[halftrak]

does anyone know of any internet harrassment laws that are in effect right now, my daughter's ex-in-laws are continously harrassing her online, any info would be great, thanks halftrak

[collateraldamage5591]

I have not looked at this link much at all but it may help.


http://www.wiredsafety.org/index.html

[CRABBY]

She can file a police report and obtain an order of protection....

[Deb]

I may be naive on this subject, but I'm not sure how someone can harrass someone online. If they are sending emails you block them, delete the email without opening it or change your email address. If they are finding her in chat rooms or IM's then you should be able to block them there too.

I don't know of any law that protects someone online. There was the case of the 15 year old girl that killed herself due to neighbors harrassing her online and the law could not do anything about it. Last I heard they were trying to get laws passed that would. I think freedom of speech protects the sender just like the receiver unless they threaten bodily harm then you could print it out and get a restraining order.

Just my opinion - maybe someone else knows more.
Deb

[Deb]

Below is part of a newsarticle regarding the young girl I spoke about previously....
If you want to see full article you can google internet harrassment.





Megan Meier took her own life after being harassed and told that the world would be better off without her by “Josh”, a boy she believed she had befriended on MySpace. Josh and his MySpace account, however, turned out to be the creation of Lori Drew, her daughter, and a teenaged employee.

You may recall that we explained back in November, when Megan Meier killed herself after the online harassment by Lori Drew, that Drew’s actions did not actually violate any criminal law on the books at the time. (The state of Missouri, where these sad events took place, is now putting together legislation which would criminalize an adult using online technology to harass a child.)

[halftrak]

Hey Deb, yeah I heard about the girl that you spoke of in your reply, you are right about freedom of speech protecting most people online,this involves myspace and what they are doing is putting up fake profiles of her online and putting up pictures that they have taken of my daughter and her friends on other people's profiles, these people are very mad at my daughter for divorcing a family member of there's that was abusive to her, this lady in particular got fired from a big university and actually put up a fake profile of her supervisor also, my daughter has filed numerous police reports but nothing ever came of it.Someone told me of a new internet law about to go in effect but I haven't heard anything about it. all emails from them are blocked but they have over 20 email accounts and each time one is blocked they get another one, see what I mean, thanks for your reply, halftrak

[red1030]

halftrak, what about your daughter changing her email account and opening a new one is another name and profile. She could open it but give it a different name, different birthday etc. Then only give it to people she truly knows and trust. This may work for her. The best accounts for security is yahoo, if the person doesn't know your name and birthdate, if they do, then change those two things on your profile. Another one that is good is msn....it is very difficult to break a pwd code their...don't ask how I know, it is just something I have discovered.. the next one that is difficult is netscape. That one is ok until they come to a security question and that must be spelled and capitalized exactly right... talk to your daughter and see what she says..oh btw..my space is an easy target by anyone.... I am so sorry she is going through this ...love and miss you Red

[DH's better half]

Depending on where your daughter lives, she may be better off going to the county level of law enforcement. Many local departments don't have the familiarity with internet harasment that county level LE does. Any restraining orders also usually come from county level also, although temporary emergency one's can be obtained locally.

[Deb]

Hi Halftrak, I understand what you are saying there and there are a lot of bad people in this world that have nothing better to do than just to sit around making someone elses life miserable. I think the main problem you would face is proving they are the ones that did it. Without a confession it would be very hard and they are not going to say they did it.

I think Red is right here. Obviously they are changing their email address quite frequently to fool your daughter. She will just have to do the same with hers. Where she might get some action is through their ISP or she can call her ISP and ask for help. I think what they will do for her is to change the email address. As for Myspace I only have a couple of ideas - one is to complain to Myspace about what is going on and see if they will do something - two is for her to stay away from it for awhile until this all blows over and most likely it will. It will just take some time. He will find someone else to beat around on and go on with his life at that point they will most likely leave her alone that is if there aren't any children involved. Men like that just make me sick but that would be a whole other post of how little they are and how they do this to make them feel bigger.

Please let me know if you do find a way to stop it ok. In the meantime tell your daughter congradulations for getting away from him. She is a very brave woman and I commend her for doing so.

Take Care,
Deb

[red1030]

Hi halftrak, Deb's note about proving it prompted something more that I maybe could add to this mystery. First every email that you receive can be traced back to a tower which gives you a general locations of where the email came from...and I will have to ask my husband but I believe that you can find the computer who sent the message through their IRS (this may be the wrong initials..) which is a computers address. Good luck sweetie..I am so sorry you are going through this...love Red