consultant. He even lied about having cancer, she said.

She claims he stole thousands of dollars from his victims.

"Mentally, it just about broke me to think that I had been so naive, when I don't consider myself to be a very naive person," she said. "And of course, I was worried about my safety." She may have good reason to be. Dozens of Internet dating cases have ended in tragedy. And experts said it's only getting worse.

"Men especially are getting are getting bolder as far as using dating Web sites to find their next victim," said Jayne Hitchcock, who is working to halt online abuse.

"Most of these women will tell you that they had a bad feeling about it but they went ahead with it because the person the man had a wonderful profile," Hitchcock said. "He was charming."

One victim said it was loneliness that clouded her judgment.

"Victims are victims because somebody is looking to exploit their weakness," she said. "And it doesn't matter if you're doctor. It doesn't matter if you're an accountant."

She said she wants women to trust their instincts because she didn't trust her own. About 35 percent of daters admit they lie about themselves online, according to a survey research study by Jeana Frost of Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Though the real number is probably MUCH higher!)

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

THE LURES OF THE ONLINE PREDATOR

2012-01-17T01:08:00.000-04:00

The excerpts used are from the book THE ART OF SEDUCTION by Robert Greene. Many of these seduction techniques are time-tested and often used in sales & marketing as well as the training of Neuro-Linguistic Programming for salesmen and advertising persons.

For anyone who thinks those "seduce women now" sites are total b.s. - think again. There are 1000s of sites to teach predator HOW TO all over the internet. Some even FREE & interactive. This is powerful, covert stuff that can penetrate even the smartest minds. BEWARE

By the way, did you know that more intelligent people are EASIER to hypnotise? Ask any certified hypnotist and check this fact OUT!

COMMENTS in Dark Blue & Italics are the EOPC Team's and not Mr. Greene's. Other Dark Blue areas in Greene's excerpt are our emphasis only.

HOW TO DO IT

1-CHOOSE THE RIGHT VICTIM

Everything depends on the target of your seduction. Study your prey thoroughly, and choose only those who will prove susceptible to your charms. The right victims are those for whom you can fill a void, who see in you something exotic. They are often isolated or at least somewhat unhappy (perhaps because of recent adverse circumstances), or can easily be made so-for the completely contented person is almost impossible to seduce. The perfect victim has some natural quality that attracts you. The strong emotions this quality inspires will help make your seductive maneuvers seem more natural and dynamic. The perfect victim allows for the perfect chase.

Picking up vulnerable, abused - by parents or partners, disabled, unhappily married, separated and/or despondent people online is the cyberpath's stock in trade.

AND STAY OFF ALL THE ONLINE DATING SITES -
WHERE CYBERPATHS' CAMP OUT!

2-CREATE A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY- APPROACH INDIRECTLY

If you are too direct early on, you risk stirring up a resistance that will never be lowered. At first there must be nothing of the seducer in your manner. The seduction should begin at an angle, indirectly, so that the target only gradually becomes aware of you. Haunt the periphery of your target's life-approach through a third party, or seem to cultivate a relatively neutral relationship, moving gradually from friend to lover. Arrange an occasional "chance" encounter, as if you and your target were destined to become acquainted-nothing is more seductive than a sense of destiny. Lull the target into feeling secure, then strike.

Did he tell you that you & he had SO much in common? Did they get you into chatting about life, politics, your family, philosophy? Did they make themselves a confidant and "confide" in you as well? Did they tell you you were the ONLY one who understood them?

3-SEND MIXED SIGNALS

Once people are aware of your presence, and perhaps vaguely intrigued, you need to stir their interest before it settles on someone else. What is obvious and striking may attract their attention at first, but that attention is often short-lived; in the long run, ambiguity is much more potent. Most of us are much too obvious-instead, be hard to figure out. Send mixed signals: both tough and tender, both spiritual and earthy, both innocent and cunning. A mix of qualities suggests depth, which fascinates even as it confuses. An elusive, enigmatic aura will make people want to know more, drawing them into your circle. Create such a power by hinting at something contradictory within you.

Did they say things that made you think WTF?
Did they make comments and then tell you they 'didn't want to talk about it anymore'?
Did you feel they were churning inside and you could "help" them?
Did they use Confusion Technique talk with you or "word salad"?
Stuff that made you think HUH... yet, you felt funny about calling them on it?

4-APPEAR TO BE AN OBJECT OF DESIRE- CREATE TRIANGLES

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid or neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest. We want what other people want. To draw your victims closer and make them hungry to possess you, you must create an aura of desirability - of being wanted and courted by many. It will become a point of vanity for them to be the preferred object of your attention, to win you away from a crowd of admirers. Manufacture the illusion of popularity by surrounding yourself with members of the opposite sex-friends, former lovers, present suitors. Create triangles that stimulate rivalry and raise your value. Build a reputation that precedes you: if many have succumbed to your charms, there must be a reason.

Did they have the spouse who would DIE if they knew the person you are chatting with didn't love them anyone? Did they tell you their former fiance or partner was the best sexual partner ever and/or they still talk frequently with them? Did they miss their "past glories" because all they wanted to do was "please" someone and "make them happy?" Did they suggest they might be looking for something a little better.... even a little better than you? Of course they would NEVER come right out and say that! Do a search on TRIANGULATION - an online predator's FAVORITE 'position.'

5-CREATE A NEED: STIR ANXIETY AND DISCONTENT

A perfectly satisfied person cannot be seduced. Tension and disharmony must be instilled in your targets' minds. Stir within them feelings of discontent, an unhappiness with their circumstances and with themselves: their life lacks adventure, they have strayed from the ideals of their youth, they have become boring. The feelings of inadequacy that you create will give you space to insinuate yourself, to make them see you as the answer to their problems. Pain and anxiety are the proper precursors to pleasure. Learn to manufacture the need that you can fill.

Did they help you understand how bad your current relationship is/was? Did they know you as someone so much more than your partner? Did they tell you they liked who you were inside even if you are fat or ill? Did they tell you that you & they could help & support each other emotionally? Did they make you feel more wanted than you have been in years?

6-MASTER THE ART OF INSINUATION

Making your targets feel dissatisfied and in need of your attention is essential, but if you are too obvious, they will see through you and grow defensive. There is no known defense, however, against insinuation-the art of planting ideas in people's minds by dropping elusive hints that take root days later, even appearing to them as their own idea. Insinuation is the supreme means of influencing people. Create a sublanguage-bold statements followed by retraction and apology, ambiguous comments, banal talk combined with alluring glances-that enters the target's unconscious to convey your real meaning. Make everything suggestive.

Did they try to initiate cybersex and when you said no - apologize profusely?
Or tell you of an erotic dream and then say they feel so bad they told you if it offended you?
Did they send you erotic cards or pictures and insist your online relationship was NOT about sex but "oh so much more."
Did they suggest a hotel room? A clandestine meeting? A weekend away? Just the two of you? To "comfort" each other?
Did they tell you they "wished" they could have a "fantasy weekend away" with someone that REALLY cared about them - without saying that person might be YOU?
Did you feel almost compelled to throw yourself at them to 'end their pain' and loneliness?

7-ENTER THEIR SPIRIT

Most people are locked in their own worlds, making them stubborn and hard to persuade. The way to lure them out of their shell and set up your seduction is to enter their spirit. Play by their rules, enjoy what they enjoy, adapt yourself to their moods. In doing so you will stroke their deep-rooted narcissism and lower their defenses. Hypnotized by the mirror image you present, they will open up, becoming vulnerable to your subtle influence. Soon you can shift the dynamic: once you have entered their spirit you can make them enter yours, at a point when it is too late to turn back. Indulge your targets' every mood and whim, giving them nothing to react against or resist.

Did they seem to be so much like you it was eerie?
If you were Christian, they were Christian? If you were Agnostic, they were agnostic? and so on?
Did you find them mirroring you? Stealing your words, phrases, thoughts and even parts of your personality? If the relationship is over, did you meet someone else who told you about the predator and what was told them and realize "that was MY story" and they told it as if it was their own!

8-CREATE TEMPTATION

Lure the target deep into your seduction by creating the proper temptation: a glimpse of the pleasures to come. As the serpent tempted Eve with the promise of forbidden knowledge, you must awaken a desire in your targets that they cannot control. Find that weakness of theirs, that fantasy that has yet to be realized, and hint that you can lead them toward it. It could be wealth, it could be adventure, it could be forbidden and guilty pleasures; the key is to keep it vague. Dangle the prize before their eyes, postponing satisfaction, and let their minds do the rest. The future seems ripe with possibility. Stimulate a curiosity stronger than the doubts and anxieties that go with it, and they will follow you.

Was your real-life relationship stale or abusive? No sex? Never went out anywhere? Never travelled anymore? Broke? Did they offer you "REAL LOVE"? was the word "SOULMATE" used often? Were their sexual innuedos erotic & exciting? Did they offer to take you places? Dinners? Theatre? Trips? Did they offer you gifts? To pay your plane fare?

9-KEEP THEM IN SUSPENSE- WHAT COMES NEXT?

The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken. More: you have ceded them power. The only way to lead the seduced along and keep the upper hand is to create suspense, a calculated surprise. People love a mystery, and this is the key to luring them farther into your web. Behave in a way that leaves them wondering, What are you up to? Doing something they do not expect from you will give them a delightful sense of spontaneity-they will not be able to foresee what comes next. You are always one step ahead and in control. Give the victim a thrill with a sudden change of direction.

Did they suddenly disappear from IM or Chat for days or weeks? No explanation? Did emails go unresponded to? Did they seem to want to talk to you or be with you one minute and to get rid of you the next? Did they leave the computer for a "few minutes" never to return. Did they say they were going to bed and yet their available IM light was still on? Did you get an odd email saying "sorry we keep missing each other" when you were online at the same time as them and they NEVER ever IM'd to say hello or didn't answer if you IM'd them?

10-USE THE DEMONIC POWER OF WORDS TO SOW CONFUSION

It is hard to make people listen; they are consumed with their own thoughts and desires, and have little time for yours. The trick to making them listen is to say what they want to hear, to fill their ears with whatever is pleasant to them. This is the essence of seductive language. Inflame people's emotions with loaded phrases, flatter them, comfort their insecurities, envelop them in fantasies, sweet words, and promises, and not only will they listen to you, they will lose their will to resist you. Keep your language vague, letting them read into it what they want. Use writing to stir up fantasies and to create an idealized portrait of yourself.

Were they the best partner but unappreciated? the all-star at work? the better parent? the religious altruist? the truth & justice commando? Did they portray themselves as sweet but misunderstood? As imperfect but trying so hard? Was the sexual or romantic talk absolutely mind-blowing? THIS IS A FORM OF MIND CONTROL!!! Did you find it hard to think or function sometimes because of the drug-like nature of this online relationship?

11-PAY ATTENTION TO DETAIL

Lofty words and grand gestures can be suspicious: why are you trying so hard to please? The details of a seduction-the subtle gestures, the offhand things you do-are often more charming and revealing. You must learn to distract your victims with a myriad of pleasant little rituals-thoughtful gifts tailored just for them, clothes and adornments designed to please them, gestures that show the time and attention you are paying them. All of their senses are engaged in the details you orchestrate. Create spectacles to dazzle their eyes; mesmerized by what they see, they will not notice what you are really up to. Learn to suggest the proper feelings and moods through details.

The online predator's verbal slight of hand is overwhelming. Even to a smart & savvy person. If they are in a bad relationship, always ask how they are feeling? Had you been to the doctor? What did your doctor say? Are you upset? Something happen? Death in your family? Did they offer their 'strong arms' and warm cyber-embrace? Do they seem to care about the little things in your life like no one else? All part of the bait!

12-POETICIZE YOUR PRESENCE

Important things happen when your targets are alone: the slightest feeling of relief that you are not there, and it is all over. Familiarity and overexposure will cause this reaction. Remain elusive, then, so that when you are away, they will yearn to see you again, and will only associate you with pleasant thoughts. Occupy their minds by alternating an exciting presence with a cool distance, exuberant moments followed by calculated absences. Associate yourself with poetic images and objects, so that when they think of you, they begin to see you through an idealized halo. The more you figure in their minds, the more they will envelop you in seductive fantasies. Feed these fantasies by subtle inconsistencies and changes in your behavior.

Online psychopaths are masters at this. As pointed out above - did they disappear from the net or from you for days or weeks without a word? You call their cell phone and got voicemail? Are they busy for a while, off to work conference or with family for a while? Can't talk to you because something's come up and they are SO SORRY. Yet when they do "pop" on to say hi they are VERY concerned about YOU and said "HI" because they were 'thinking of you so much' and 'upset that they haven't been there for you.' RIGHT......

13-DISARM THROUGH STRATEGIC WEAKNESS AND VULNERABILITY

Too much maneuvering on your part may raise suspicion. The best way to cover your tracks is to make the other person feel superior and stronger. If you seem to be weak, vulnerable, enthralled by the other person, and unable to control yourself, you will make your actions look more natural, less calculated. Physical weakness-tears, bashfulness, paleness-will help create the effect. To further win trust, exchange honesty for virtue: establish your "sincerity" by confessing some sin on your part-it doesn't have to be real. Sincerity is more important than goodness. Play the victim, then transform your target's sympathy into love.

Did you hear phrases like "sometimes when I talk to you I feel I can't control myself"?
Or did they tell you that you were "too good" for them?
Did they say "if you really knew me, you'd leave me" or "I wish I was as good as you think I am."
Were they STRUGGLING with their feelings and fears about you? Getting so close to someone 'scaring' them?
Did they do something STUPID and 'confess' to you about it?
Did they give you the impression that you were the only person they could TRUST?

14-CONFUSE DESIRE & REALITY: THE PERFECT ILLUSION

To compensate for the difficulties in their lives, people spend a lot of their time daydreaming, imagining a future full of adventure, success, and romance. If you can create the illusion that through you they can live out their dreams, you will have them at your mercy. It is important to start slowly, gaining their trust, and gradually constructing the fantasy that matches their desires. Aim at secret wishes that have been thwarted or repressed, stirring up uncontrollable emotions, clouding their powers of reason. The perfect illusion is one that does not depart too much from reality, but has a touch of the unreal to it, like a waking dream. Lead the seduced to a point of confusion in which they can no longer tell the difference between illusion and reality.

Any of this sound familiar? "if only things were different" or "if/when we are together" or "you are my soulmate" or "it scares me how I feel about you" or "I know we were together in another life" or "if only I'd met you years ago" or "I can't wait to see you" or "we are going to have such a good time when we get together" or "thank goodness I finally met someone who likes _____ also. This will be a blast!" or "I have to thank God for making someone as perfect for me as you, now I don't feel so alone!"

15-ISOLATE THE VICTIM

An isolated person is weak. By slowly isolating your victims, you make them more vulnerable to your influence. Their isolation may be psychological: by filling their field of vision through the pleasurable attention you pay them, you crowd out everything else in their mind. They see and think only of you. The isolation may also be physical: you take them away from their normal milieu, friends, family, home. Give them the sense of being marginalized, in limbo-they are leaving one world behind and entering another. Once isolated like this, they have no outside support, and in their confusion they are easily lead astray. Lure the seduced into your lair, where nothing is familiar.

Online relationships are already like this. In another article posted on this site - it confirms the mental states reached when one is online. Trance and dissociative states. Also, being online gives a person bravery they might not have in person.

Did they tell you to PLEASE keep the relationship a secret?
Or not to tell or talk to someone you both know or people you both see in chat rooms?
Or to not tell other friends about your "special" relationship or your "treasure"?
Do they ask when your spouse, family or partner is gone or asleep?
Do they discourage you when you say you are going out to do XYZ that it might not be 'good' for you? Or that reading certain books or sites 'might not be the best option'?
Are they narrowing your field of vision?
Do you feel that you & they have something 'sacred' you dare not 'contaminate' by telling others about it?
Does that sound NORMAL to you?

The MINUTE they tell you "not to talk to" someone or "not to tell" : Make it your business to talk to the FORBIDDEN person(s) - they might know something about your online 'friend' that is crucial or have been played by the predator themselves! And BELIEVE THEM. Do NOT BELIEVE the "scorned woman" or "hell hath no fury" or "he's crazy" stuff you will hear from your online friend - as much as you might want to. HEALTHY PEOPLE don't need to smear others!

16-PROVE YOURSELF

Most people want to be seduced. If they resist your efforts, it is probably because you have not gone far enough to allay their doubts-about your motives, the depth of your feelings, and so on. One well-timed action that shows how far you are willing to go to win them over will dispel their doubts. Do not worry about looking foolish or making a mistake-any kind of deed that is self-sacrificing and for your targets' sake will so overwhelm their emotions, they won't notice anything else. Never appear discouraged by people's resistance, or complaints. Instead, meet the challenge by doing something extreme or chivalrous. Conversely, spur others to prove themselves by making yourself hard to reach, unattainable, worth fighting over.

When you questioned them about things that seemed off and red flags - did they have explanation? Offer you 'hard proof'?
Did they do something to "make up for" their absences or gaffs? Did they do little things to "perk you up"? Like send you an ecard or flowers just to say hi.
Did they do things to "make you feel better"?
Did they say things like "I will do anything to make you happy?"
Offer you small private glimpses into their lives to prove they are ok?
Send you pictures (supposedly) of themselves with their parents? other friends? kids? And did they ask you to do the same?

17-EFFECT A REGRESSION

People who have experienced a certain kind of pleasure in the past will try to repeat or relive it. The deepest-rooted and most pleasurable memories are usually those from earliest childhood, and are often unconsciously associated with a parental figure. Bring your targets back to that point by placing yourself in the oedipal triangle and positioning them as the needy child. Unaware of the cause of their emotional response, they will fall in love with you. Alternatively, you too can regress, letting them play the role of the protecting, nursing parent. In either case you are offering the ultimate fantasy: the chance to have an intimate relationship with mommy or daddy, son or daughter.

Stand up for you? Tell you the sort of things you wish your mom or dad had told you? Offer you the sort of verbal and emotional support your current partner never does? Or were they someone you knew from high school, college or a past job who just 'happened' to look you up online or just 'stumbled' on your name & email?

All sorts of reunion sites & social networking are becoming very popular for the cyberpath to go back and rework past targets. If you were a past target they can also use the "but you KNOW me" talk to regain your confidence while getting ready to use you.

18-STIR UP THE TRANSGRESSIVE & TABOO

There are always social limits on what one can do. Some of these, the most elemental taboos, go back centuries; others are more superficial, simply defining polite and acceptable behavior. Making your targets feel that you are leading them past either kind of limit is immensely seductive. People yearn to explore their dark side. Not everything in romantic love is supposed to be tender and soft; hint that you have a cruel, even sadistic streak. You do not respect age differences, marriage vows, family ties. Once the desire to transgress draws your targets to you, it will be hard for them to stop. Take them farther than they imagined-the shared feeling of guilt and complicity will create a powerful bond.

Did they talk you into cybersex or phone sex? Just this once? Tell you they had "never done this before"?
Did they tell you some dark desire and then immediately apologize and swear they won't talk about it again.
Did they tell you "I saw a hooker once but if my wife knew she'd leave me" and "I only use porn because I am so lonely"?
Did they tell you their past relationship was very complicated because of things you would NEVER get involved with and then say it was the past PARTNER who caused the problem? Or that the partner was "deceased" and their children would "never understand the two of you." That they still care for the past partner but that it was "more than they could deal with".

Are you SURE it was the past partner and not PROJECTION on their part? Also if other people who know this person, such as chat room friends, tell you to watch out - LISTEN TO THEM!!

Also if they INSIST that you delete all chats? or emails? DON'T!!! Copy them to a disk and keep in a safe place. You may need them later and copies can be massaged to give up ISPs, sources codes and so on. Even if you have to lie - DELETE NOTHING once the online friendship turns to "more."

19-USE SPIRITUAL LURES

Everyone has doubts and insecurities-about their body, their self-worth, their sexuality. If your seduction appeals exclusively to the physical, you will stir up these doubts and make your targets self-conscious. Instead, lure them out of their insecurities by making them focus on something sublime and spiritual: a religious experience, a lofty work of art, the occult. Play up your divine qualities; affect an air of discontent with worldly things; speak of the stars, destiny, the hidden threads that unite you and the object of the seduction. Lost in a spiritual mist, the target will feel light and uninhibited.

Deepen the effect of your seduction by making its sexual culmination seem like the 'spiritual union of two souls.'

Have you & they spent hours talking about God, philosophy and spirituality?
Is this person deeper than you ever imagined? (or appearing that way?)
Do they tell you about your past lives together? you being twin souls or soulmates?
That it was destiny not the internet that brought you together. That you have a special energy?
That you give them goosebumps just being online with them?
They can feel you without being in the same room with you? Maybe that's possible but don't you wonder where they LEARNED lines like that?
Are they REALLY going to be honest and tell you about all their other online targets?
Do they tell you your age, waistline or physical/ mental illness is of 'no consequence' because it is "obvious you are beautiful on the inside"?

One of the most priceless lines we ever heard was "We have been more intimate online than we ever could be in person." Answer? Cyberpaths sometimes can't have sex with a normal woman. They are so used to looking at porn babes & hookers or masturbating (having sex with themselves) they are unable to perform in normal circumstances. At least not with any regularity. So, they dump you while trying to appear ethical about it.
(Sheesh if you are going to dump & devalue someone - be STRAIGHT WITH THEM!)

20-MIX PLEASURE WITH PAIN

The greatest mistake in seduction is being too nice. At first, perhaps, your kindness is charming, but it soon grows monotonous; you are trying too hard to please, and seem insecure. Instead of overwhelming your targets with niceness, try inflicting some pain. Lure them in with focused attention, then change direction, appearing suddenly uninterested. Make them guilty and insecure. Even instigate a breakup, subjecting them to an emptiness and pain that will give you room to maneuver-now a rapprochement, an apology, a return to your earlier kindness, will turn them weak at the knees. The lower the lows you create, the greater the highs. To heighten the erotic charge, create the excitement of fear.

O.K. heard any of THESE lines? (designed for YOU to leave them so they can play martyr with the next victim)

"If you want I will go away and not chat with you anymore" or "if this relationship is causing you pain, maybe we should end it"
Are they pulling away and trying to make it seem like your idea or they are doing you a favor?
Have they spent time online with you waxing poetic about a past girl/boyfriend as if that person was the Holy Grail or 'the one that got away'; And you feel like chopped liver after listening to that 'confession'?
Or was your online fun interrupted by reality and that person said "my partner found out" and disappeared, blocking you & your emails?
Or that "its best we don't talk for a while" and IF and when they return they "missed you so much."
Do they seem to play come-to-me-go-away? As if they can't 'make up their minds to be with you?
Have you tried to cut it off only to have them email you or people you both know BEGGING you to talk to them again?

21-GIVE THEM SPACE TO FALL: THE PURSUER IS PURSUED

If your targets become too used to you as the aggressor, they will give less of their own energy, and the tension will slacken. You need to wake them up, turn the tables. Once they are under your spell, take a step back and they will start to come after you. Begin with a touch of aloofness, an unexpected nonappearance, a hint that you are growing bored. Stir the pot by seeming interested in someone else. Make none of this explicit; let them only sense it and their imagination will do the rest, creating the doubt you desire. Soon they will want to possess you physically, and restraint will go out the window. The goal is to have them fall into your arms of their own will. Create the illusion that the seducer is being seduced.

Did they tell you its more fun when YOU are the aggressor now? Or that the online thing was getting tedious? If there was cybersex did they tell you they want REAL? Did they suggest you are throwing yourself at them? Remember WHO started the relationship!

22-USE PHYSICAL LURES

Targets with active minds are dangerous: if they see through your manipulations, they may suddenly develop doubts. Put their minds gently to rest, and waken their dormant senses, by combining a nondefensive attitude with a charged sexual presence. While your cool, nonchalant air is calming their minds and lowering their inhibitions, your glances, voice, and bearing-oozing sex and desire-are getting under their skin, agitating their senses and raising their temperature. Never force the physical; instead infect your targets with heat, lure them into lust. Lead them into the moment-an intensified present in which morality, judgment, and concern for the future all melt away and the body succumbs to pleasure.

"This is so wrong but so right!" or
"I just can't do this - it would hurt you/ both of us/ our families" or
"I didn't mean for it to get this way - even though I want you."
Haul out the puke bucket when they start with that stuff!

23-MASTER THE ART OF THE BOLD MOVE

A moment has arrived: your victim clearly desires you, but is not ready to admit it openly, let alone act on it. This is the time to throw aside chivalry, kindness, and coquetry and to overwhelm with a bold move. Don't give the victim time to consider the consequences; and create conflict, stir up tension, so that the bold move comes as a great release. Showing hesitation or awkwardness means you are thinking of yourself, as opposed to being overwhelmed by the victim's charms. Never hold back or meet the target halfway, under the belief that you are being correct and considerate; you must be seductive now, not political. One person must go on the offensive, and it is you.

Heard this or something like it? - "this is so hard for me to say but I think I love you" or "I have fallen in love with you" or "I can't go another day without you". Sorry, you can't LOVE someone you have NEVER MET IN PERSON. Don't buy it. You can 'love' the image they are presenting or the attention they are giving you - but until you meet IN PERSON and spend some time together, meet their families, see how they interact with the public for a few months (not time in bed) will you know if this is someone you can really LOVE or if its just the lust of the lonely.

24-BEWARE THE AFTER-EFFECTS

Danger follows in the aftermath of a successful seduction. After emotions have reached a pitch, they often swing in the opposite direction-toward lassitude, distrust, disappointment. Beware of the long, drawn-out goodbye; insecure, the victim will cling and claw, and both sides will suffer. If you are to part, make the sacrifice swift and sudden. If necessary, deliberately break the spell you have created. If you are to stay in a relationship, beware a flagging of energy, a creeping familiarity that will spoil the fantasy. If the game is to go on, a second seduction is required. Never let the other person take you for granted-use absence, create pain and conflict, to keep the seduced on tenterhooks.

The psychological harm caused when predators just abandon their targets is filling many psychologist's offices these days. Many therapists are clueless how to truly help these people heal, as relationships with pathologicals are different and the victims must be deprogrammed.

There is no closure with these psychopaths. They beg for you to "let them start a new life" or "I am sorry I hurt you but I have to go." Some even pretend to be someone else and send you a 'So & So Died' email. Don't buy it!

Rather than owning and dealing with what they have done to you and everyone around both of you - they withdraw and try to erase what occurred between you as if it never happened.

You may even be slandered by the predator who tells people you are harassing them when you are looking for closure. Don't expect closure.

A real person would apologize and possibly work to reframe the whole relationship, bringing normalcy and light into it. The relationship might then end on its own or become what it should have been all along.

But don't hold your breath. Online psychopaths rarely do that. They almost never allow their targets to vent their rage and confusion. They simply run and start over.

Some even try to reinvent themselves as normal humans and make contrition to their immediately families until things get comfortable enough for them to do it again.

Expose these people for what they are so they don't harm others. Don't stoop to their level of lies & defamation - just tell the truth and back it up.

And if you really still care about them? Expose them so they stop harming THEMSELVES as well.

APPENDIX A:
SEDUCTIVE ENVIRONMENTS/ SEDUCTIVE TIME

In seduction, your victims must slowly come to feel an inner change. Under your influence, they lower their defenses, feeling free to act differently, to be a different person. Certain places, environments, and experiences will greatly aid you in your quest to change and transform the seduced. Spaces with a theatrical, heightened quality-opulence, glittering surfaces, a playful spirit-create a buoyant, childlike feeling that make it hard for the victim to think straight. The creation of an altered sense of time has a similar effect-memorable, dizzying moments that stand out, a mood of festival and play. You must make your victims feel that being with you gives them a different experience from being in the real world.

This is so easy to do online!! People already have dissociative states when online and feel "melded" to their computers. They want the fantasy or at least the escape from everyday pain they aren't getting. Online gaming rooms, chats, and so on give people freedom to be "anyone you want them to be." The internet is great but relationships are for real life! If this person refuses to introduce you to their friends or even meet you within 6 weeks of chatting with you? Say goodbye. And the MINUTE you see a red flag - back off. This isn't the love of your life - its the lure of the predator!

CROSS POSTED HERE

Match (dot) WRONG

2012-01-16T01:42:00.000-04:00

EOPC recieves 100s of emails every week. At least 90% and more start with or include: "I met a someone who SEEMED LIKE a nice guy/ girl via ONLINE DATING."

Readers, never -- we repeat -- NEVER would we recommend Online Dating to ANYONE. EVER. It's not a "good way to meet people" nor is it a way to "ease back into dating after divorce/ breakup." Online dating is CRAWLING with predators: narcissists, sociopaths, cyberpaths -- etc. And the online "sex site" (i.e. - bangmatch.com, eroticy.com, adultfriendfinder.com, redpersonals.com - there are 100s) are the worst!!

And don't kid yourself -- it can be IMPOSSIBLE to know who someone really is, their criminal background and their TRUE intentions... EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW THEM!

STAY AWAY FROM ONLINE DATING!!! Volunteer, join a local group, go to the library and volunteer your time, join a running club or a gym. But never ever go looking for love, friendship, a pen pal or and old school pal online.

The online dating industry buries the bad stories. For each ONE of those good stories you hear? There are a minimum of 15-25 horror stories. Below is just one of them:

Texas man fights misdemeanor assault charge on Internet date gone awry

A Texas man with a home in Aspen faces assault and domestic violence charges after an Internet date allegedly ended in an scrap at the Hunter Creek trailhead in August 2007.

John Kirk Mitchell, 51, however, claims that the woman he met online was the one who started the fight. He said she had filed charges in a nearly identical situation involving her ex-husband in 2001.

And Mitchell, an oil executive in San Antonio, Texas, has hired an attorney from a high-profile Denver firm to prove it.

On Aug. 28, Mitchell and the woman, whose name is withheld because she is an alleged victim of domestic violence, were on a date after meeting on an Internet dating site, according to a police report.

Mitchell picked up the woman in Denver, where she had driven from her home in Fort Collins to meet him. Things went wrong at about 6 p.m. that evening, when the two began arguing over the music being too loud on the drive from Mitchell’s Aspen residence to the Hunter Creek trailhead, according to the woman’s statement in the police report.

Officers arrested Mitchell on charges of third-degree assault and took him to jail.

Mitchell’s attorneys say the woman has a history of lying to police over harassment and assault charges.

The case has been before the Pitkin County court for nearly a year. A possible plea deal in March fell through.

In a March 18 letter to Judge Erin Fernandez-Ely, the alleged victim implored the judge to deny Mitchell a plea deal that would have dropped the assault charges for a no-contest plea on disorderly conduct.

When the plea deal fell through, Mitchell dropped his local attorney, Lauren Maytin.

And after a four-month hiatus in court, Mitchell hired Jeffrey Pagliuca of the firm Haddon, Morgan, Mueller, Jordan, Mackey & Forman, P.C. in Denver. On Aug. 5, his attorneys filed a motion to admit a recent lie detector test Mitchell took.

On Wednesday, Ely set a trial date for Sept. 26, but Mitchell’s attorneys and Deputy District Attorney Richard Nedlin are negotiating a possible settlement.

Ely will consider the motions at a hearing scheduled for Sept. 24.

ARTICLE

HOW ONLINE STUPIDITY CAN GET YOU IN BIG BIG TROUBLE!

2012-01-15T01:42:00.000-04:00

REVENGE OF THE SPAM
Gregory Steven Hart lives behind black metal gates in a house full of computers, elegant sculptures and expensive liquor that he never drinks.

Three days after Christmas, Deputy Sheriff Russell Hemmendinger hauled Hart to jail. The charges were driving with a suspended license and resisting arrest. The deputy took him down in the driveway of his $367,000 Lutz home, in front of his pregnant wife and neighbors.

Hart posted bail and went home and got to work. Within 24 hours, the first concerned citizen e-mailed the Pasco County Sheriff's Office.

From: tom and ray

To: dtobin@pascosheriff.org

Subject: Is Officer R. Hemmendinger Gay?

Has Officer R. Hemmendinger ever had sex with a boy that's under the age of 16?

*****

Hart is 43, a database developer for a massive health care corporation called Baxter International. He has a clean record, aside from nearly two dozen traffic tickets - mostly for speeding and running red lights - in the past decade. These led to the license suspension, which led Hemmendinger to his doorstep.

Hemmendinger is 31, married, a Pasco deputy for three years. His record is spotless. Citizens have written the agency to commend him for good work.

Hart claims that during the arrest Hemmendinger "started screaming and yelling hysterically at me ... like a lunatic." He returned from jail and began digging. He says his research convinced him that Hemmendinger was a homosexual pedophile.

A reporter pressed him for evidence.

"I can't go into detail," he said.

Did he report the supposed transgression to the Sheriff's Office?

No. He says couldn't trust them to investigate.

Hart had another idea. He has his own software company, Database Engineers, as well as a computer armed with a program called Atomic Mail Sender and a list of addresses known to accept spam.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of e-mails screamed into cyberspace:

Who is Pasco Sherriff Officer R. Hemmendinger?

How is he a suspect as a child molester?

Is he homosexual?

Does he have sex with boys under the age of 16? Regularly?

Contact the Pasco County Public Information Director ...

Demand to accept ONLY the truth!

*****

One of these e-mails reached Pasco Deputy Eric Pfenninger, who alerted Hemmendinger, who reeled with disbelief. The e-mail led to two sites, Hemmendinger.net and Hemmendinger.org, at least one of which advertised an upcoming gay dating service called Hemmendinger Homosexual Haven.

Hemmendinger plugged the name into an online service that lists the owners of Web domains. The answer came back: Database Engineers Inc. The sole officer was Gregory Hart.

Hemmendinger notified his superiors and denied the allegations. Meanwhile, the Public Information Office took more than a dozen phone calls and nearly 70 e-mails from citizens.

The public-information officers told the citizens it appeared to be the work of a malcontent bent on vengeance. The agency did not conduct an internal-affairs investigation. Public Information Director Kevin Doll said there was no evidence with which to start one.

On Jan. 12, Hemmendinger filed a lawsuit accusing Hart of defaming his good name. The suit is pending in circuit court. Libel experts say Hemmendinger may have a strong case.

Here are two of Hart's defenses:

1. "I haven't made a statement. I asked a question."

Jurors may see through that, said Dale Herbeck, who teaches communication law at Boston College. "This is kind of like asking, 'When did you stop beating your wife?' "

2. He didn't personally send the e-mails - his corporation did.

"Nonsense", said Clark Furlow, who teaches corporation law at Stetson University College of Law.

"If I'm driving a car and I run you down in the street, I'm liable. The fact that I'm driving for a company doesn't change anything."

ORIGINAL

WHY AN "ONLINE" RELATIONSHIP?

2012-01-14T01:38:00.000-04:00

WHY AN INTERNET RELATIONSHIP?

Private investigators get asked this question frequently. In their experience, it seems that the internet is safer and easier to meet people in than the real world is. On line, you can be the person you want to be. Maybe better looking, richer, happier, etc., etc. and it's safe to be that person. Mike, who was a mechanic in the Navy ten years ago in real life becomes Mike the former "Navy Seal" on-line. Michelle, whose college roommate became a model in the real world "does some modeling" when chatting with her friends in cyberspace.

You can type things on the internet that you would never say in the real world. In short, it gives people a place to fill a lagging self-esteem or to compensate for the short comings of their real life. Or to simply prey on others for fun, sexual pleasure or money.

Once you "meet" someone on-line who sounds exciting, sexy and interesting, you spend time learning about them and fantasizing about how they look, how well they relate to you, etc. As the "relationship" goes on, the two get to know each other better and the real world begins to enter the conversations.

Trust develops because this is the person "you relate to" and it builds up as more time goes by. It then gets to the point where they begin to be even more honest, sometimes totally honest, and an internet affair becomes a real relationship or affair outside of cyberspace.

Does it really happen?

Absolutely. Too many of clients consult with P.I.s and state their disbelief that their loved one would be trolling for sex on the internet or having an on-line affair. The reality is that, like affairs at school, work, church, the health club or any other social environment, it usually happens quite innocently and grows.

People go online and get to know one another in this safe internet world and slowly it progresses into cyber sex and or a real life relationship. Do not underestimate this format for people meeting and growing close on the internet. Internet affairs happen daily, in every town across the country.

There are also those who are not looking for a boost in their self esteem or have a relationship, rather they simply want sex with someone they don't know or no-strings-attached. In some cases, cybersex fills this need.

This sub-culture is comprised of men and women who use the computer to meet other people who want commitment free sex. They are attracted to the excitement of the affair. They like to type stories about fantasy and sex. They look for others who share this desire.

It is important not to stereotype these folks. They are not just "strippers" or the "dirty old man" wearing a trench coat. This is your neighbor, the soccer mom, the teller at the bank, your accountant, the person next to you at church, your coworker and potentially your partner.

This group uses the computer the same way those looking for true love do. They visit certain sites (not always dating sites - sometimes divorced persons, pen pal sites, parenting boards, class reunion sites, recovery sites or shared interests), e-mail, chat and instant message.

FREE SPEECH: FROM LEGAL TO LETHAL

2012-01-13T01:16:00.000-04:00

by Lori Andrews

Recently, Judge Roger Titus of Maryland declared unconstitutional a federal law that made it a crime to use the internet "with the intent to harass [or] cause substantial emotional distress to a person in another state." In the wake of that decision, legislatures and courts across the country will need to rethink existing statutes on cyberharassment.

In the Maryland case, William Cassidy had been charged with cyberstalking Alyce Zeoli, a former colleague and a Buddhist religious leader, based on his tweets, such as, "Do the world a favor and go kill yourself. P.S. Have a nice day." Zeoli asserted that the tweets made her so fear for her safety that she had not left her house for a year and a half, except to see her psychiatrist. But the judge dismissed the case. His reasoning will animate discussions in legislatures about how to amend state and federal laws.

Judge Titus indicated that "threats of harm" are punishable, but not communications "intending" emotional distress. He also considered it relevant that the medium used (a tweet) was communicated to the public at large rather than just the victim. The target of the harassment could just choose not to follow the tweets. "This," said the judge, "is in sharp contrast to a telephone call, letter or e-mail specifically addressed to and directed at another person, and that difference ... is fundamental to the First Amendment analysis in this case." Judge Titus also seemed to think that it was unreasonable for Zeoli to have such a dramatic reaction; he said that Cassidy's tweets were not a "true threat."

Words are powerful. They can move listeners or readers to action, sometimes even to harm themselves or someone else. But generally, our society doesn't punish the speaker or writer. Think about Ozzy Osbourne. Thirty years ago, he recorded the song Suicide Solution. The song states that "Suicide is the only way out," and contains the barely-recognizable lyrics, sung at a faster speed, "Get the gun and try it; Shoot, shoot, shoot."

When a 19 year old shot himself in the head with a .22 caliber handgun after spending five hours listening to Ozzy's music, his grieving parents sued Ozzy and the record distributor. The California Appellate Court rejected their claims (pdf), noting that speech does not lose its First Amendment protection merely because it "may evoke a mood of depression." The court said the lyrics failed to "order or command anyone to concrete action at any specific time."

But courts have held differently when the speech is directly addressed to a particular person. In a case currently on appeal in Minnesota, William Melchert-Dinkel was charged with pressuring two people over the internet to commit suicide. He posed as a young female nurse who pretended to enter into a suicide pact with his victims. The judge in the Minnesota case pointed out that Melchert-Dinkel's "encouragement and advice imminently incited the suicide of Nadia Kajouji and was likely to have that effect." The judge in the case labeled the instant messages as "lethal advocacy" and held that Melchert-Dinkel's words were "analogous to the category of unprotected speech known as 'fighting words' and 'imminent incitement of lawlessness.'" The judge distinguished messages sent to the public at the large, saying that Melchert-Dinkel had the right to take his pro-suicide message to the public--over the internet, on television, and so forth--but did not have the right to address that message to a single, vulnerable individual. Melchert-Dinkel's attorney is appealing the case, based on the First Amendment.

But how direct does a threat have to be? What if Melchert-Dinkel had just sent Nadia an mp3 file with Ozzy’s Suicide Solution? Courts are already weighing whether people's "likes" on a social network can be used as evidence against them. In a Wisconsin case, a judge admitted into evidence a litigant's MySpace reference to a short story in which a judge was harmed. In contrast, a Mississippi court refused to use a dad's MySpace post of Ronald McDonald being shot in the face to prove that the mom should get custody of the kids.

The "intent" standard is also problematic. As Judge Titus suggested, the standard is too broad, covering speech that is constitutionally protected. But the "intent" standard is also, in some cases, too narrow. It might allow someone to evade legitimate prosecution by claiming they didn't intend harm, they just intended to be funny.

That strategy worked for 40-year-old Elizabeth Thrasher, whose victim was her ex-husband’s new girlfriend’s daughter. Thrasher posted photos, the phone number, and the email address of the 17-year-old girl in the "Casual Encounters" section of Craigslist, in which people expressed their interest in casual sex. As a result of the "Casual Encounters" posting, the 17-year-old girl was swamped with sexually explicit cell phone calls, emails, and text messages that included nude pictures and solicitations for sex. One man even came to the Sonic Restaurant where she worked after failing to reach her on her phone, leading her to eventually quit her job out of fear. She testified that the publication of the information made her feel like she "was set up to get killed and raped by somebody." Thrasher’s attorney argued that photos of the girl and her work location were already available on the girl's MySpace profile. He said the postings were "tantamount to a practical joke"--and Thrasher was acquitted.

The issue of targeting a victim versus the public at large is also a question to be considered. Judge Titus suggests that, to be criminally actionable, tweets and posts need to be sent directly to the victim. But because of the nature of digital communications, Judge Titus' distinction between public tweets and direct communications with the victim may not hold up in future cases. Much of the cyberharassment of women does not involve a direct threat from one person to another. In a Connecticut case, a man posted a YouTube rap video of himself waving a gun while threatening to shoot his baby's mom and "put her face on the dirt until she can't breathe no more." Even though the man was in North Carolina at the time and the woman resided in Connecticut, the court issued a restraining order against him.

Under Judge Titus' standard, such a video might not have been a cause for concern because the woman could just have turned it off. This issue of targeting a private person versus the public at large will be key in cases where the person posts information (such as a Google map to a woman's house with a claim she wants men to act out rape fantasies) and the poster himself does not intend to do violence.

As courts and legislators deal with cyberharassment, they'll be determining what the limits are to punishing people for tweets and posts that threaten violence or cause emotional harm. They'll also have to determine whether the rule that the communication must be sent directly to the victim makes any sense in the age of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, where public posts--especially those that urge someone else to harm the victim--might be even more deadly than private ones.

Lori Andrews is the author of the upcoming I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy

original article found here

Spying on Partner's Email ILLEGAL

2012-01-12T01:27:00.000-04:00

Spying on lover's e-mail? Monitoring may be illegal
Austin police have charged two recently with activity.

By Tony Plohetski

Shawn Macleod wanted to know where his estranged wife was going on the Internet and what she was writing in e-mails, investigators said, so he secretly installed a program called SpyRecon on her computer that sent him electronic logs with the sites she had visited and messages she had sent.

His spying resulted in a four-year prison sentence.

Software programs created to monitor computer activity have grown in popularity in recent years as parents have sought ways to prevent children from accessing adult Web sites or e-mailing possible predators and as businesses have tried to curtail the time employees spend on the Internet when they are at work.

Others, too, have found a use for the software: Scorned lovers can track where their spouses or partners go online, whom they are e-mailing and what they are saying — all possibly in violation of the law.

Austin police considered Macleod's actions tantamount to illegal wiretapping and charged him with unlawful interception of electronic communication, a second-degree felony that can carry a 20-year sentence. Macleod pleaded guilty in May.

"It's pretty alarming," said Macleod's attorney, Johnny Urrutia.

Urrutia said he would be surprised if his client knew that what he was doing was against the law.

Doug Fowler, president of SpectorSoft Corp., which manufactures an Internet monitoring program called eBlaster, said law enforcement agencies nationwide have in recent months sought company records during criminal investigations, hoping the documents would show who installed the software on victims' computers.

In New York this year, a sheriff's deputy was found guilty of eavesdropping after investigators said he spied on the computer activity of a neighbor he thought posed a threat to young girls in their neighborhood.

The deputy was sentenced to five years of probation.

In California, a man was indicted on federal charges in 2005, accused of manufacturing, advertising and sending a program called Lovespy.

In that case, victims received an electronic greeting card that, when opened, would record e-mail messages and the Web sites they visited.

Austin police in recent months have charged two men, including Macleod, with the crime. The second case, filed last month, is pending.

Detective Darin Webster, who works in the department's high-tech crime division, said investigators also have looked into several other cases that didn't result in charges because the evidence had been destroyed or they couldn't conclusively determine who had installed the spyware.

"The problem itself isn't the software," Webster said. "The problem is how the software is being used. ... And in the cases I've seen, there are warnings on there that it may be against the law. In Texas, it is."

State law says it is illegal to intentionally intercept spoken or electronic communication.

The law grants some exceptions, such as to switchboard operators who might hear part of a conversation while doing their job.

The law doesn't address certain questions about computer spyware, such as whether it is legal to install the equipment on a jointly owned computer without the consent of the second owner.

Employers typically have workers sign waivers acknowledging that they know the company computers are monitored.

Parents, as guardians of their minor children, are allowed to monitor their children's activities.

According to court records, Macleod's estranged wife, Kristy, reported to police in August 2005 that she suspected he was monitoring her computer use.

A detective using a fake name sent Kristy Macleod an e-mail offering to buy the couple's pool table.

A few days later, Shawn Macleod confronted Kristy Macleod about the e-mail, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Detectives searched the computer and found SpyRecon software on it, according to the affidavit.

Kristy Macleod could not be reached for comment. Company officials for SpyRecon did not respond to an interview request.

In an online advertisement, the company asks, "Have you ever needed to secretly read the e-mail of your child or spouse?"

In the second case Austin police filed, investigators said Alexis Lugo, 29, installed eBlaster software on his ex-girlfriend's computer.

An affidavit in that case said Kara Winebright called Austin police and reported that she thought Lugo had hacked into her computer and changed the password on some of her accounts.

Winebright said she had broken up with Lugo and later had discovered some unusual activity on her account with eHarmony, a dating Web site. She checked her other online accounts and found similar problems.

Police searched her computer and found the eBlaster software.

Ordinary anti-spy software might not detect such programs, but checking to see which programs and files have been downloaded to hard drives should reveal them, said Fowler, the manufacturer of eBlaster.

Fowler said his company intended for the software to be used only by parents or businesses, not by spying spouses or partners. The company marketed the product that way several years ago but stopped, he said.

"We ultimately decided that it wasn't a market we wanted to participate in," Fowler said. "There are certainly those who buy the software for this kind of thing. But we don't encourage it."

SOURCE

Over 400 Online Bullying Incidents in Wales in 2011

2012-01-11T01:03:00.001-04:00

(U.K.) Almost 400 incidents of cyber harassment and bullying were investigated by police in Wales last year, we can reveal.

Victims of abusive, threatening or harassing messages sent via social networks included teenagers as young as 14.

The problem has increasingly hit the headlines in recent months with celebrity victims Katherine Jenkins and former Miss Wales Imogen Thomas complaining publicly about being subjected to vitriolic online attacks.

Away from such high profile cases, in the South Wales Police force area alone 331 harassment-related incidents classed as “e-crime” were investigated, but resulted in just three arrests.

A Freedom of Information request identified 46 cyber crimes in the Dyfed-Powys Police area, resulting in 12 arrests. Offences included 10 hate crimes, one kidnapping and one threat to kill. Eight victims were under the age of 20. In North Wales, where 18 crimes on social networks were recorded, police investigated one offender for harassment while using a false identity.

Two cases were referred to the High Tech Crime Unit in Gwent, involving harassment messages, and e-mails sent to trustees of an organisation alleging homophobic harassment and bullying. However no further action was taken.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) Centre is currently running a programme called Thinkuknow to educate children and young people about the dangers of “trolling” they face online.

A spokesman said: “Trolling is a description given to someone’s online actions that are deliberately inflammatory or abusive. It ranges from posting a nasty comment on a social networking profile, or a football forum to extreme and persistent abuse.

“It could include harassment, bullying or anything that causes distress to another. The effects can be devastating. Too few people realise that in acting this way online you can quickly break the law. People may think they can remain anonymous when they are online, that they can say and do things they wouldn’t dream of doing in real life without consequences.”

A spokesman for eCrime Wales said: “The e-Crime Partnership, which includes the four Welsh police forces, works to raise awareness of e-crimes of all kinds. The fact that these incidents are now being reported by the public reflects the fact that people in Wales are becoming more aware of the issue generally and of the importance of passing details of such attacks to the police.”

Jonathan Bishop, a South Wales-based internet expert who recently ran a Trolling Academy tutorial, said that as the numbers of arrests were low, fixed penalties and Asbos should be used against cyberbullies for less severe offences. It would be more appropriate then if local authorities, particularly where vulnerable persons are affected, used their powers under New Labour’s anti-social behaviour legislation to issue fixed-penalties to those who harass others, he said. “Local authorities also have the powers to apply for Asbos against persons, which could tell the cyberbullies that they can go to jail for up to two years if they continue their abuse.”

Criminal cases involving the malicious use of false identities on social networks are becoming increasingly common.

In August James Edward Dunn, 28, from Middlesbrough, was jailed for seven years for raping a 15-year-old girl he had lured into meeting by lying about his age on Facebook.

At the time the investigating officer, Detective Constable Jolene Morrison, had urged teenagers who use Facebook to “only speak to people that they know” and to be aware that the person they think they are talking to may not actually be that person.

In September Sean Duffy, 25, from Reading, was jailed for 18 weeks for taunting the families of four dead teenagers on online tribute sites.

And in November, police in Mid Wales vowed to crack down on “trolls” after a 14-year-old sex abuse victim was subjected to an online smear campaign after her attackers were brought to justice.

Mr Bishop, a town councillor for Treforest, said the use of false identities – by “Snerts” who post messages to harm others, and “E-Vengers” who are driven to harm others they feel have wronged them – is a serious problem.

original article found here

CYBER AFFAIRS

2012-01-10T01:38:00.000-04:00

Cyber affairs are the ‘flavor of the day’ when it comes to infidelity and extramarital affairs. The internet now ties with the workplace as the leading place for cheaters of both sexes to find willing partners with whom to have extramarital affairs. It has removed most of the risks associated with cheating on your mate.

Gone are the days when a would-be-cheater had to physically leave home to seek out someone with whom to have an affair. Now it can all be done in cyberspace without the risk of running into family members, nosy neighbors, or inquisitive friends and workmates. With a few clicks of the mouse, a potential cheater has instant access to an endless array of willing partners. A cyber affair can be easily initiated and conducted from the privacy of your home, with your unsuspecting spouse or significant other in the same room, oblivious to what is going on.

Is a Cyber Affair Cheating?
Cyber affairs are actually a form of emotional infidelity. Although in the early stages, there’s no sex involved, most emotional infidelity eventually leads to sexual infidelity if left unchecked . But men and women view cyber affairs very differently.

Most men don’t consider cyber affairs as cheating. However women view them quite differently. A survey in Divorce Magazine found that only 46 percent of men considered intense internet relationships to be infidelity, compared to 72 percent of women.

Are Cyber Affairs Serious?
Many people question whether or not cyber affairs should be taken seriously -- especially, if there’s no sex involved. A cyber affair is a VERY serious threat. A cyber affair should be treated as seriously as a sexual affair, because left unchecked, that’s where it will eventually end up.

In the past 10 years, divorce attorneys have reported seeing an increase in divorces and separations resulting from cyber infidelity. According to the Fortino Group, one-third of divorce litigation is caused by online affairs.

It doesn’t take much for a cyber affair to make the transition from cyberspace to the real world. Several studies have found close connections between cyber affairs and subsequent sexual affairs.

• According to statistics, 50% of people who engage in internet chats have made phone contact with someone they chatted with online.

• One study found that 30 % of cyber-affairs escalate from e-mail to telephone calls to personal contact.

• Another study found that 31% of people had an online conversation which eventually led to real-time sex.

So don’t make the mistake of underestimating a cyber affair.

Signs of a Cyber Affair
How can you tell if your partner is having a cyber affair? Telltale signs of a cyber affair include sitting at the computer into the wee hours of the night, heading for the computer first thing in the morning, insisting on privacy when surfing the Net, moving the computer into a a locked office or more private area of the home, constantly changing passwords, and other suspicious behavior.

Regardless of the term you use -- cyber cheating, cyber affairs, online affairs or internet affairs, it’s a variation of emotional infidelity and should never be taken lightly.

A Fool Proof Test
People will often try to justify a cyber affair by calling it a harmless online friendship. If your partner tries to make light of your concern, or accuses you of making a big deal about nothing, there’s one way to find out for sure.

If the internet friendship is as harmless, or as innocent as your partner claims it to be, then he should have no problem with you sitting beside him, observing the exchange of correspondence back and forth. If he’s unwilling to do that, then you have your answer as to whether or not his online friendship is as harmless as he would have you believe. Safeguard your relationship by taking positive action before it’s too late.

FOR MORE CLICK HERE

OH THE THINGS CYBERPATHS SAY!

2012-01-09T01:21:00.001-04:00

OH, THE THINGS CYBERPATHS SAY!

Just a few words about the reactions of online predators we have profiled or those we have helped to expose behind the scenes of this blog.

In the time this blog has been up and running - we have only heard from ONE online predator who threatened us directly with legal action. We welcomed it since we had done nothing wrong and could back up everything we had. (this is the reason for our stringent rules for exposure) Of course, this Cyberpath dropped the whole thing.

Brad Dorsky, who threatened us, seemed to think he was dealing with a bunch of vindictive teenagers on a social networking site - he thought wrong. Mr. Dorsky said he was going to his local police - we told him to please feel free as we would be happy to speak to the FBI about his contacting someone out of the country and grooming her until she was no longer a minor to talk about violent sexual acts online with her that traumatized her. (Cyberpaths love to see how far they can push you after they have brainwashed you).

Mr. Dorsky later had a friend of his write to us - wanting to know who we were, who gave us the information about them and tell us Dorsky was 'a good person.' We did not give out the name of the person who gave us the information. We are happy to post rebuttals or clarifying information.

Also, we encouraged him to seek counseling for the way he had treated his victims and even offered to help him find a counselor in their area. We never heard from him again; nor did we remove any of the postings. hhmmmm......

We have reports of cyberpaths filing restraining or cease & desist orders or DMCA Takedowns on their victims to turn it around make themselves or their families look like the hurt party. Some, we guess, have enough money to drag all their victims to court and blame them for not controlling the whole internet. Most times - they have taken doctored or 'selective' information to law enforcement to get these orders. Law enforcement is often SHOCKED when they find out they have been lied to by these seemingly 'upright citizens.'

Sheer stupidity. All to support lies.

None of the ones we know have resulted in much of anything (other than the emotional trauma) legally for the victims. All have been dropped.

- We had one cyberpath, Steven Langley Guy, write us as his EX WIFE and that "he" had tried to commit suicide because we called him 'a predator.' (why would an EX-WIFE be using his computer?? and he IS a predator)
- Then Mr. Guy wrote that he was hiring a lawyer (many of them SAY this, virtually none of them really do it!!)
- And finally - "he" wrote as the person who exposed him begging us to remove him.

ALL FROM THE SAME IP NUMBER.
These predators really think we're that stupid?

EOPC asked him for the same "proof" we ask from those who turn this information over to us. To date - NO ONE EXPOSED HERE has been able to show us any hard proof that anything we have posted here was false or fabricated. These cyberpaths and all others remain on our site.

We can see that our cyberpaths come to this blog, searching for who is here - who posted against them. Some even search all the defamation and free speech links for some loophole. (Keith Clive , Dan Jacoby, Doug Beckstead and others, come here using anonymous proxies thinking we don't notice, LOL) Oh yes, some DO even try to change their location, their IPs or use anonymous proxies. Nice try!

Dan Jacoby has been having his board-owner buddies write and threaten us and then post things about EOPC as "that horrible site" for outing his new identities. Jacoby & his proxies "Do Protest Too Much." We would guess that his exposure cut into his preying grounds. Jacoby has also made no attempt at restitution for the things he duped out of one of his victims.

To all you cyberpaths; How about expending that energy you are using on your smear campaigns & attempts to re-write history instead: on making amends & talking it out with those you harmed, or in your own offline lives -- as well as getting yourselves therapy - in short: be an honest human being who doesn't use & abuse people.

Don't just cut them off when YOU Get caught!!
Genuinely Apologize. (Make financial restitution where necessary)
If your victim asks you to leave them alone -- DO SO!
For some: Reframe the relationship and talk about what happened. Not a shouting match because the victim won't buy into your "version" of things. REALITY TALK.
BE ACCOUNTABLE!

PROBLEM IS, Victims: CYBERPATHS REALLY DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING BUT THEMSELVES. ANYTHING. YOU COULD BE HANGING FROM A ROPE AND THEY WOULD FIND A WAY TO BLAME YOU (like -- Lori Drew)

Remember - abuse happens in secret.

Beckstead is trying DESPERATELY to do damage control by posting articles his name appeared in every place he can. This pushes the posts about him down on Google. Beckstead hopes no one will scan past the first page or two -- that way he can say: "See, I'm a good guy!" All in an effort to counter the truth that he's an abusive, perverted online predator and to convince his new targets what a altruist he is.

Beckstead even went so far as to PHOTOSHOP pictures of himself to try to make himself look thinner (he's morbidly obese) and used a recent assignment to write about the war in Iraq (he was sent there to write) to tell potential prey he was "deployed" and imply he's an enlisted soldier. There's no crime in being fat but at least be honest. He's also filled his FACEBOOK account with old friends & friends-of-friends who all believe he's a nice guy and know nothing about his secret life; in attempt to clean up his image without any real apologies.

All we ask is these people submit to the same standards we have for our victims/targets: PROOF. Hard proof. (Funny how cyberpaths tend to think their 'words' are enough to rewrite truth and history) If we get this proof - we will of course retract and/or post rebuttals.

Like other abusers, the cyberpaths seem to have a 'script' of blame and excuses when they are exposed. Despite being miles or even countries apart, they all say basically the same things (or variations on a theme):

[the victim] is lying/ made it all up

[the victim] is psycho/ crazy

[the victim] set me up

[the victim] is obsessed with me

[the victim] wants to ruin my life/ is the abusive one

[the victim] is cyberstalking/ stalking me / my family/ my friends

I don't even know [the victim]

I have hired a lawyer to deal with this (on Kristen Rhoad, one of Phil Haberman's victims - has hired a lawyer(s) or legal representative - and it seems Mr. Haberman filed false charges and is about to get a legal spanking for abusing the system)

It never happened

[The victim] is just jealous

That was all planted, I never said that/ did that

That is false, I am the victim here!

They [the victim] abused ME!!

I had to do something for relief. [The Victim] toyed with me/ tempted me.

I am sorry - I have changed (while still having online affairs)

[The victim] is just trying to ruin my life/ my happiness/ destroy my family or hurt my spouse.

And we can't go without an extra special mention to: LORI DREW - the woman that drove a 13-year old named Megan Meier to suicide. Who, after a year of the law doing NOTHING - told Megan's mother (who lives 4 doors down) and who is fighting for justice for her dead daughter to:

"GIVE IT A REST"

Mrs. Drew - you have confirmed via your lawyer's statements: that were full of "poor me" and blame-shifting to your victim (a 13 year old victim) that you are mentally disordered. You have proved your cyberpathy - because you just did precisely what every other perverted predator here does: BLAME YOUR VICTIM!

Nathan Thomas (a.k.a. "T") asked one of Targets to please not "annoy him" once she found out. He also accused one of his many overlapping wives of CAUSING the problem because she DIDN'T STAND BY HIM (i.e. believe and support his lies). You used women for free sex, room, board - even MARRIED THEM and now you don't want them to "ANNOY YOU?"

Thomas has even gone as far as to tell a wife with whom he had an allegedly BIGAMOUS MARRIAGE that "the CIA and US Government" were going to be "mad at her" for questioning him! He'd tried to convince her he was a Special Ops Agent for the U.S. Thomas took off after that on a "secret mission" (NOT) and this wife hasn't seen him since!

Sick... just sick.

Dunetz/ YidwithLid (some simple web searches showed out he'd changed his nickname from Gridney to Yidwithlid and now calls himself Sammy Benoit) told Target #2 "if you love me you will leave me alone and let my wife heal" (wait! He'd told Target #2 he didn't love his wife anymore and loved only HER! So in 3 days - after getting caught - he totally changes his tune? REAL Love doesn't do that!)

Gridney/ Yidwithlid told Target #1 "its over" and he would help get her children taken from her (which made her go to police... the rest is history). Over? What's over? It never started!

Now he makes his victims out to be some sort of attack-bots.

To this day Dunetz (like all of them) still blames Target #1 only for exposing him to his job, his family, etc and implies all the hooker postings and ads for casual sex were 'planted' or 'made up' (forensic recovery has shown us they were from HIM, not planted or made up at all!) - which she did NOT do and has posted the hard copies to prove it.

She (like many of our victims) only told his wife in the hopes his wife would HELP him break his sex addiction and exploitation of women. It's too easy to believe women like this are doing it for revenge. But often, they aren't! She felt compelled to go to police to protect her children - and look what happened! A $2million a year brothel ole Dunetz/ Yidwithlid was going to for about 3-4 years - PRIOR to Target #1 and #2 - was BUSTED!

Recently Yid With Lid went so far as to send a statement that this whole thing was because Target #1 was "jealous" that he wouldn't "bang" Target #1 because she is fat & ugly and (most hysterical) he "didn't want to hurt his wife." Very third grade. Obviously, the expensive hookers, phone sex and other women were of no consequence in hurting his wife. Despite him trying to tell everyone that his victims are jealous and planting it all.

from Dunetz's own "mouth":
I have 30 years in marketing. I already twist facts for a living.

from Yid's blog

______________

They all want victims to DROP it when THEY CAUSED PROFOUND TRAUMA TO THEIR TARGETS!

Victims:

Don't drop it! Your pain is not NOTHING!!

THE CYBERPATH FEELS ZERO RESPONSIBILITY TO THOSE THEY HAVE USED & ABUSED! To them you're an object, just some words on a screen - not even real!

IN FACT, THEY BLAME THE VICTIM FOR TELLING!!

To make the point about how these predators have no feelings or feel the least bit sorry for what they do to you. Think about how they belittle, smear & blow you and your trauma off.

And yes, its trauma - make no mistake.

They can see or emphasize with THEIR pain (they are such MARTYRS!) but your pain, the pain they caused? According to them, you have no right to feel bad! Only a really personality disordered individual has SUCH A LACK OF EMPATHY.

Don't listen to them anymore! Don't listen to anyone telling you they're O.K. and you're bad for being traumatized and not "forgiving & forgetting." You KNOW BETTER!

Anyone (friends, family, counselors) telling you to "Move on" or "get over it" is further abusing you because:

EMOTIONAL RAPE IS A STATIC EVENT.

It is FROZEN in the psyche of any compassionate human being. Since friends, family and clueless doctors may have never been through this sort of thing; and predators have NO REAL FEELINGS - they see it as a blip on their radar. An inconvenience. To them.

Why do you think, victims - that Cyberpaths show so much scorn for you once you find them out?

BECAUSE NOW YOU KNOW THE TRUTH and TRUTH is the one thing they can't handle.

There's a huge difference between obsession and JUSTICE.

After THESE CYBERPATHS' START, ENCOURAGE and LEAD ON THE VICTIM and then toss them away like trash - traumatizing them; the only thing for victims to do is TELL. Telling is the first step towards HEALING!

(of course there's the predators who start outright SMEAR CAMPAIGNS against those who have found them out, exposed them or questioned them. Doing this is as unoriginal as the "scorned woman" accusation and we don't buy it either.)

And if your predator says they have "changed - turned over a new leaf" - "please leave me alone to get on with my life"? HOW DARE THEY!

If they have really changed? They will take the time - how ever long that takes (days, months, years) to talk things through with you - admit & acknowledge what they did and make amends.

If they tell you "my therapist says I can't talk to you" - therapy has not caught up with this sort of interpersonal exploitation. That would be fine if you went into the online relationship knowing the truth IN THE FIRST PLACE. But you didn't.

They used you like an object, a thing, something they click off like the computer itself - and you deserve better. Besides, they are only using therapy as a COVER.

If they say "it will hurt/ upset my partner if I talk to you" find out exactly what they told their partner about you. Did they paint you as the bad one to get their a** out of the doghouse? Probably! If they say that they are still lying - to you, to their partner and themselves.

HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE!

(there are cyberpaths, such as Clive, Doug Beckstead and Dorsky that have tried to erase their tracks and rewrite history but don't know much about web archives and data retrieval! NOTHING ever really disappears on the web.)

Charles Ed Hicks said, IN COURT - IN FRONT OF A JUDGE, after 2 of his ex wives testified against him and hard proof of his fraud and bigamy was entered into the record that it was "False, ALL FALSE" Rumor has it - he's writing a book to 'set the record straight.' Maybe O.J.'s publisher is interested? LOL

Did we mention after a year in jail for Bigamy, Hicks was recently tossed out by another woman in Charleston, S.C. and is back online using the name CHARLES HICKS or CHARLES GREENE? Trolling for his next victim? And he's currently a WANTED FUGITIVE so beware!

Do you think they learn? change? NO! They just play on their next victim's compassion and willingness to believe in them.

Also the winner, by 98%, of the lines married predators (those that admit they are married) give to their victims:

My [spouse] is cold to me/ the marriage is dead/ won't have sex with me/ its over ...but I am staying because of the kids/ money and I don't love [my spouse] anymore... our marriage is only on paper....

YAWN!
It's so predictable that it's sad. Truly sad. As sad as the fact that to these predators, victims are merely objects to use.

And as we have said many many times - please at least Google or search on the person you are chatting with's name and nickname(s) and read EVERY PAGE OF ENTRIES THAT COMES UP. If they are pressing you for a meeting - we have links to background check agencies on the right and for a small fee you can find out everything you need to know.

If anyone tells you "if you do a check on me then you don't trust me/ love me" - DO THE CHECK ASAP! If you find them on a site warning you - BELIEVE IT. If they tell you "don't speak to so and so, they will lie about me or my relationship with them" or "she's a scorned woman" - SPEAK TO THAT OTHER PERSON ASAP AND GET THE TRUTH!!!!!

REMEMBER: People who are honest have nothing to hide.

MORE: VERBAL ATTACKS OF THE SOCIOPATH

"Find Your Perfect NIGHTMARE Online"

2012-01-08T01:07:00.000-04:00

"Find Your Perfect Date at Match.com", reads this online dating service's current banner ad. "Find a Nightmare", reads the banner ad attached to the inside of my skull. Because online dating, at least in my experience, is one of the unfunniest jokes around.

What am I ranting about? Well, the six months that I spent on Match.com, and the 120 dollars I coughed up were complete wastes of time and money.

I first joined Match.com because it seemed to have the biggest database, and its friendly, photo-driven database let me actually look at the people I was sending e-mail to. Unfortunately, the database underwent a complete restructuring shortly after I joined, destoying several evening's worth of work creating an an earnest, heartfelt personal profile. So I had to painstakingly re-enter all this information.

After re-building my personal information, reconstructing my personal search criteria, and uploading a new picture of myself, I waited patiently for some incoming e-mail to arrive. After two weeks had gone by, with nary a response, I went on the offensive, and started to actively search for women matching my criteria (heavy-smoking divorced caucasion atheists).

I quickly found that there were forty-one of these people within a 50 mile radius of my location. Because I don't believe that love is blind, I narrowed my search criteria to the twenty-five who had actually uploaded pictures of themselves, and immediately screened out another seven for being butt-ugly. That left me with eighteen, so I composed one heartfelt, sincere, earnest e-mail, and sent the same message to the group using a "blind copy BCC".
Five women of the eighteen replied, and over the next several weeks, I began trading e-mails with three of them. Here is a brief summary of the resulting encounters.

Date 1: A Candle-Lit Dinner
J*** seemed to have everything going for her. A cute face, a paying job at a prominent New York film institute, a wry way of expressing herself in e-mail, and realistic expectations about the prospects of meeting Mr. Right through an online dating service. She wrote: "I really don't think we'll know if there's a real connection between us until we actually sit down together and make eye contact". She suggested we meet at an intimate Italian restaurant near her workplace on the West Side, and I hung out at the bar until she showed up.

I remember sitting there with a Diet Coke, with my back to the entrance and my mind swirling with fantasies about what we'd talk about - the arts, Giuliani, the Yankees - whatever seemed most conducive to romance. But then, my reverie was broken when an extremely large woman tapped me on the shoulder, I turned around, and it was J*** - about 80 pounds heavier than her picture had indicated. I could hardly even see her eyes peering out from within the folds of fat, much less make contact with them.

Because I consider myself a gentleman, I bought her dinner (Lasagna), and talked exclusively about Giuliani, which seemed to please her to no end. But as soon as I could dump her in the subway, I ran screaming back to the East side, and never sent her e-mail again.
Date 2: Romantic Phone Sex
With the J*** experience safely behind me, I began to more carefully analyze the pictures that my six "hot" prospects had uploaded of themselves, to look for obvious signs of retouching or Loch Ness monster-style fakery. Using software originally developed by the CIA Global Maps Division, I began blowing up and enhancing some of these grainy JPEGs, and sure enough, several contained dead giveways that they were taken many years ago, when the subject was in much better (or at least much younger) shape. These background clues included biplanes flying in the distance, cars with tailfins, and an old Nixon: Now More Than Ever poster.

I was left with two prospects whose pictures seemed honest. One was an exotic belly-dancer, and I had made all the arrangements to meet her when she requested that we talk on the phone first.

There was scratchy Middle Eastern music playing in the background when I called, and what seemed to be a couple of hungry kids screaming. This is in itself wasn't a turnoff - in fact it was almost a turn-on. But when this poor woman began talking, I knew that there was no way on earth that we could ever communicate earnestly and heartfeltly about anything, at least in any extant language. She sounded like just like Brezhnev did after a hard night of drinking, so I told her I was feeling ill (which I was), and I moved our date into the far-distant future (2006).
Date 3: Sexy E-Mail
Older, wiser, but still horny as hell, I was now down to just one prospect, so I sent her another piece of earnest e-mail. By this time, I was becoming increasingly desperate to meet someone under 800 lbs. who actually spoke the English language, but I was also getting gunshy.

So I began asking a few personal questions about her - what kind of food she liked eating, whether she liked music from the Middle East, or had a thing for vodka - innocuous things like that. I had become accustomed to this kind of probing behavior - (one of my correspondents had actually asked for my Social Security Number, and I stupidly complied, and of course never heard from her again).

To this day, I don't think I was being overly intrusive, but my correspondent clearly thought differently. Maybe she got my e-mail at the end of a long day, or her real boyfriend had dumped her - I'll never know. But here's the reply I got back after sending her a simple "request for clarification of one of your earlier points" message:

WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU. DO YOU WANT TO MEET ME OR NOT? ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE AMBIVALENT SONS OF B*TCHES WHO CANT MAKE UP THEIR MIND - ARE YOU SRIOUS ABOUT MEETING ME OR JUST WANT TO TORTURE ME AND F*CK WITH MY HEAD? DON'T BOTHER REPONDING - IM UP TO HERE WTH YOUR DUMB QUESTIONS. N**
Epilogue:
I cancelled my Match.com subscription, spent the money I saved on two reasonably good subscription porn services, and tried to forget the whole thing. But I can't really forget, because every day, I receive junk mail about some wretched new Match.com event - a wine tasting, or a boat cruise, or a getaway weekend.

Someday, I'm sure I'll meet someone, and maybe, God willing, we'll wind up having grandchildren together. But I'm 100% sure that I'd be better off taking my chances with a random, in-your-face encounter than by flying blind in a world of illusion. And I'll certainly never date online again, until such time as they can screen out the imposters, the losers, the psychos, and the women who sound like Brezhnev.

I actually do know people who have met compatible mates online, but I believe these success stories are vastly outnumbered by the number of empty, unhappy, soul-searing experiences that nobody publicizes - the victims are too ashamed, and the service doesn't want to know either. Match.com and its brethren are, in my opinion, seamy lonely-hearts clubs where deception, trickery, and paranoia run rampant, scarring the gullible and the guileless.

But then again, I guess I'm one of those "ambivalent sons-of-b*tches who can't make up their mind" - at least about throwing myself blindly into the arms of these cyber-weirdos.

ORIGINAL POST HERE

Online Impersonation? Get Arrested.

2012-01-07T01:09:00.000-04:00

(Texas, U.S.) A 34-year-old Odessa man was charged with online harassment after reportedly pretending to be his ex-girlfriend and asking for sex.

Kevin Wade Johnson, 12055 W. Edith St., remained in custody Thursday on a $15,000 bond.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Johnson’s ex-girlfriend started getting calls from people wanting to meet her to have sex. One of them told her he’d gotten her number off of her profile at the mobile gaming community MocoSpace, and when she searched for her name, the profiles “1hottnurse4u” and “nastynurse4u” came up, which included her personal and work phone numbers, as well as photos of her, the affidavit stated.

The woman suspected that Johnson had been the one to create the profiles because they were ones she knew he had, the affidavit stated.

After making the report Aug. 9, Odessa police got a search warrant Aug. 30 for MocoSpace’s data and found that the phone number connected with the profiles belonged to Johnson, the affidavit stated. Sept. 14, a third profile “hotnurse4u” was created, again with the woman’s information and photos of her, the affidavit stated. Oct. 6, a grand jury subpoena was served to MocoSpace for the third account, and it, too, was connected with Johnson’s number. Sprint-Nextel confirmed Johnson as the account holder for the number Oct. 7, the affidavit stated.

The arrest warrant was signed Oct. 12, and Johnson was arrested Monday on the third-degree felony charge.

original article found here

In Just One Hour Online...

2012-01-06T01:26:00.000-04:00

It took just one hour for internet experts to find out almost every private detail of one woman's life

Steve Boggan challenged web experts to see how much they could discover about his partner. The results were chilling...

As I sit writing this, I am feeling vaguely grubby — guilty even — in the way a neurotic husband might after hiring a gumshoe to go trawling through his wife’s secrets.

There is a 15-page report in front of me chronicling virtually every aspect of my girlfriend’s life: past and present. That includes her friends, education, embarrassing pictures, former boyfriends and long-forgotten relatives.

Much of the information is new to me. And the uses to which it could be put — uses I hadn’t dreamt of until this week — are chilling.

Armed with this information, criminals could use her identity to commit fraud or resurrect minute details of her past, her movements and friendships to lure her into scams or even dangerous liaisons.

It could be used to con her into revealing her bank details and credit card numbers.

My internet snooping began because the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt — a man not known for worrying about internet surfers’ privacy — suggested recently that young people might want to change their identities in the future in order to separate themselves from a past lived too openly on the internet.

We all know Facebook pictures of you dancing at a party with a traffic cone on your head might come back to haunt you. But change your identity completely?

Surely, I wondered, there isn’t enough out there to warrant that.

So I decided to find out how much I could discover about my partner of 12 years, Suzanne, just by using the internet.

Before you think I’m a rat, I should point out that Suzanne, a 39-year-old with a soft furnishings business, agreed to it.

I began in the way lots of identity thieves do: with her name and address. Of course, I knew these details, but identity thieves often discover them by ‘dumpster diving’: looking through dustbins for a discarded piece of mail.

I passed Suzanne’s name and address — but no other details — to Adam Laurie, a 48-year-old computer security and internet privacy advocate.

He shared the information with Chris Sumner, 39, another security expert, who works for a multi-national corporation.

Or at least, that is Sumner’s day job; by night, he analyses vast amounts of information publicly available on the internet to see what it can tell him about criminal activity — in this case, how fraudsters are using social networking sites to choose their victims.

Using sophisticated and completely legal computer techniques, he looks for patterns in the behaviour of internet users to uncover otherwise hidden links.

In the case of social networking sites, he can see just how close two people, or groups of people, really are to each other.

He had met neither me nor Suzanne and knew nothing of her existence until given her name and address.

A day later, his findings dropped into my email inbox.

Picking Suzanne’s life apart, he told me, had taken him just over an hour.

This is because, in common with millions of people in Britain, Suzanne uses the social networking sites Facebook and Friends Reunited, and has signed up to the business networking site LinkedIn and Flickr, the photo-sharing website.

By also using the genealogy website ancestry.co.uk, Sumner was able to piece together the names of all but one of Suzanne’s relatives, including cousins.

Using electoral rolls on 192.com and by searching on Google, he found the addresses of her parents and lots of her friends and colleagues.

From her LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, he found the names of Suzanne’s primary and secondary schools, and a college she had attended in Derby. He also discovered she had studied fine art at Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design in London.

He also had details of Suzanne’s qualifications and pictures of her from her days at school. The snaps weren’t hers — an old schoolfriend had put them on Facebook.

There were some naff hairstyles, but that was as deep as the embarrassment went. Only you know whether a trawl of pictures of you would be more damaging.

But Sumner didn’t stop there. He was able to tell me that Suzanne had travelled extensively in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean and the South Pacific.

This was because she had used an application on Facebook that linked to the travel website TripAdvisor. You fill in where in the world you have been to keep your relatives up to date. But anyone can see it.

He was not only able to list all 41 countries she had visited, but also the 162 towns and islands to which she had been.

Sumner was able to tell me Suzanne’s exact movements by cross-referencing her TripAdvisor entries with photographs she had posted on Flickr.

When you click on a picture on Flickr, a small box gives you access to detailed information that is entered not by you, but by your camera. So, the date and time of the shot are included.

Now that phones and cameras have GPS, there are even concerns that the location of where you uploaded the picture — normally where you live — might be visible.

From a mixture of all of these websites, Sumner listed Suzanne’s likes, dislikes, hobbies, the 34 towns and cities she had visited in Britain, the places where she used to socialise in her youth and details of her former jobs in the newspaper industry.

In fact, it’s fair to say that after just one hour’s trawling he knew more about many aspects of my girlfriend’s past than I did.

Shocking? Perhaps. Yet also astonishingly easy. Suzanne had voluntarily signed up to these websites and, bit by bit, put most of this information out there herself — and forgotten much of it.

However, what I found even more disturbing is that much of what Sumner found was supposed to have been visible only to people whom Suzanne had accepted into her inner circle of ‘friends’ on each networking website. This turned out to be dangerously naive.

Over the years, standard privacy settings— notably for Facebook — have changed, so what you once thought was private has become public.

You are notified about these changes, but if you forget to adjust your individual settings to return to the old level of privacy (which can be fiendishly complicated) then some of your private information becomes available for everyone to see.

‘There are some weird, strange quirks that let you into places you aren’t supposed
to go,’ says Sumner.

‘For example, on Facebook you may not be allowed to see someone’s photographs because they’re private. But if they post a message with one of their photos attached, you are given the option of seeing their whole album. And as you can imagine, that can be embarrassing.’

According to Sumner and Laurie, organised criminals are using this information
in increasingly sophisticated ways to target victims.

‘Criminal gangs are carefully fishing for victims,’ says Laurie. ‘In the past, they would have sent out thousands and thousands of spam emails in a scattergun fashion — and many still do.

‘These are called phishing scams and involve fake requests from banks asking
people to confirm their account details, passwords and so on. The hope is that, once in a while, someone would be silly enough to reply.

‘Today, they are much more targeted. For example, with the information we got about Suzanne from Flickr, you would be able to see where she visited, when, and, if there were captions on the pictures, with whom.

‘After that, the criminals (or romance scammers) would tailor a scam. If they noticed that, say, she was a regular visitor to Malawi, they would make an introduction online, claiming they were a friend — for example, called Dave — of someone she visited there with five years ago.

‘Surely she remembers them? From that beach — her friend was there, too ... yes?

‘Usually people are too embarrassed to say they don’t remember. Then ‘‘Dave’’ claims he is setting up an orphanage — would she like to make a contribution towards it?

‘Or they might simply say they’re a friend of a person you were with and say he’s gone back there, broken his leg and they’re having a fund-raising collection to airlift him home. It’s crude, but effective.’

Sumner says it can get even more complex, with software tools that can work out who is friends with whom among your online groups of contacts.

‘Once you have established a person’s inner network, you go back into their history to find someone they knew at school who isn’t in that network of close friends and who hasn’t signed up to networking sites,’ he says.

‘Then you join those sites in their name, establish yourself with their online identity and ask your original target to accept you as a friend on, say, Facebook.

‘Before you know it, you are inside their life as a trusted person they think they used to know.

‘Once you are in, you can read about what your target and their friends are up to, such as when they are going on holiday. With that information, you can burgle their homes.

‘You can even ask to be Facebook friends with their children. This is a particularly frightening way for someone to stalk you or your family. They can introduce themselves as a Facebook friend of Mum or Dad. And then it’s only a couple of steps away from something awful happening.

‘Teenagers, in particular, are very indiscreet and post hundreds of pictures of themselves, sometimes drunk with their friends in the living room in front of the plasma screen TV or home cinema.

‘Not only are these the sort of pictures that will come back to haunt them in the future — potential employers aren’t supposed to look at these, but they do — but it’s also a dumb way to show burglars what property you have and where it is.

‘Especially after your children have told all their “friends” when the house is going to be empty.’

Sumner described how some of the information he gained from Suzanne would have helped him to get hold of her bank and credit card details. I won’t reveal exactly how he did it, but it involved using some of her social networking information to gain her confidence, then posing as a friend and asking if her business would make some curtains for him with a sample of material he’d seen on another website.

The catch would be that he had set up that other website himself and when she visited it some rudimentary programming he had installed would help him acquire her credit card details.

I ask Suzanne if she would have fallen for the scam. ‘It’s hard to know, but based on what he said, why wouldn’t I have gone along with the requests of a potential customer?’ she says.

There are other ways, too, that criminals can use personal information harvested from the internet. For example, people often use the names of their children or
pets as passwords for online shopping sites.

If criminals can find these names, by gaining access to your social networking circle, they can try to hack into your accounts on popular shopping sites such as Amazon and view your shopping history, or even order expensive goods to be sent to a pick-up address. (I did not ask Laurie or Sumner to attempt this because it would be in breach of data protection law.)

What can we do about all this? Well, not a lot, other than to be aware your information can be used in more sinister ways than you can possibly imagine, and to be on your guard.

As for your children, they can be warned to modify their behaviour and to think twice about what they write and post online and whom they accept as ‘friends’.

According to Linda Weatherhead, principal policy advocate for the campaign group Consumer Focus, social networking sites bear much responsibility for this explosion of potentially useful information.

‘It is a complex problem, but one simple way of making things safer would be to have all our information kept private as the default setting,’ she says. ‘Then it would be up to you how much you want to relax them as you decide to share more of your private
information.

‘Beyond that, we just have to be careful what we put out there — you can advise children about what they are doing, but you can’t wrap them in cotton wool. You can never make anything completely safe.’

But if Adam Laurie and Chris Sumner are right, then the risks of social networking extend far beyond a few embarrassing photos.

In particular, be careful who your ‘friends’ are; they could turn out to be your worst enemies.

original article here

'Maze of Online Dating'

2012-01-05T01:27:00.000-04:00

EOPC is publishing this to point on the chronic lying implicit in online dating. We believe the author minimizes the danger inherent here.

EOPC NEVER recommends or approves of Online Dating to meet people. Under ANY circumstances. Join a volunteer organization but NEVER Online Dating.

His online profile -- dark hair, 5'6", athletic build -- caught her attention and the e-mail exchange went well, so Carla Riemersma agreed to meet the 58-year-old Wisconsin man in person.

But the nonathletic, 5-foot-2, 64-year-old, bald man who greeted her on the date didn't exactly match his cyber persona.

"I'm looking for this stud-muffin, and it didn't quite turn out that way," Riemersma said.

Frustrating dates such as this inspired Riemersma, a 65-year-old college professor from the Hudsonville area, to start taking notes.

The result is her book, "What are the Odds? The Likelihood of Finding Love and Romance in Cyberspace." In it, Riemersma, shares her personal adventure and documents the pitfalls of looking for love online. She takes an academic approach to the topic with statistical research.

Riemersma, who teaches at Baker College and the University of Phoenix, spent about $500 for 15 months of online dating services, including Match.com, Yahoo.com, Sexy Ads, American Singles, Senior Friend Finders and eHarmony. She met more then 200 men, sometimes fitting as many as three dates into a single day.

To research the book, she spent four years reviewing 4,000 active profiles randomly chosen from several well-known Internet dating sites and conducted interviews with nearly 300 Internet daters. About a third of those participants were women.

She often would arrive at a meeting with her date's profile in hand to compare reality to what was advertised online. When people lied, she made a note of it. She found 97.5 percent of the online daters she interviewed were dishonest about their profile, with women most likely to fib about age and weight while men often fudged their age and marital status.

White lies
Riemersma calls it "cyber-truth" when people post a false age, weight or marital status in an effort to get a date.

... Now, she strongly advises people to be honest from the beginning if they're serious about finding a person to love them as they are.

TIPS
Dating detective work

Online dating tips from Carla Riemersma, author of "What are the Odds? The Likelihood of Finding Love and Romance in Cyberspace":

• Do not lie or exaggerate when writing your profile.

• Use a current photo.

• Avoid confusion -- list your ground rules for the first date in your profile.

• Do not give out personal information via the Internet.

• Use a cell phone instead of home phone if you decide to call your date.

• Once you know your date's name, do a Google or Yahoo search. Read ALL the pages.

• Always meet in a public place for the first date.

• Never consume alcohol on your first few dates, and monitor alcohol consumption of the person you are dating.

• Always tell someone where you will be during the first date, and make sure your date knows you're going to call that person during the date to say you're OK.

• Make sure you have your own transportation to and from the date.

"Eventually, you have to meet, and how do you explain the extra 20 pounds if you listed yourself as slim or athletic?" she writes.

She said about 60 percent of the men who stated they were single, separated or divorced still were married. So, she quickly developed a radar for men with tan lines on their ring fingers and indentations where a wedding band usually goes.

"It was so obvious," she said.

One guy showed up to a date with a bandage wrapped around his ring finger. She asked if he'd had a mishap with a saber saw. It turned out the man's finger was fine, but he was married.

Throwing in the towel
Terri Timmer, 52, of Grand Rapids, tried cyberdating for a few months, but gave up in frustration about a month ago.

In contrast, Ken Cote, 47, of Lake Odessa, has had pretty good luck meeting women online. ... It helps that he is a private investigator. He says he does background checks on his dates -- and he checks on the people his friends are dating, too...

Falsehoods
While Riemersma was researching her book, there were an estimated 40 million people dating online in the United States and more than 1,200 online dating sites. Those numbers continue to grow.

Original article here

Perfect Prey: Surviving a Cyber Shark's Romantic Fraud

2012-01-04T01:01:00.000-04:00

Liz Cole was victimized by an online career con artist - but she turned the tables to expose the con man on national television. Much of this book is written as a real time journal, taking readers inside the world of Liz Cole and her suitor, convict and predator John Melvin Hill.

Recently divorced, with low self-esteem, Liz Cole turned to online dating and met a charming Irishman - in reality, a Quebec con artist - who preyed on her and vanished. She then found him and set up a televised sting operation and has great advice.

Millions use Internet-dating sites to look for love. Some find their mates, some find disappointment. And some fine something far more dangerous - con artists and sex predators lurking in the shadows of cyberspace. -- CTV's W-Five

What do you do when your charming knight on a white horse turns out to be Satan in a tuxedo? (this is the true story of how one woman fought back) -- Canadian Living Magazine

buy the book here

If You're Accusing or Exposing - Make Sure It's the Correct Person!

2012-01-03T01:05:00.000-04:00

PROMINENT writer and radio broadcaster Marieke Hardy has issued an apology to a Melbourne man she incorrectly accused of authoring a hate blog against her.

In early November Ms Hardy, a regular panelist on the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club, drew media attention for naming Joshua Meggitt as the alleged author behind a long running campaign of online harassment against her.

Pointing the finger at Mr Meggitt even sparked a Twitter campaign under the hashtag #mencallmethings, in which many female tweeters and bloggers reposted some of the worst online comments that had been made about themselves.

In the December 23 post on her blog, Ms Hardy issued a formal apology, saying: “For over five years I have been the victim of a hate blog against me. On 9 November 2011 I incorrectly identified Joshua Meggitt on this site as the man responsible for writing that blog.

“I accept that Joshua is not the writer and I sincerely apologise to him and his family for any upset caused.”

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Ms Hardy is believed to have paid Mr Meggitt a legal settlement of $13,000.

original article found here

Lack of Help for Victims of Cyberpaths & Scammers

2012-01-02T01:03:00.000-04:00

by James Eli Shiffer

Jody Buell thought she was falling in love, but she fell for someone who didn't exist.

The Burnsville, Minn., woman didn't catch on to the scam until she had spent more than $10,000 on her online admirer.

Instead of sinking into despair, however, Buell decided to get even.

For the past two years, she has been helping other fraud victims get advice, support and fellowship from an online group called romancescams.org. Since the Yahoo group was founded in 2005, it has helped more than 50,000 people from around the world.

"It's basically a war," said site founder Barb Sluppick, a scam victim who lives in Missouri. "They're battling us for our money. We're fighting back, but we're fighting on our own because the government doesn't seem to want to get involved in this."

Government officials say the biggest hurdle is that the vast majority of suspects are located outside their jurisdiction, usually in other countries. The epicenter of the scams appears to be West Africa, particularly Nigeria, where young men reportedly work through the night in Internet cafes perpetrating dozens of frauds.

"I've had scam victims from around the country getting ahold of us because they can't find anybody to pick up their case," said Jim Arlt, interim director of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety's alcohol and gambling enforcement unit. "I am astounded at really the lack of coordinated effort in this area."

In the past year, the FBI has received more than 4,000 complaints about dating-site fraud, but the agency has no estimate on the financial impact, FBI spokeswoman Jenny Shearer said.

In some cases, the losses are devastating. An Arizona man who contacted romancescams .org said he was taken for $1million, and in August, a New York man shot himself after losing $50,000 to an online scammer.

When Buell first joined the group, Sluppick had to moderate her comments because she was still so angry. Now Sluppick considers Buell her second-in-command.

Looking back, Buell said she can't believe she missed the warning signs. She said she decided to tell her story publicly for the first time because she counsels others to feel no shame for being the victims of crime.

"Who in this world does not want or need to be loved?" said Buell, a longtime insurance broker.

In 2008, the dating site eHarmony.com matched Buell, 53, with Claude Eichmann, who described himself as a Maryland businessman with an international mining company. Their friendship blossomed by e-mail, instant messaging and phone conversations.

Paul Breton, a spokesman for eHarmony, said he can't disclose the methods his company uses to weed out crooks. But he noted the site also instructs users to protect themselves by recognizing the signs of a fraud - someone who wants to move too quickly, who draws you into a sudden personal crisis, who has a complicated story, who asks for money.

Buell's friendship with "Eichmann" played out over 3-1/2 months. His photo showed a smartly dressed man with unruly black hair. After a number of weeks they exchanged phone numbers, and while Buell was initially put off by his accent, he reminded her that he had grown up all over the world.

"Every time I would raise a doubt or a question, he would have a plausible answer," she said.

The two planned to meet, but first he had to travel to the West African nation of Ghana to open an office. Then troubles began. His office equipment supplier fell through. Could you send money? he asked. Buell refused, but he persuaded her to buy $10,000 worth of computers and phones and spend another $1,300 to ship it to Ghana. Buell even included a pair of Timberland boots he coveted, plus a lock of her hair.

Then "Eichmann" became ill and asked her to pay for his malaria medicine. Buell implored him to contact the U.S. Consulate, but he resisted he idea, so she went to the embassy website herself. On the home page, she noticed a link to "romance scams."

"I clicked on it," Buell said. "It was like ice went through all my veins. Everything that happened to me was listed on that website. My dream person turned into a nightmare in 15 seconds."

Buell reported the crime to IC3, the federal Internet crime clearinghouse, but she doesn't expect any follow-up. (IC3 reports an 8+ year backup on reports; many they dismiss.)

After Buell's sad encounter, an old boyfriend invited her to go on a bike ride. On the trip, he popped the question. Now she's happily married, but she's not forgetting what happened to her.

original article found here

The Pick-Up Artist

2012-01-01T01:45:00.000-04:00

Readers - this type of guy can work his game ONLINE probably even EASIER than off. Here's proof that these predators THINK OF THEIR PREY AS OBJECTS and are non-cureable. BEWARE!

BY Alex Molotkow

In the summer of 2004, a newly single professional in his early forties wanted to sleep with as many women as possible. Sex being above all other considerations — time, money, shame — he took on the persona “Dimitri the Lover” and drafted a general sexual proposition for any “attractive, intelligent woman” who happened to read it. He printed a few thousand posters and hired a postering company. Together they placed them all over the city, from family-oriented neighbourhoods like the Beaches (where mothers’ groups ripped them down en masse) to York University campus (which alerted the police).

“I got dozens of responses. Dozens. And f**ked maybe 20 women, something like that. Not a lot,” Dimitri tells me. Of course, most people who saw the poster thought it was a joke. I did, until Dimitri hit on me in Starbucks two years later. I was taken aback, mostly because of the way he looked: tall and broad-shouldered, with dark, gelled-back hair. A stranger on the street might nickname him “Dimitri the Lover” as a joke.

Dimitri can spit out romantic hyperbole like a seasoned Don Juan, but his rants are reminiscent of Screw magazine’s Al Goldstein. His speeches, however eloquent, often spin off their axes and turn into wildly offensive tirades. He says he means no harm, though this might not be obvious to those who read his posters. Lately, he’s been posting ads for a community called Toronto Real Men. In early March, a notice for a meeting (“905 Keeps Your C**k Alive”) at Rancho Relaxo offended one person so much that they alerted the Toronto Women’s Bookstore. The store called the venue, which cancelled the event post-haste. “It just seemed like a joke when I saw it — I was shocked by it, but I didn’t think it was this serious thing,” says Rose Kazi, a Toronto Women’s Bookstore employee. “

That’s part of the reason why I went to Rancho — this might be a joke, but just so you know as a business, your name is on it.” On his website, www.dimitrithelover.com, Dimitri referred to the complainants as “bitter, moustached, man-hating, femi-nazi c*nts from socially regressive, evolutionarily non-sequitur organizations.”

With Toronto Real Men, Dimitri has joined the “seduction community,” the vast network of dating gurus and “pickup artists” (PUAs) popularized by Neil Strauss’ 2005 book, The Game. According to Frank B. Kermit of www.franktalks.com, a Toronto-based seduction guru who specializes in relationship management, the movement began in the early ’90s, as a newsgroup dedicated to the convoluted techniques taught by Ross Jeffries (Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia is said to be based on him). Some of the men immersed in the seduction lifestyle seem to be engaged in a real-life role-playing game, where PUAs like “Swinggcat,” “Mehow” and “Juggler” vie for experience points. Others are just lonely with little confidence.

“Most of these people are just guys looking for some guidance where their parents or society in general couldn’t give it to them,” says Miso G., proprietor of www.naturalseducers.com, a company that offers weekend training programs for men at $1,200 to $1,500 a pop, and a moderator at Toronto Phoenix Society, an online forum for men. “[Guys] would never ask for advice on topics like these as freely as girls would.”

As with any self-help movement, there are plenty of hacks eager to capitalize on the downtrodden. There are also community organizations where nobody pays a thing.

“Think of it as alcoholics anonymous,” says Kermit, who has run “lairs” — free forums for men — in Toronto and elsewhere. Seduction groups have existed in Toronto for several years, but the movement remained obscure until Strauss’ book. Kermit’s Toronto Lair formed to absorb members from another group, the Toronto Social Network, which split in two (the other half being Toronto Phoenix Society) due to questionable leadership practices, including charging for mandatory seminars. Dimitri charges for Toronto Real Men, though he emphasizes that he doesn’t need the money. “They don’t get something for nothing,” he told me. “$250 a year, you’re a member. One meeting a month. I’m going to be offering courses to men on how to get f**ked, fast.”

Dimitri was born in Toronto in the early 1960s. He had a rough upbringing:

“My father was very physically and emotionally abusive. My mother was just a borderline manic, histrionic, dramatic woman, and I did not grow up really understanding what love was.” A nerdy overachiever in high school, he didn’t lose his virginity until he was 20. He became a physician, but lost his licence after pleading guilty to charges of sexual impropriety during house calls. His lawyers pressured him into the decision, he says. “I asked [one patient] out on a date, and we chatted a bit, I said give me a call sometime, gave her a goodbye hug. That was it.”

Two more women came forward with similar stories after reading about him in the newspaper, he continues, and one recalled that he had “spent too much time in the bathroom.”

“At the time, I was married. And my wife was sexually dysfunctional, I had not had sex with her in a year and a half. It was a very tough time, I was very horned up. And I was busy, between that and working, so for me it was easy to hit on chicks that were patients.”

In the aftermath, Dimitri says, he lost everything he owned and spent half a year on welfare. His sex drive remained intact, however, and without money for dates he became more direct with women. He credits the experience for ridding him of all regard for social norms. It also embittered him against what he considers to be feminist alarmism.

“[Toronto Real Men is] a rebellion against society, and what they’ve turned men into. I should never have gotten in trouble for what happened. I should have maybe gotten a slap on the wrist… [Toronto Real Men is] a rebellion against feminism, and really feminism is what’s created a lot of this. Sexual harassment in the workplace — it’s so overblown.”

The personal coaching courses he now offers, including “Women Worship You” and “Worship the C**k,” are intended to help men assert their masculinity.

Dimitri claims to live by principles, though it’s difficult to distinguish them amid his inflammatory digressions. He’s honest about his intentions, and he speaks earnestly when not caught up in showmanship. Whatever he does with women, he insists that he always does it consensually. The many conquests he claims certainly make him a desirable seduction guru: he says he’s slept with 400 to 500 women, a modest figure given his compulsion for hitting on every halfway attractive woman he sees. When I went “cruising” with him around the St. Lawrence area, I watched him pick up several pretty girls with rapid efficiency. I also saw him weather several cold rejections, which he attributed alternately to ethnicity, “Paul Bernardo Syndrome” and confusion. He had a remarkable knack for determining who would be receptive to him. When they weren’t, he assumed they had been abused by another man. “If a woman doesn’t trust me, usually she’s a nut job,” he once told me.

Some feel as though Dimitri goes too far, online and elsewhere. “I do not associate with Dimitri the Lover,” Kermit says. “I had no idea the guy was as misogynistic as he is. [He’s] very charming and very entertaining… [but] I will not endorse people who promote the idea of violence, even as a joke.”

For a feminist, it’s difficult to respond to somebody whose MO is feminist-baiting. “If you want to have a party with straight men talking about how to get girls, you know, that’s fucked up, but I’m not going to stop you,” says Kazi of Toronto Women’s Bookstore. “But [Dimitri’s ad] was just disturbing. I don’t know — maybe he should just change his marketing angle.” Kazi and Alex MacFadyen, another bookstore employee, laugh it off. “We’re very sex-positive, so that’s not the problem,” MacFadyen comments.

“I encourage him to come in! And, you know, get a book,” says Kazi.

What would they recommend?

“What about C**t?” Kazi suggests.

MacFadyen howls. “The Ethical Slut!”

ORIGINAL

MORE:
Pick Up Artists or F**ked up Men?

The "Seduction" Community

A Whole Online Group for How-To

When It's Someone You Trust...

2011-12-31T01:48:00.000-04:00

You never know who might try to hurt you on the internet

BY CATHERINE WALKER

OVER the past few weeks we have learned that 80 per cent of victims of cyber-stalking are women, and many have been the victims of ex-lovers, but although it seems relationships have a lot to do with online stalking it is not always men who are the stalkers. This week, we talk to a woman who was stabbed in the back by the person who she least expected.

Jane Burns (name has been changed to protect identity) was a normal young woman. In 2005, most of her friends at university were studying abroad, which brought her and another classmate a lot closer together than before. They spent hours together and told each other everything. Jane’s new best friend spent a lot of time on the internet, trying to meet men in forums. Jane worried her friend because she would often go to meet them after just a few weeks, thinking she had found her ideal man, and then resulting in disappointment, but little did Jane know it was herself she should worry about. Jane was in a long-distance relationship with a man abroad, but thanks to the internet they kept in touch every day.

One day, after she returned from a holiday at her boyfriend’s home, she went online and found an e-mail, apparently from him, which was directed to another woman, telling her he loved and missed her. Jane, with tears in her eyes, contacted her boyfriend to ask for an explanation. He, of course, knew nothing, but she felt deceived and hurt and told him she wanted to split up. Luckily, he insisted she checked whether the e-mail had really come from his address – it hadn’t. The address that had been used was the same, apart from a dash, which in the heat of the moment, she hadn’t noticed. On closer examination, the language was a little different, although the nickname used for her was right.

The only person who had this information was Jane’s friend, who also happened to have asked to read some of their e-mails just two weeks earlier. Why did she do this? Jane says she can’t imagine. But when she told her friend about the ordeal, without accusing her, she immediately went offline and the two have not spoken since.

You never know who is trying to hurt you on the internet, so be careful.

original article found here

Trust turning to betrayal.

Study Shows Over 30% of Internet Dating Site Users are Married

2011-12-30T01:07:00.000-04:00

Study Shows Over 30% of Internet Dating Site Users are Married

Newly launched PrivateDateFinder.com is the first and only dating site where you can find romance without anyone else knowing. The site offers a unique way to conceal both how you pay as well as eliminating all the tracks you leave behind. The result is confidential purchases and the comfort of knowing your activities remain private.

(Monarch Bay, CA.) – First Privacy Financial, LLC. announces the launch of www.PrivateDateFinder.com, the first and only dating site where you can find romance without anyone else knowing. The site offers a unique way to conceal both how you pay as well as eliminating all the tracks you leave behind. The result is confidential purchases and the comfort of knowing your activities remain private.

Research shows that over 30% of existing online date site members are either married or in relationships. However, no one has addressed this large segment who desire real privacy or those who never used online dating simply because they didn't want anyone else knowing. They simply do not want to get caught.

Jerry Klein, President / CEO of the First Privacy Financial said; “Private Date Finder offers a real solution to those who simply do not want anyone else to know they are using a dating site. In a USA Today poll an overwhelming 88% of respondents said they are concerned about their privacy and consider protecting it important. Now you can safely buy anything online and no one will know."

Private Date Finder includes free membership in EverPrivate, a proprietary patent pending web-based service that erases all your tracks from any PC without any downloaded software. Also included is a free prepaid PrivaCash MasterCard, a virtual Debit card issued instantly online that can be re-loaded at 35,000 retail locations.

Mr. Klein said; “We have partnered with Relationship Exchange to enable our members to have access to over 2 million existing online dating members from sites under their management. This provides Private Date Finder members a huge number of romance partners wherever they live, right from our launch. Sign-up is free and the EverPrivate features are available instantly.”

(Why let a little thing like being married interfere with your dating?? - EOPC)