IS IT LEGAL (redux)

We are reposting this article due to popular demand:
IS IT LEGAL (To Expose a Cheater or Abuser Online)? by EOPC

CLICK HERE TO READ

And an excerpt from a recent article along the same legal lines:

"Obviously, the men (or women) have the option of attempting to sue the person who post information about them, if they can figure out who they are. No one yet has been able to unmask a poster or sue an exposure website successfully. (as of this writing) "(Of course the women can then countersue for INTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS and ALIENATION OF AFFECTION (if married and allowed in their state.). Since many women develop permanent PTSD [Emotional Rape Syndrome] adrenal fatigue and severe depression from Cyberpaths - these women's claims may be easier to prove.)

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If the Postings are False, Are They Defamatory?

....Moreover, "substantial truth" - truth in substance, but not in the details -- is a full defense to a defamation claim. So any man who is contesting a claim of infidelity, probably should never have been unfaithful.

The truth is a 100% defense to defamation. Those who post it can not be sued for "defamation" if they are simply reporting information. They are then covered by 'citizen journalist' rights. However, you can be sued for inciting others to harass someone, twisting facts, accusing, posting someone's address, phone or other private information online.

(EOPC's legal release requires the victim(s) to take FULL, 100% responsible for their posts and what is said. Additionally, they must hold EOPC harmless and those posted can only try to take action against the poster, not us. We are reporting and giving opinion only. EOPC can't adjudicate. We absolutely do not get involved with any of these cases (example: contacting employers, etc.) We can't diagnose or take legal action against anyone for their posts. We REQUIRE posters sign and verify they are telling the truth and leave the burden of proof to them. Many cyberpaths try to get around this by guessing who we are and then harassing who they think is us. We are still here. This is absolutely the same for other exposure sites as well. EOPC merely provides a platform and is held harmless.)

"...The owner of DontDateHimGirl who was threatened with a lawsuit, later sued and the court threw out the suit completely says:

"Most of them say that the [person] who posted [the profile] is crazy, that something is wrong with [the poster/target], that they're saints."

and

"If someone posted my picture/profile in a database and I learned of it but it wasn't true, then I probably wouldn't waste my time even rebutting it. Why? Because if I'm innocent, then the burden is not on me to prove such, at least not under American jurisprudence — legal or moral. And I don't use and abuse people online or off - so I am not afraid of scrutiny.

In short - its a catharsis the victims won't get anywhere else. What are the victims of these men and women to do with their anger, pain and hurt? Suck it up and allow the abuser to move on to another victim? Tell or not tell his spouse, partner or family? Stew in their feelings?"

and

"A former U.S. attorney Scott Christie was quoted in the New Jersey Star Ledger,

"Yes, it's all legal. If I were the owners of (such a) site, I wouldn't be concerned. They're providing an outlet for people to express their opinion.

It's much like hosting a bulletin board for people with a common interest,. People are giving their opinion about other people - they're entitled to it under the First Amendment."

And this from Canada.com:

According to a privacy lawyer from Halifax, (snip)

"If the person's reputation is in Canada, and they are in Canada, and likely the person who posted the information is in Canada, there's more than enough connection for Canadian defamation law to apply," says David T.S. Fraser, chair of the privacy practice group at McInnes Cooper. BUT he hastens to add the statements aren't considered defamatory if they're true.

"If you're a slug," says Mr. Fraser, "it's only appropriate people know you're a slug."

FOR THE ENTIRE ORIGINAL ARTICLE
CLICK HERE

Ex-Boyfriend Sued For Cyber Harassment

by Alexis Shaw

A Virginia woman is suing her ex-boyfriend after he tormented her and her teenage daughter by posting their photos on prostitution sites, sending dozens of men to their home, and distributing nude photos of the woman to her co-workers, her daughter and her daughter's friends.

The year long harassment caused the woman to lose her job in a bank and forced her to change her name, the woman's complaint states. ABC News is withholding the woman's new name.

Soraida Hicks' ex-boyfriend, Bruce Stimon, pleaded guilty in December 2012 to stalking, felony identity theft, and extortion. He was sentenced on Jan. 25 to three years in prison.

Now Hicks and her daughter Pam, 16, have filed a $20 million civil suit against Stimon. She is claiming slander, libel, and infliction of emotional distress, according to court documents.

"I didn't think that he was going to be crazy," Hicks told ABC Washington D.C. affiliate WJLA. Hicks could not be reached for comment by ABCNews.com.

Hicks and Stimon, who is 46, met on a plane traveling from Boston to Washington in the fall of 2011, and the two started a long-distance relationship. Hicks lives in Arlington, Va., and Stimon lived in Kensington, N.H.

According to Hicks' attorney, David Shurtz, Stimon showered Hicks with gifts, even buying Hicks an iPhone and paying for her service on his family plan.

But Shurtz said Stimon used the iPhone as a way to make himself the only man in her life, and he gained access to Hicks' contacts and emails in order to control her.

According to the complaint, "the gift was a deliberate plot to surreptitiously keep track of all the contacts and comings and goings of [Hicks]."

Hicks was unaware of her boyfriend's monitoring until January 2012 when she learned that Stimon "had created a web site advertising her services as a prostitute," according to the complaint. At the time Hicks was in Paraguay visiting her parents, a trip Stimon had financed.

Stimon posted Hicks' name and address, as well as her photos, on web sites advertising prostitution, and listed Hicks' supervisor at her workplace as her point of contact, the complaint states.

"He was creating an artificial theory so that he would be the only man she would contact," Shurtz said. "And the theory was that she was under a cyber attack. And he came to her and said, 'Ah ha! I will be your white knight and I will stop the cyber attack.'"

Instead, Hicks broke up with Stimon and reported the harassment to the Arlington County Police Department.

"From January to probably about March, we were just trying to compile information and figure out what was going on," said Det. Angela Comer of the Arlington County Police Department.

Stimon's cyber attacks escalated. He sent explicit photographs of Hicks to her friends and co-workers, causing Hicks to lose her job as a financial sales consultant at a bank, according to the complaint.

He created a fake Twitter account and sent videos of Hicks and himself having sex to Hicks' daughter and her daughters' friends. The videos were taken without Hicks' consent, the complaint said. It also stated that Stimon also advertised both mother and daughter for sex, sending men to her apartment nearly 60 times.

The investigation involved several sections of the Arlington County Police Department.

"The commonwealth attorneys, the tactical unit, just about every unit in our department had a hand on this case," Comer said.

Comer said Hicks filed a protective order against Stimon in June 2012. When he came to court to dispute the order, he was arrested for "stalking, unlawful filming, and use of a person's identity to harass," but was released on bond a few months later, Comer said.

Woman Sues Ex-Boyfriend for Cyber Harassment

Police tried to keep Hicks' phone number a secret from Stimon, but it frequently needed to be changed as Stimon would figure it out and harass Hicks, Comer said.

In November police caught Stimon slashing Hicks' car tires near her home. He was arrested and charged with destruction of property, stalking, and violating the protective order Hicks had filed against him.

"What was so devastating to Mr. Stimon was that when he was caught, his computer and cell phone were in his car, and they became evidence," said Shurtz.

original story found here

Online Gossip: Entertainment? or Harassing Smear?

By Kianga Kelley

To some it's entertainment, but to others it's just down right cruel. Have internet gossip blogs, revenge sites and message boards gone too far?

You might remember Lori Drew, the recently convicted Missouri mom accused of harassing a teenager on MySpace to the point where she committed suicide. Well, there's a young lady in Baton Rouge looking to prevent these types of tragedies.

Many people enjoy a little gossip every now and then, but what happens when those gossip blogs are about you? Kavon Davis, a senior at Southern University, knows first hand how it feels.

Davis says she was shocked when her name appeared more than once next to what some would consider vulgar and harassing information on a Facebook group called "The Questions."

"It really hurt because I didn't know him and I didn't know why he wanted to do that to me."

Davis isn't the only victim of this blog; the site also targets university officials as well as politicians. Fed up with the humiliation, Davis says she complained to the university urging them to put an end to the blog. She says a hearing was held last week and the student responsible was placed on probation, a decision Davis says isn't good enough.

"If you're not in school for higher learning or to prepare yourself for corporate America you shouldn't be here and this institution shouldn't allow him to be here."

We contacted Southern officials but were told by law the university cannot release any information regarding a student hearing.

And these types of message boards are not just happening in Baton Rouge. As a matter of fact there is a website called juicycampus.com where students nationwide post anonymous written attacks on anyone.

LSU freshman Alex Baynhan says, "Sometimes the stuff they say is just unnecessary. Not everything people do has to get out to the public."

Katherine Gordon, a senior at LSU, says,

"Freedom of speech I understand, but there comes a point you're crossing the line, you're starting to hurt people's feelings."

Not everyone is disappointed with the Facebook group; many students are backing up the site's creator. Kavon Davis says she came forward because she feels sites like these could turn some people to violence or even suicide and she wants them to stop.

She says she's working on finding an attorney.

SITES IN QUESTION
Don'tDateHimGirl.com
Womansavers.com
DatingPsychos.com
LiarsCheatersRUs.com
CheaterExpose.com
FilthyLiar.com
Cheaterville.com
WhoScammedYou.com
DumpOnYou.com
CheaterExpose.com

ORIGINAL ARTICLE FOUND HERE

GETTING THE UPPER HAND

EOPC gets emails every week from victims of cyberpaths, asking:

"How do I get rid of this person?  They are stalking, harassing, cyberstalking, defaming, contacting my family/friends.  I told them to stop.  I reported them to the police and others.  They are angry that I figured out their game.  They will not leave me alone."

The below article will hopefully, be of some help.

I want to talk about some things we can all do when dealing with a nutjob or control freak. Many of these I have used over the years. Some I learned from my own mistakes.

Basically, it boils down to a number of traits and attitudes:

1. Have confidence and feel powerful - If a person doesn’t have any confidence right now, with themselves or a particular situation, then I say , ’Fake it Until you Make it!’


Practice, practice, practice, until you ARE confident that circumstances will work out better for you. Act as if you ARE a powerful human being. Make eye contact with others and treat your life like it should be treated, because everyone deserves to be treated well.


Do not let anyone take it from you! Learn all you can about what being a confident person truly is. Surround yourself with confident people who are impeccable and rise to the occasion of being the best they can be, regardless of circumstances


2. Don’t try to win a pointless battle. Take care of yourself and the things in your life that are most important. Leave the petty things for another day. Pick and choose your battles! Don’t allow yourself to be controlled by ANYONE by getting involved in an argument or stupid drama. Delegate the fighting to someone else who is more experienced and a professional to handle the ’bull’. They will quickly realize what it’s like dealing with your psychopath and may suggest how to handle things from a different perspective.


3. There’s no need to be kind, friendly or nice. It’s not your job to give in to what others want all the time. You can always be professional-like, firm and say no! You are not required to provide your reasons to anyone for simply saying no. You have the right to completely ignore people who try to harass you, no matter what the threat may be. Do not react to them, and never forecast what actions you will take (if any). You are not obligated to be in a relationship with the other person if you do not want to be. You can chose your friends and those you wish to associate with. You can choose where you work. You can choose where you live and how you live.


4. Be unpredictable and mysterious. You can break the rules and do things differently. You owe it to nobody to account for anything. Never submit to their demands (but you can make it seem like you will). No one needs to know everything about you, especially someone who wants to harm or damage you. This alone can shake things up a bit - the stalker can be thrown off balance and not know what to expect anymore - and there’s nothing they can do about it.


5. Control emotions. Never get mad. Don’t cry in front of the other person. Appear upbeat and as if nothing can bother you; smile and laugh often! You do not always have to be sad - and never appear depressed (or homicidal).

Be business-like and serious when you need to be - confident and resilient. If you show emotion (especially desperation or loneliness), then you demonstrate to others what you may be feeling, and they can take advantage of you when you are vulnerable, or use it against you (legal professionals, law enforcement, and those in a position of power included).

Beat the crap out of a concrete floor (or solid ground) with a bat or a stick and scream to release your emotions (in private!) if you need to get rid of pent-up junk. I used to have to do this regularily. Now I laugh about it. But it felt great afterwards. It’s a healthy way to deal with ’stuff’.


6. Think about yourself (and your loved ones). Don’t worry what your harasser is up to or doing (or planning next). It can drive you mad not knowing, I realize that. What’s worse is you thinking up bad scenarios that have not happened (or may never)! Consider your own needs. What makes you happy and content in your life? Get your life back - start doing those things that you love again. Make it a habit, get unstuck and release yourself from all the negativity


7. Educate yourself. If you’re unfamiliar with certain topics, such as legal rights or finances, then research as much as you can. Information is power. Get yourself a free education by volunteering or working in the industry you may need to learn more about.


Most answers can be found on the internet these days, or by speaking to professionals and experts who know what they are talking about. Other answers can be located deeper within yourself. Always know what your options really are, make a Plan A, B, C and seek guidance on how you can get there.


Don’t believe everything people tell you, especially those in authority (because they could be lying, lazy, or just plain lame). Ask questions when you don’t know what to say. Don’t be afraid to ask questions! Do not assume anything. There may be more than one way to deal with your problem - there can be multiple solutions that you can test and try.


8. Dress for success. Look presentable and professional as much as you can. Do your hair, wear good clothing, spray on perfume or cologne, put on makeup to brighten your features.


Don’t look like a frazzled walking stress-case because people will treat you like one. More opportunity will arrive on your doorstep when you appear as though you expect it. Not only will you look better, you will start to feel better, appear more confident, be taken seriously and treated accordingly.


9. Get a handle on your financial situation.  If you have money that someone else wants, find a way to protect it.

Focusing on accumulation of wealth and success will preoccupy you and take your mind off the meaningless crap in your life. Remember, the one who has the gold, has more power.


10. Disassociate. By choosing to not have anything to do with the other person (unless absolutely necessary), you can gain the upper hand instantly. No one likes rejection.


If they have no way to connect with you, or harass you, and you don’t reciprocate or react, then the game they play can eventually become boring to them - they will move on to something or someone else to occupy their time (without a reaction from you). Their behaviour may escalate, but stand your ground. Keep safe and away from potentially violent situations. Do not take the bait if they make childish, harmful or made-up comments about you.


11. Be sharp and quick. Be witty, ingenious and creative. When you think you have explored every possible solution (and they have miserably failed), consider what the least obvious means to an end may be.


Go with your gut. You can outsmart a psychopathic when they least expect it, as this is all a game of cat-and-mouse to them. Most of them assume you will try to engage others to go against their smear campaign or abuse. The majority of these cases (are criminal, yes) but will never be prosecuted. Know that and accept it.


You can expose their character defects, their weaknesses and gaps in their plan. This can really get them tangled up in a ball of lies and contradictions!

Alot of the above techniques are likely employed by the stalker or psychopath in your life. I heard from a police detective once that if the cops want to catch the criminals, they have to think like them. This does not make them bad or immoral people for doing so.

So put yourself in the shoes of your harasser,and deal with their behaviour by being proactive and ahead of the game. Think like them, but do not be like them.

I believe I have the upper hand now when it comes to dealing with my psychopathic stalker. We are out of sight (and reach) - there is nothing more he (or she) can do to harm us.
 
original article found here

Warning About E-Personation Bill

By Edward Berridge

Online Human Rights Group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has warned that a bill working its way through the California legislature will make it a crime to impersonate someone online in order to "harm" that person.

The law will make it illegal to create a Facebook or Twitter account with someone else's name, and then use that account to embarrass that person.

The EFF said that "impersonating" corporations and public officials has become an important and powerful form of political activism, especially online."

"For example, the Yes Men, a group of artists and activists, pioneered "identity correction," posing as business and government representatives and making statements on their behalf to raise popular awareness of the real effects of those entities' activities, like the failure to DuPont to adequately compensate victims of the Bhopal disaster and the U.S. government's destruction of public housing units in New Orleans," the EFF said.

Last year, the activists staged a thinly veiled hoax by presenting themselves at a press conference and on a website as the Chamber of Commerce and promised to stop lobbying against strong climate change legislation. The Chamber promptly sued the Yes Men based on a trademark complaint.

Spoof sites and "identity correction" raise awareness about community issues, environmental threats and, most recently, the historical roots of Haiti's economic problems, the EFF said.

The people behind the bill said that there is nothing to worry about as it only applies to "credible" impersonations. They claimed that at the moment victims of online harassment and defamation have little legal recourse.

However the EFF replied that laws against fraud and defamation are already on the books, and they apply online as well as offline.

original article here

NOTE: THIS BILL PASSED IN CALIFORNIA and NEW YORK
CLICK HERE FOR MORE

Cyberharassers: You Can Hide, But You Can Not Run

If you think using a false identity will allow you to slander or harass people online, think again. Anonymity will not save you.

By Dan Tynan

You gotta love the InterWebs. You can get away with saying practically anything about anybody-- and if you hide behind a fake identity, nobody will ever be able to tell it’s you. Right?

Well, no. You can’t just say slander or harass someone without repercussions. If what you say or do would break a law in physical space, it will also break laws in cyber space. And I don’t care how anonymous you think you are, your identity is only a subpoena away.

(REMINDER: Every victim who's predator/ harasser has been exposed on EOPC has to sign a legally binding document that holds EOPC harmless. The post(s) is the FULL responsibility of the victim who sends the information to be posted.)

William Lawrence Cassidy found this out the hard way after he posted some 8,000 nasty, threatening, and disturbing tweets directed at one woman: Alyce Zeoli, a Buddhist leader in Maryland.

Cassidy, who also went by a variety of aliases including Tulku Urgyan Tenpa Rinpoche and Marshal Jim Duncan, probably thought he was being clever by posting the tweets via fake names. He wasn’t. He's now cooling his heels in a Maryland jail cell, awaiting trial for cyber harassment.

Per the New York Times:

… in response to a subpoena, [Twitter] revealed the Internet protocol address of the computer used to post the messages. The authorities found Mr. Cassidy at home in a small Southern California town called Lucerne Valley. Similar rants were posted on blogs that law enforcement authorities say they traced to him.

I had a tiny taste of something similar myself recently, after I made a joke about the Tea Party in a blog post. I said that before I friended anyone on Facebook I always make sure they’re not ax murderers or Tea Party members. After this lone comment prompted a handful of “news” stories on right-wing sites, I tweeted out a formal apology – to ax murderers.

You’d think I’d bitch slapped Sarah Palin while strangling a puppy. I cannot repeat here most of the nasty NSFW things these people said about me in blog comments and on Twitter.

But the worst one was the pseudonymous a**clown who made a “joke” by tweeting about my alleged fondness for kiddie porn. I informed him that he was flirting with a defamation suit, but he didn’t care – he seemed to think he was immune.

I’m not sure what these people thought they’d achieve by this campaign, but I think they proved my point about why I wouldn’t want to friend them.

Some free speech advocates argue that Twitter is a public forum where all voices should be heard. In Cassidy’s case, his alleged harassment of Zeoli seems to go well beyond free speech and into threats against her physical safety.

In my case, well, I’m a big fan of the First Amendment – I use it every day -- but I don’t think it gives you a license to slander or knowingly spread falsehoods. And I’m not alone.

“There is a whole litany of things that are not protected by the First Amendment, including illegal activity and copyright violations,” notes Bennet Kelly, a Los Angeles attorney specializing in cyber law who’s also an award-winning blogger for the Huffington Post.

Kelley often represents people who’ve been harassed or stalked online, typically by people posting anonymously or via a fake identity.

“These people think they’re immune, that they can hide their identity and get away with anything,” says Kelley. “But the victims usually have a pretty good idea of who these people are, and if not, we can investigate and find out.”

The simplest route: Take the account information and/or IP addresses used by the harasser, and demand their real identity and contact info from their service providers.

Once Kelley approaches the harassers, they usually take the offending material down to avoid further legal consequences.

Unfortunately, cyber harassment doesn’t get the attention it deserves, says Kelley. “People get all upset about cookies invading the privacy,” he says. “When’s the last time someone committed suicide over a cookie?”

TY4NS blogger Dan Tynan hasn’t sued anybody yet, but there’s still time. Visit his snarky, occasionally NSFW blog eSarcasm or follow him on Twitter: @tynan_on_tech.


original article here

iPredator

Cyberbullying, cyber stalking, cyber crime, cyber terrorist, Internet predators and online users who engage in harmful, nefarious and malevolent activities meet criteria for iPredator. The term iPredator was developed by iPredator Inc.’s founder and partner, Dr. Michael Nuccitelli. Now made available to the public are the factors he used in the formulation of his theory.

In Dr. Nuccitelli’s article, he presents a brief overview of the 20 factors that were used in the design of the iPredator construct and all iPredator Inc.’s products, services and educational materials. Although Information and Communications Technology will continue to advance in both technology and applications, the 20 factors described by Dr. Nuccitelli, he believes, will be relevant for decades to come. A brief description of Dr. Nuccitelli’s construct that the 20 factors were used in its construction is as follows:

iPredator: A child, adult or group who engages in the exploitation, victimization, stalking, theft or disparagement of others using Information and Communications Technology (ICT.) iPredators are driven by deviant fantasies, desires for power and control, retribution, religious fanaticism, political reprisal, psychiatric illness, perceptual distortions, peer acceptance or personal and financial gain. iPredators can be any age, either gender and not bound by economic status, race or national heritage.

iPredator is a global term used to distinguish all online users who engage in criminal, deviant or abusive behaviors using Information and Communications Technology. Whether the offender is a cyberbully, cyberstalker, cyber criminal, online sexual predator, Internet troll or cyber terrorist, they fall within the scope of iPredator. There are three criteria used to define an iPredator including:

I. A self-awareness of causing harm using Information and Communications Technology.
II. The intermittent to frequent usage of Information and Communications Technology to obtain, exchange and deliver harmful information.
III. A general understanding of Cyberstealth used to profile, identify, locate, stalk and engage a target.

When an offender profile includes these three characteristics, they meet the definition of iPredator. A fourth criterion, not included in the triad defining an iPredator, is what Dr. Nuccitelli has termed iPredator Victim Intuition (IVI) and reserved for seasoned iPredators. IVI is the aptitude to sense a target's online vulnerabilities, weaknesses and technological limitations increasing their success with minimal ramifications. iPredators, through practice and learning, develop a sense and/or skill of being able to experience an intuition to know what online user will be a successful target.

As Information and Communications Technology, social media, virtual reality and the Information Age rapidly expands becoming integral to humanities daily activities, understanding the basic tenets of these new dimensions are preponderant. In 2011, the Internet celebrated its 20th birthday. In 2012, most of humanity continues to fail in understanding the golden rule of all new territory exploration. What always comes with opportunity and new frontiers are elements unknown and potentially dangerous. It is these unknown and dangerous elements lurking within cyberspace online users must be vigilant about ready to practice iPredator Protection.

As Dr. Michael Nuccitelli has stated, “The twenty factors I used in the development of iPredator can each be expanded upon and researched as to the relevance they have to cyberbullies, cyberstalkers, cyber criminals, cyber terrorist and online sexual predators. The development of iPredator is the first step in the journey to fully understand the modus operandi of all iPredators.”

iPredator Inc. was founded in September 2011 to provide educational and advisory products & services to consumers and organizations on cyberbullying, cyberstalking, sexual predators, cybercrime, Internet defamation, cyber terrorism and all forms of cyber abuse. Their goal is to reduce victimization, abuse, theft and disparagement from online assailants. Their website is the first step to educate online users on the dangers on the Internet. Dr. Nuccitelli has extensive media experience and truly enjoys educating the public on iPredator Awareness, Internet Safety, Forensic Psychology & national criminal news.

Website: http://www.iPredator.co

(EOPC publishes this for information only and it should not be construed as an endorsement)

What is Google's "Humility Algorithm™"?

[Grant Crowell's Interview with Michael Roberts - October 30, 2010.]

GRANT: What is the "Google Humility Algorithm?"

MICHAEL: Please understand that I am answering these questions with the presupposition that it does in fact exist because my assertion is based on my empirical observations... I believe it really is out there!

Originally I called it “Google's Humiliation Algorithm”; however, I realized that I might have been jumping to conclusions because in context “humiliation” could imply that Google is deliberately humiliating the subjects being Googled. I opted instead for “Google's Humility Algorithm” to give Google the benefit of the doubt with respect to intent; humility is considered by right minded people to be a noble state of being although I would argue that it should be voluntary. I believe the humility algorithm is a provision within the Google search formula giving what would otherwise be unmerited high search rankings for a small number of web pages containing derogatory or demeaning words in close association with proper nouns such as personal and business names.

GRANT: How does it occur?

MICHAEL: I don't know; I would expect that Google guards its algorithms like KFC guards its secret recipe. Notwithstanding, although I cannot see the wind, I see its effects. Based on my observations and the tests our team have run, if I were to hazard a guess I would say there is a list of “humility words; nouns and adjectives that bring the hypothetical algorithm to life. These words include ponzi, scammer, abuser, whore, tax cheat, playboy, felon, conviction, indictment, bankrupt, molester, fraud, cheater, pyramid scheme, etc -- I'm sure you get the idea. There are also some web sites apparently designated as humility domains by default and they include the likes of ripoffreport.com, complaintsboard.com and, interestingly, blogspot.com.

GRANT: What is the reason for it occurring?

MICHAEL: I sincerely hope that Google's intentions were pure and that they were simply trying to ensure that the search results were diverse and balanced; lest genuinely bad individuals and organizations use expensive SEO techniques to bury legitimate dissent, competition and whistle blowing.

GRANT: What effect does it have on Google's search results (and search relevancy)?

MICHAEL: The humility algorithm seems to have special reservations for positions 3 and/or 4 on page one of Google search results. My close observations suggest that these high-ranking results have almost without exception, some type of a humility keyword in close proximity to the search subject's name. This year's "Caffeine" release of Google search has shifted the weight somewhat with humility search results being more random between #1 through #4 on page one and now it seems that #1 on page two has been reserved for humility results, but not always.

GRANT: What examples can you provide as evidence (can cite both existing and past)?

MICHAEL: I cannot really go into too much detail here because much of our work is based on real-life cases for clients. In some instances we have individuals literally on the verge of suicide because of the problems this was causing; unfortunately the child of one of our clients succumbed to the pressure several months ago. That being said, now that your readers have been told what patterns to look for, it won't take long to verify my assertions. And I would invite any brainiacs out there who have a better head for maths than I, to do some serious testing. I would appreciate being privy to the results.

GRANT: If you are correct, what do you think this is this accidental or intentional on Google's part?

MICHAEL: I believe the algorithm is very deliberate; but it is the intent that I am more interested in. In other words "humility vis-à-vis humiliation", or "don't be evil vis-à-vis evil is relative".

GRANT: If intentional, what would you argue is Google's motive or motives?

MICHAEL: If it is a humiliation algorithm [i.e. evil], then it could be argued that Google could benefit when users decide to click on a Google AdWords link to a humiliation victim's competitor once the user has read the negative results for the business he or she found in organic Google search results.

GRANT: What are the problems this creates?

MICHAEL: That is a whole 'nuther conversation which stretches from mild emotional annoyance for some individuals right through to suicide and breakdowns. I have personally witnessed these two extremes and everything between in the last three years. For businesses, the same emotional toll for the individuals involved through to insolvency; once again I have seen it all. I would even go so far as to say that the Wild-Wild-Web combined with the US Congress' existing subsidy for Internet libel, through Section 230C of the Communications Decency Act, is a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States. A competitive market driven economy can no longer function on a level playing field in these conditions; in many vertical markets the only businesses that can win are those willing to stoop to either “doing evil” by smearing their opposition with "googledoo", or looking the other way when it is within their power to act. I am referring here to the many thousands of tear soaked letters sent to Google et al, begging for the removal of egregious allegations from search engine results. These are usually met with canned template responses encouraging the victim to simply create more online content with positive spin to dilute the negative postings.

I find such narcissistic corporate cultures to the reprehensible on at least two levels.

(1) The very law that gives ISPs the immunity to turn a blind eye to such requests is in fact titled “Good Samaritan” protection, clearly implying that it was Congress' intent that the recipients of such letters would do the right thing.
(2) Such letters encouraging the creation of more online content serves the purpose of creating more advertising platforms for AdWord campaigns; victims effectively become slaves at worst or indentured servants at best to Google by creating more of what it devours and profits from, information.

GRANT: In your opinion, would this put Google in a position of increased liability? Or are they fully protected by the CDA?

MICHAEL: This would be a good opportunity to make it very clear that I am not an attorney, although I consult for many of them in these matters. As such, I would rather defer to the wisdom of suitably qualified, but more importantly qualified professionals to express such opinions.

GRANT: What do you think needs to be changed and why?

MICHAEL: I would start with the human heart and the nastiness epidemic, but that comes only from a miracle of God. Otherwise, if I could wave a magic wand I would like to see some common sense amendments made to the communications decency act which still gives generous immunity for Internet service providers but conditional upon reasonable attempts to comply with the intent of the “Good Samaritan” clause which is found specifically in TITLE 47, CHAPTER 5, SUBCHAPTER II, Part I, § 230(C).

GRANT: What questions do you think Google needs to answer for in light of this evidence?

MICHAEL: My questions would be simple:
(1) “Does the humility algorithm exist, and why?”

(2) Do your family members receive the same cookie-cutter responses when they ask you for junk results to be removed from your search index?

original article found here

OUR THANK YOUS TO THE SUPPORTER WHO SENT THIS TO EOPC!

INTERNET PROVIDERS & REVENGE BOARDS MAY BE LIABLE FOR PREDATORS & HARASSERS

by Jonathan Bick

The economic difficulty of pursuing individuals for bad acts has led injured parties to seek legal remedies from the companies that facilitate the platform upon which the bad acts occur. In the past, internet facilitators could avoid contributory and vicarious liability by claiming users' bad acts were beyond the facilitator's ken and control. Now, widely available, low cost e-commerce technology diminishes the viability of said defenses.

Previously, passive internet service facilitators successfully argued that they do not "collaborate" with internet users to undertake bad acts because they were either unaware of the bad acts or could not act to prevent such bad acts in a timely fashion. Advances in internet technology, however, have increased the internet facilitator's capacity for ameliorating internet bad acts automatically. Failure to employ such technology may result in an increase in the facilitator's liability for not preventing bad acts on the internet.

Internet facilitators include service providers, hosting services, blogging platforms, 'gripe' sites and social network sites, to name just a few. These internet service suppliers allow email, instant messaging, peer-to-peer communications, blogs, broad internet access, chat rooms, intranets, interactive websites, and other electronic communications. They also allow various goods and services transactions.

These transactions may result in a myriad of bad internet acts, ranging from defamation, copyright infringement, failure to protect trade secrets, harassment (including hostile work-environment issues), to criminal accountability and loss of attorney-client privilege.

The nature and extent of internet bad acts is exacerbated by the fact that internet sites are accessible beyond national borders, and no international code of internet behavior exists. Additionally, user-generated content may be a substantial portion of an internet facilitator's site content and the international legal community has yet to standardize intellectual property rights; international intellectual property standards are governed by multilateral treaties.

In the past, internet facilitators could avoid secondary liability for not stopping bad acts by showing one of two types of defenses. First, if charged with vicarious liability, facilitators could show that they did not possess the ability to supervise those who engaged in bad acts using the facilitator's Internet assets. Second, if charged with contributory liability, they could show they did not have knowledge of the bad act involving the facilitator's internet assets. See MGM v. Grokster, 545 U.S. 913 (2005).

However, as internet technology increasingly allowed automated action to enable internet facilitators to prevent bad acts by third parties on their sites, the United States implemented a statute that provided a "safe harbor" provision protecting websites and web providers from secondary liability for certain bad acts, such as copyright violations performed by users on a facilitator's internet asset. The most wide-ranging safe-harbor provision is offered by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 105-304, 112 Stat. 2860 (codified at 17 § U.S.C. 101 et seq.) (DMCA).

Though the question of interpreting this part of the statute has yet to reach the Supreme Court, lower courts have been consistent in interpreting it broadly and have applied it to any entity that provides access to the internet. In particular, the court in ALS Scan, Inc. v. RemarQ Cmtys., Inc., 239 F.3d 619, 626 (4th Cir. 2001), found that a newsgroup website would fall under the definition of an internet facilitator. The court in Corbis Corp. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 351 F.Supp. 2d 1090, 1100 (W.D. Wash. 2004), found that Amazon.com fits within the definition as well.

However, the safe harbor also requires that the internet facilitator who is eligible for indemnification from secondary liability not have "actual knowledge" of the infringing material. The near universal use of internet technology, which provides actual knowledge of the content of the facilitator's site and the site's related transactions, may be used by plaintiffs to pierce the safe-harbor provision and require the internet facilitator to forfeit the protections of the safe harbor.

Internet technology that allows a facilitator to limit an internet user's bad acts is available. The three most important technologies are: automatic internet user monitoring systems, "net nannies," and internet tracking software.

Automatic internet user monitoring systems, such as screen capture utilities and key logger software, record all information that is sent to an internet facilitator's site. These monitoring systems can feed captured data to software tools which will prevent internet users from taking certain action to facilitate bad acts, such as installing malware and distributing unlawful spam, among other activities.

For more than 10 years net-nanny software has been providing internet facilitators with a secure means to web filter to avoid the use of its site for purposes deemed inappropriate. Net nannies may be used to stop the distribution of images of an unlawful nature, deny access to internet users whom the internet facilitator deems to be undesirable, and generally censor unacceptable behavior automatically on behalf of the internet facilitator.

Existing internet user-tracking software can usually narrow the radius of geographical location of an internet user within several hundred feet, without requiring the user's permission. This is done by sending a message to the target, and using the time it takes to bounce back, the internet user's IP address and Google Map software. Knowing the likely geographic location of an internet user can allow the internet facilitator to prevent internet bad acts, such as allowing a site user to send goods into a state which has deemed such goods to be contraband.

In combination, automatic internet user monitoring systems, net nannies, and internet tracking software are capable of removing unlawful or unacceptable content and sending an electronic message to the bad actor informing that person of the violation that has been committed. Internet technology may also mete out sanctions automatically. In particular, certain internet technology may automatically bar a bad actor's access after determining that a violation of the terms of use agreement associated with the internet facilitator's sites has occurred.

While changes in internet technology may change internet facilitators' liability in the United States, such changes may be blunted in Europe due to the implementation of local law. The European Union has attempted to deal with the liability of internet facilitators by issuing a series of directives.

These directives are known as the E-Commerce Directive, and it grants liability exemptions to passive internet facilitators. See Directive 2000/31/EC, arts. 40-58, 2000 O.J. (L 178) 1 (EC). The E-Commerce Directive exemptions only apply if the internet facilitators do not "collaborate" with a user to undertake illegal acts and must act expeditiously to remove access to any illegal information upon receiving notice of such illegal activities.

While the directive is binding on member states as to the effect to be achieved, it allows the implementation process to be designed by each member state for implementation in its sovereign jurisdiction. The directive does not address internet technology, thus the use or failure to use such technology is not a factor in assessing internet facilitator liability.

Even if the use of monitoring and control technology were integrated into the E-Commerce Directive, the result is not clear, as evidenced by the three cases considering YouTube's liability for user copyright infringement that parallel Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., in Spain, Germany, and Italy.

All three countries are members of the European Union and thus subject to the E-Commerce Directive. Yet the cases have resulted in a YouTube victory in Spain, but losses for YouTube in Germany and Italy.

original article found here

The 7 Deadliest Social Networking Hacks

Think you know who your real online friends are? You could be just a few hops away from a cybercriminal in today's social networks

By Kelly Jackson Higgins

It started with a stolen Facebook photo attached to an inflammatory profile. It led to online harassment, death threats, and emails to the victim’s boss questioning the victim’s character. But an online personal attack against Graham Cluley earlier this year is one example of how easy it is to use a social network to damage the identity of an individual -- or an entire company.

Cluley’s case shows just how rapidly social networks can spread a smear campaign or personal attack -- and how it can quickly spread to the victim’s professional life. Cluley, who is a senior technology consultant with Sophos, recently met another victim who experienced a similar attack on Facebook, Kerry Harvey. He says it was apparently an acquaintance of Harvey’s who built a phony Kerry Harvey Facebook profile that branded her occupation as a “prostitute,” complete with her cellphone number.

Could such a thing happen to you or employees at your company? You bet. Social networks are the next major attack venue for trolls, spammers, bot herders, cybercriminals, corporate spies -- and even jilted ex-lovers or enemies -- to make money, or just plain wreak havoc on their victims’ personal lives, security experts say.

“It's the easiest way to passively gain intelligence on the largest groups of society and nearly every walk of life,” says Robert Hansen, aka RSnake, founder of SecTheory LLC.

The root of the problem is that social networking sites by nature aren't secure. They typically don’t authenticate new members -- you can’t always be sure that your online friend is who she says she is -- and attackers can easily exploit and capitalize on the “trusted” culture within the social network. Users often don't deploy the security and privacy options that some of these sites offer, either.

Social networking application development tools like OpenSocial and third-party tools on Facebook, for example, can be abused by attackers to readily spread malware or lift personal information. There’s also the very real risk of corporate espionage, with attackers culling tidbits from personal or professional social net profiles to wage targeted attacks on businesses via their employees. And popular Web attacks, like cross-site scripting, can also be used against members of social networks.

And don’t think for a minute that your “private” or closed profile keeps you safe from an attack or potential personal embarrassment, either. “There is no such thing as privacy on the Internet,” says Adam O’Donnell, director of emerging technologies for Cloudmark. “You are only delaying the inevitable information leakage for any content you put online. My recommendation is to treat the Internet as if all content there lasts forever.”

Attacks on social networking sites have only just begun, so think twice before you get too personal with what you post on them, or too loose about accepting and trusting new friends and connections.

“You’re only going to see these attacks on social networks go up,” says researcher Nathan Hamiel, who along with colleague Shawn Moyer recently conducted some relatively simple but scary hacks recently on various social networks that they demonstrated at Black Hat USA and Defcon 16 this month. “We’ve noticed some weird social networking attacks since we did our talk” at those hacker conferences, he says.

Here's a look at the seven most lethal social networks hacks:

* 1) Impersonation and targeted personal attacks

* 2) Spam and bot infections

* 3) Weaponized OpenSocial and other social networking applications

* 4) Crossover of personal to professional online presence

* 5) XSS, CSRF attacks

* 6) Identity theft

* 7) Corporate espionage

1) Impersonation and targeted personal attacks
You’d think security experts would be relatively immune from social networking hacks since, well, they’re security experts. But a recent wave of nasty hacks targeting security industry figures such as Alan Shimel of StillSecure and Petko Petkov of GNUCitizen, where their personal email accounts and other private data were raided and posted on the Net, have demonstrated that a determined attacker can even get to the experts.

Putting yourself “out there” with a social network presence basically leaves you open for all kinds of attacks, even personal ones. Just ask Sophos’s Cluley, who faced hate messages, death threats to his wife, and his photo being superimposed on some pornographic images after his Facebook photo hack. “They didn’t use my name,” he says, but all it took was someone to recognize his face.

Twitter, the microblogging site where members post quick updates on what they’re doing or comments to multiple “followers,” introduces a whole other element to social networking security -- physical security, experts say. “I never talk about where I am, who I'm with, where I'm going, or any other specific details,” RSnake says. “But that doesn't stop anyone else who knows that same information from doing that behind my back - maliciously or not.”

Sophos’s Cluley says posting too much information on Twitter, such as your whereabouts or trip plans, leave you wide open to things like burglary or stalking. “Twitter is a fascinating thing. To be honest, it could lead to all sorts of physical problems, such as physical theft…or jealous ex’s” tracking what their ex is up to, says Cluley, who “tweets” his blog titles. “When I post to my blog, I’m not saying ‘I’m at the supermarket.’ First of all, who cares? I much prefer to wait until I get back” from the store to say what I’m doing, he says.

And as Hamiel and Moyer demonstrated at Black Hat USA and Defcon 16, you don’t even have to have a social networking profile to be targeted. The two researchers were able to easily impersonate security icon Marcus Ranum (with his permission) on LinkedIn, the social network for businesspeople. Ranum doesn’t have an account, so the two basically lifted Ranum’s photo off the Internet and gathered information on him online and built a convincing phony Ranum profile. (See LinkedIn Hack Demonstrates Ease of Impersonation.)

They channeled Ranum so well that they amassed 42 LinkedIn connections within 12 hour, even duping Ranum’s own sister into friending the phony Ranum profile.

2) Spam or bot infections
Spammers -- for plain old advertising, click fraud, or for bot recruitment -- need mechanisms that efficiently and effectively deliver and spread their messages, malware, or both. And attackers have already honed in on the social networking community, hijacking accounts and using their address books to spread spam, worms, or other malware.

“We’re seeing more and more malware via spam and links in spam. We’re seeing this with malware text on Facebook and Twitter that’s designed to draw people to particular pages,” Sophos’s Cluley says.

Most recently, attackers hijacked some Facebook accounts, and posing as members sent messages to their friends to dupe them into viewing a video clip link, which instead was actually a Trojan that silently downloaded malware onto their machine once they opened the link.

A recent report by ScanSafe found that in July, up to one in 600 profile pages on social-networking sites hosted some form of malware, mostly adware and spyware.

3) Weaponized OpenSocial and other social networking applications
Users often don’t think anything of installing an application in their browser. “But these applications can all have the same levels of access to their system, and some of the most private information is often [stored] in the browser, so it can be more dangerous,” Moyer says. “It blows my mind how people can think that downloading [these applications] is not as bad” as downloading some application to their system.

That makes third-party application services like OpenSocial a dangerously handy tool for attackers. “The addition of the third-party application service also allows for another avenue for code-based attacks to occur,” Cloudmark’s O’Donnell says.

It’s not that all of the developers of those social networking virtual kisses, secret crushes, or birthday reminder widgets are necessarily malicious. OpenSocial, for example, offers an option for writers of these tools to limit malicious JavaScript in these applications, but inexperienced developers typically don’t bother or know to use these measures, O'Donnell says.

“These are opt-in only, and a limited number of developers use the tools. What ends up happening is that developers with a limited amount of security-sensitive development experience create these applications that spread like wildfire, allowing a new vector for infection on many profiles -- and by infection, I primarily mean attacks focused inside the social network,” O’Donnell says.

Users don’t always realize that the third-party widgets for Facebook, for example, weren’t written by Facebook. Some have holes that collect more information on users than necessary or safe, and others have been written specifically to install adware or generate revenue. “To their credit, Facebook has closed down some of these apps that behaved inappropriately,” Sophos’ Cluley notes.

A rogue application called “Secret Crush” was circulating around Facebook earlier this year, spreading spyware instead of love. (See 'Secret Crush' Spreads Spyware, Not Love.) It sent victims an invitation to find out who has a secret "crush" on him or her, and lured them into installing and running the Secret Crush app, which spread spyware via an iFrame. The attack got more advanced and worm-like when it required the victim to invite at least five friends before learning who their “crush” was.

“They [these sites] are basically under constant attack,” Moyer says. “We think a lot of the Web 2.0 problems [with these sites] are more about how much trust is being placed on the client side.”

4) Crossover of personal to professional online presence
Even if you keep a MySpace account for personal use, and a LinkedIn one for professional networking, there’s no guarantee that those late-night partying pictures aren’t going to end up in front of your colleagues on LinkedIn, or worse, your boss.

“Consider everything on a social network to be public, whether it’s private photos or work history,” Hamiel says. “You can’t stop a ‘friend’ from copying your stuff and putting it wherever” they want.

There are some measures social networkers can take to prevent the details of their social and personal lives from spilling over to their professional ones. Cloudmark’s O’Donnell says he doesn’t bother with separate personal and professional social networking accounts: “For me I find it far easier to not keep them separate, and to present a professional face on both my personal and my professional profiles."

You can set up “limited” profiles on sites like Facebook. “I can add someone as a limited friend, and they don’t know they’re limited. They can’t see my holiday photos,” for instance, Sophos’s Cluley says. That way, “I’ve really tied down and parceled up what I want as my real close friends” on the site.

There are also privacy settings that can control what information you share with others on the social network, and what information Facebook apps can get and share about your profile.

5) XSS, CSRF attacks
Cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities are obvious attack vectors, and some social networking worms have used XSS flaws to help propagate themselves. But most social networks have tightened their defenses against XSS attacks, security experts say, and CSRF attacks are not yet common.

XSS and CSRF do pose a big risk to these sites, especially when it comes to social networking applications, experts say. In an XSS attack, malicious code is injected into vulnerable Web applications and users who view those pages can get hacked. In a CSRF attack, an attacker basically tricks the victim's browser into making a request on his behalf -- as the logged-in user.

“Anytime [that] you, an attacker, can force a user to load HTML, the potential is there for browser exploits, botnet infections, and account manipulation via XSS/CSRF,” says HD Moore, director of security research for BreakingPoint Systems.

A CSRF attack could potentially jump and spread across multiple social networking sites that the user is logged onto -- effectively spreading the attack from one social network to another. It could, for example, force a victim viewing a CSRF-infected page on MySpace to post something on his own wall on Facebook if the wall-posting function was vulnerable. “I think [CSRF] certainly is one useful vector that's being overlooked now,” Moyer says.

Meanwhile, with the openness of social networks, attackers don’t really need to bother with complicated XSS or CSRF attacks. “But if you [the attacker] combine attack vectors, you could be a lot more effective. We think as long as [social networks] allow users to create markup in profiles and comments and link to external content, this will continue to be a problem,” Moyer says.

6) Identity theft
A social network profile can give away some valuable tidbits –- victim’s name and date of birth –- that identity thieves can use to guess passwords or impersonate them, and even eventually steal their identity, some security experts say.

But that doesn’t mean that identity thieves are crawling all over social networks, Hamiel says. “I just think that the claims that social networks are an identity theft magnet are overblown."

Social networkers sometimes inadvertently hand over the goods themselves: In a study Sophos conducted over a year ago, about 41 percent of Facebook users in the study gave out their email address, date of birth, and phone number to someone they didn’t know.

One safety tip for social networkers is not to answer all the questions posed to them by the site, and don't provide your true date of birth, Sophos's Cluley says. “You don’t need to tell Facebook your educational background, your phone number, etc. You don’t even have to tell them your real date of birth,” he says. “I want the identity thief to get the wrong date of birth.”

You can even make up a phony maiden name for your mother. “Don’t make it something that’s a matter of public record,” he says.

Even so, social networks basically tap into human nature’s innate need to socialize, and the bad guys know it. “People aren't very good at security,” RSnake says. “We were built to work in teams, we're pack animals.”
7) Corporate espionage
Even if an employer blocks access to social networks from the office, the organization still could be susceptible to corporate espionage attacks via its employees’ personal profiles.

To pull off a spear phishing attack, for example, all an attacker has to do is search for Company A’s employees on a social networking site and then pose as someone within the organization -- such as the head of human resources -- and email the employee addresses he finds, for example. A phony HR spear phish could look something like this, Sophos’s Cluley says: “Dear Fred Jones, Congratulations on joining XYZ Company. Click on this link to access our HR Intranet and then log in with your regular network username and password so we can update our files.”

A newbie to the company could easily fall for the ploy and hand over access to the corporate network, he says.

The only shot at preventing this hack is for social networkers to limit what they post publicly and to keep their employer’s name out of their profile. “Keeping the name of your employer... far away from your personal profiles can reduce the chance that someone will target your employer through you,” BreakingPoint’s Moore says. “The trouble is that even with completely separate personal and professional identities, it only takes one scrap of public information linking the two to negate all of the time that went into separating them in the first place.”

That’s because the “six degrees of separation” rule applies on most social networks: You’re only a few hops away from a bad guy. “We know that there are bad people on these networks using them to steal information,” Cluley says. “You may be only a half a dozen hops from an identity thief if we’re all connected.”

Responses to: editors@darkreading.com

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Many thanks to support group member, Gypsy for this gem!

WHY PEOPLE SEEM ANGRIER ON THE INTERNET

By Makini Brice

When the internet saw its rise in prominence, many worried that people would retreat to their own corners, surrounded by people who believed exactly the way that they did. To a large extent, that has happened, as evidenced by Fox Nation and Daily Kos. But the internet also gave rise to the "troll," so-called for internet users who spout views contrary to the site's readers. And with that has come cyber-bullying.

This week, a 17-year-old teenager was delivered harassment warnings due to his harassment of Olympic diver Tom Daley. Tom Daley stated that he wanted to win the gold medal to honor his father, who died of brain cancer last year. When Daley failed to medal, the 17-year-old tweeted, "You let your dad down I hope you know that."

There has been a lot of analysis of the victims of the cyber-bullying that can run rampant on various internet websites. It has been well-documented that victims suffer from decreased self-esteem. But very little seems to be concluded about the perpetrators themselves. Who are trolls? And why do they do it?

Alan Manevitz, a clinical psychiatrist at New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital, theorizes that people feel a freedom of speech that they cannot feel elsewhere, where there are few, if any, consequences. Indeed, the vast majority of people who shout venomous words in all caps on the internet do not face any repercussions. When schools, for example, try to dole out punishment for perpetrators of cyberbullying, some are met with cries of foul play.

Some trace "trolling" to the anonymity of the internet. Maybe that is true to an extent, but certainly not completely. This week, the Real Housewives of New Jersey Facebook page was littered with comments on how much they hated Milania Guidice, the five-year-old daughter of a Real Housewives cast member. All of the vitriol came from people whose names were attached to their Facebook accounts.

Many psychologists believe that the level of attacks is increased when a person cannot see the face of the person that they are attacking. One recent study found that contestants on a game show were more likely to criticize fellow contestants if they were in a different room rather than in the same one. Robert Milgram's 1950s-era experiments shed light on people who were more likely to give people potentially lethal doses of electric shock when they could not see them. Later replications of Milgram's studies found that his conclusion was less likely to be true if people identified more strongly with the student receiving the shocks.

Simon Rego, the director of psychology training at New York City's Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College, explained to Health magazine that our brains are hard-wired to take into account non-verbal cues, like body language, tone, and facial expressions. On the internet, all of those cues are removed, heightening many people's response and level of discourse.

Rego suggests pausing before sending an angry email, or to envision the person on the other side. After all, many states have cyberbullying laws in place – and no Twitter exchange can be worth ending up in handcuffs.

original article found here

Laws Protect the Harassers!

by James Temple

In the summer of 2009, Carla Franklin landed on a Facebook page created under her name.

She was shocked to see her own image staring back, a swimsuit photo from her earlier days as a model.

Worse yet, Franklin also found a YouTube channel dedicated to her, featuring a student film she had acted in years before. The page labeled her a prostitute and listed her contact information.

Franklin immediately suspected that the cyber bully posting the material was a man she went on a few dates with three years earlier. But it took months to get the companies to remove the content and a court order to force Google to provide the information necessary to link him to the posts. Three years later, she's still in the process of completing the case.

Franklin's experience highlights the long legal battle in store for most people seeking to unmask online harassers, and remove intimate, hateful or defamatory material from the Internet. It also underscores the tension between the rights of harassment victims and the rights of websites, which were granted broad immunity from the actions of their users through legislation that protects free expression online.

These challenges and frictions will be the subject of a panel discussion in San Francisco, during a fundraiser for Without My Consent, a nonprofit that helps to educate harassment victims and their attorneys on legal options.

Franklin, who now acts as an advocate on these issues, will appear on the panel, along with experts from Twitter, Reputation.com, the California attorney general's office and elsewhere.

Traumatic results

The exact scope of online harassment is unknown, but it's clearly widespread.

University of Maryland law Professor Danielle Citron noted in a recent blog post that the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that "850,000 people in 2006 experienced stalking with a significant online component," while other researchers predict that 30 percent of Internet users will "face some form of cyber harassment in their lives."

It can take many forms, including hate speech, threats of rape and sexual violence, and posting of nude or doctored images. The threat of uploading intimate pictures and videos is sometimes used to blackmail victims for sex or money.

The results can be traumatic and tragic, as exemplified by the case of Tyler Clementi. In 2010, the 18-year-old Rutgers student killed himself after his roommate hid a webcam in their room and streamed video online of his sexual encounter with another man. Between the Communications Decency Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, online companies enjoy broad protection from legal liability for the content created or posted by users, be it copyrighted or defamatory.

These laws basically ensure that companies like Craigslist, Twitter and Facebook can host open forums where people can freely trade ideas and goods. But they also mean that victims of legitimate harassment face a gauntlet of challenges in getting material removed and identifying those responsible.

Costly litigation

It costs at least $10,000 in legal fees to issue a subpoena to an online company demanding the IP address that links a real person to an uploaded file, said Colette Vogele, co-founder of Without My Consent. It costs thousands more to file a lawsuit against the perpetrator.

Depending on the facts of the case and the state involved, the victim might be able to sue the person for defamation, publication of private facts, breach of confidence and other claims. Some acts can rise to the level of criminal offenses, including stalking and extortion.

There are risks in filing a lawsuit, however, as Franklin learned all too well. After she sued Google, she found her name and the details of her case splashed in the New York Post and New York Daily News, which dubbed the Duke and Columbia graduate a "brainy ex-model." Bloggers and commenters were far nastier.

Victim advocates like Vogele argue it should be much easier for victims to pursue remedies. Among other things, they believe more of the offenses should be considered crimes, it should be simpler to sue under a pseudonym, and courts should demand greater cooperation from websites.

"Courts can apply (the Communications Decency Act) in a less overzealous way," Vogele said. "We need to apply it in a way that doesn't protect speech that is harmful."

Protecting speech

On that question, however, many free speech advocates disagree. It should be difficult to unmask anonymous commenters and remove online material because those hurdles protect free speech, said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

If sites were required to respond to harassment claims that hadn't been evaluated by a judge, many would simply remove material by rote. They wouldn't spend the time and money to determine whether someone was legitimately harassed or just meanly criticized, nor would they be particularly qualified to make that call.

Current law "protects channels of speech but still allows people to pursue claims against the bad actors," Zimmerman said. "Yes, it costs you something to pursue your claims, but that's the social deal we've made."

As it is, some courts have applied too lenient a standard in certain cases, he and others say. Notably, in 2009, a New York judge required Google to reveal the name of an anonymous blogger who had called model Liskula Cohen a "skank" and "ho."

Here the critical question becomes: Is labeling someone a "ho" equivalent to describing someone as a prostitute - a factual claim that could be libelous if false - or is it, in common use, a generic criticism?

Or to paraphrase Zimmerman: Would a reasonable reader of the blog go away thinking, "Wow, I didn't realize Cohen had sex for money," or would they assume it was a crudely stated personal opinion?

As much as the blogger's actions were distasteful, the courts shouldn't serve as a "tax-subsidized private investigator" for celebrities, politicians or anyone else who wants to out and silence their critics, he said.

'I try to forget'

On the other hand, it's difficult to feel the law has struck the entirely correct balance when you hear a story like J's. The California woman (who didn't want her name used) made one mistake a decade ago that continues to haunt her.

She agreed to make a sex tape with her boyfriend at the time, with the understanding that it would be kept private. Instead, years after they broke up, it appeared online, edited to look like the debut film of a porn actress. Her real name was used.

With Vogele's help, J sued the man, winning monetary damages along with a requirement that he assist in the ongoing removal of the video and pictures online.

But the legal effort took years and the images had spread so widely by then that they continue to resurface. Her husband regularly searches for new appearances and sends take-down requests to sites. J, who has been contacted by strangers who have viewed the video, continues to screen calls and avoid social media.

"I try to forget, I try to pretend it never happened, but I know it will always be there," she said. "It's a nightmare that will always keep following me."

For more information, or for more on legal options for victims of cyber harassment, go to withoutmyconsent.org.

original article here

NOTE: EOPC is not guilty of any above. We have signed legal releases for our stories. They can ONLY be removed by the written request of the person(s) who submitted them for posted. We are not liable for opinion statements. We are not personally involved in any of our exposes. All other articles are covered under the FAIR USE DOCTRINE. Great care has been taken to legally comply with information on this sort of website. Complaints about exposes must go to the person(s) who submitted them.