Cases of cyber bullying

1.LOS ANGELES — Federal prosecutors have charged a Missouri woman over a MySpace hoax they say led to the suicide of a 13-year-old girl who believed she'd been jilted by a cyber Romeo.

Lori Drew, 49, of O'Fallon, Mo., was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on a charge of conspiracy and three counts of a computer crime and accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information used to inflict emotional distress.

INDICTMENT:

U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien said the Justice Department sought charges in Los Angeles because the MySpace social networking website and its computer servers are based in Beverly Hills and Southern California. MySpace is owned by a subsidiary of News Corp.

"It's clearly a tragic case," O'Brien said. "We think Ms. Drew's actions resulted in the death of a child."

If convicted, Drew could face a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each of the four counts, he said.

"Any adult who uses the Internet or a social gathering website to bully or harass another person, particularly a young teenage girl, needs to realize that their actions can have serious consequences," he said.

An attorney for Drew, Jim Briscoe, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The indictment centered around the hanging death in October 2006 of Megan Meier after flirtatious Internet chats with who she thought was a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans, who turned out not to exist. The indictment identified the girl only by the initials M.T.M.

The girl hanged herself at home after receiving messages from "Josh" including one stating that the world would be better off without her.

The indictment alleges that Drew helped create a MySpace account under a fictitious name and used it "to torment, harass, humiliate and embarrass the juvenile."

"Whether we characterize this tragic case as 'cyber-bullying,' cyber abuse or illegal computer access, it should serve as a reminder that our children use the Internet for social interaction and that technology has altered the way they conduct their daily activities," said Salvador Hernandez, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles office.

After the girl's death, the indictment says Drew and unnamed co-conspirators deleted the fictitious account from the MySpace system in an attempt to hide their tracks.

O'Brien said the case was the first in which the computer crime statute had been used in a social networking case. Previously it has been used in computer "hacking" cases, he said.

In Missouri, the girl's mother, Tina Meier, told the Associated Press, "I'm thrilled that this woman is going to face charges." Megan's father, Ron Meier, 38, said he began to cry "tears of joy" when he heard of the indictment.(adapted from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-05-15-myspace-suicide_N.htm)

2. In a case that sparked a massive outpouring of anger and grief in South Hadley, MA, charges have been brought against nine teenagers believed to have bullied Irish native Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide in January, just prior to her death.
Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel spoke about the charges that followed two months of investigation in a case with some parallels to the recent death of West Islip High School student Alexis Pilkington:

“It appears that Phoebe’s death on Jan. 14 followed a torturous day for her, in which she was subjected to verbal harassment and threatened physical abuse,” said Scheibel.

Prince’s death has drawn significant attention to the panic surrounding cyberbullying, a factor initially thought to have been related to Pilkington’s suicide. A Facebook group calling for the expulsion of “three girls” believed to have pushed Prince to take her life has over 23,000 members.
Although three of those charged have not been named, six of the teens no longer considered juveniles were identified in the Boston Herald, and charges against each individual were published:

Sean Mulveyhill, 17, of South Hadley who is charged with statutory rape, violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting, criminal harassment and disturbance of a school assembly.
Kayla Narey, 17, of South Hadley who is charged with violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting, criminal harassment, disturbance of a school assembly.
Austin Renaud, 18, of Springfield who is charged with statutory rape.
Ashley Longe, 16, of South Hadley charged with violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting as a youthful offender.
Flannery Mullins, 16, of South Hadley violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting and stalking as a youthful offender.
Sharon Chanon Velazquez, 16, of South Hadley who is charged with violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting and stalking as a youthful offender.

(adapted from http://www.inquisitr.com/68188/phoebe-prince-arrests/)

Inspirational ways to use blogger

 

Blogger is the easiest way for teachers and students to share work, class notes, pictures and research online.

School groups can use Blogger to communicate and generate feedback on community events. Blogger is very effective for use in collaborative projects that would benefit from an online journal with multiple contributors.
Blogger also allows students to jump right into web publishing without having to learn html, and access their account from any computer.
Blogger for Students
Students can use Blogger to share work, research and pictures with classmates, teachers and parents who can access all of these things from anywhere. A blog can be a convenient hub for collecting information for both long and short-term projects, as students can store information as drafts before they’re ready to publish them. Blogger’s comments section allows students to easily get feedback on their work and start dialogues on their projects. Students can even start multiple blogs on one account, one for gathering information and another for the project itself. Students could also print out homework which their teacher had posted on his/her blog.

Blogger for Teachers
Teachers can easily assign collaborative group projects in an online environment that grants them an easy way to track their students’ progress. Such projects could include:

• A diary of pioneers traveling on the Oregon Trail (many teachers use the more diaryesque elements of blogs in these creative ways)
• Tracking the results of science class experiments
• Current events blog to which each student contributes weekly
• A stock market tracking games for a math or economics class
• Group research projects that include links to other online resources

Teachers can also use Blogger to stay in touch with parents about their children’s progress and keep them posted on upcoming events.

Uses for Extracurricular Groups
School sports teams, dance clubs, community gardening projects and other extracurricular school groups can use Blogger to communicate with parents about upcoming events, give game highlights and share event pictures. 

(adapted from http://www.google.com/educators/blogger.html)

tips about blogger

1.Ignore the emails, messages, or postings that use harmful language.
2.Do not forward bullying messages to others.
3.Ignore emails, messages, and postings from known bullies.
4.Block the addresses of known bullies.
5.Show the messages to trusted adults including parents, teachers, or counselors
6.Do not chat or add strangers as friends

Identity Theft And Your Child

Do not think that identity theft can’t happen to a child: This can affect anyone on the Internet. All it takes is for a child to give their personal information to a stranger. The loss of an identity is incredibly time consuming and stressful. It can ruin a child’s credit and can be complicated if someone starts breaking the law using your child’s name (i.e. hacking into places using your child’s email account or information). Likewise, if your child gives out their personal information, it could put you and your family at risk of theft or worse. You don’t want someone they’ve been chatting up on the Internet to arrive at your door and demand money or more.
Lastly, it is important to monitor the amount of time a child spends on the Internet. You do not want their whole social world to exist on the Internet. This can lead to isolation and depression, especially to those children prone to social anxiety and the like. You don’t want a child to spend all of their time online because then they forget to interact with the world around them, a world not contained within the confines of a screen.

(the previous 3 posts including this one is taken from http://www.icu-software.co.uk/online-dangers-to-children.aspx) and all the posts are modified by me

Instant Messenger

Monitor the messaging programs a child is using. This is how children communicate with one another on the Internet, and you need to keep on eye on this. This is how a lot of inappropriate language and images are exchanged. You don’t want to think your child is doing their homework only to see they’re exchanging pornographic images. Many children use the Internet as a means of bullying other children, and you do not want to find out that your child has been bullied or is bullying other kids via the Internet. Additionally, you want to monitor if your child is exchanging files via this messaging system, as this is a major way for viruses to make their way onto your computer.
Also, you want to make sure you monitor the websites a child looks at while on the Internet. One of the biggest online dangers for children is that they will see things that they should not be seeing yet.  If you do not know the information your child is taking in while on the Internet, then you are not there to explain it or to put it into context. Thus, information children see while surfing the web could lead to some terrible thoughts or behaviours or could encourage the ones a child already has.

Social Networks And Paedophiles

It is hard to be sure who you’re talking to. Anyone can post whatever they like on an online profile. They can post fake photographs, advertise fake products and lie about where they come from and even who they are. Thus, a child can’t be sure of the information they are seeing when they use such social networking websites. Additionally, consider the information on a child’s social networking profile. This leads to one of the more serious and heartbreaking dangers online: paedophiles and other people who want to hurt or take advantage of children online. Because you can’t see the people talking to your child in chat rooms, via instant messaging systems, or through social networking websites, you can not be sure what they look like. A lot of men and women use the Internet as a way to lure children out to meet them. This is how paedophiles find their victims. Additionally, a lot of older men and women use the Internet as a form of free porn. If your child has scantily clad photographs of themselves on the Internet, then adult males and females may use this for less than innocent purposes.

hear our say 2011

Interesting facts about blogger

• For Every minute 270,000 words are written on Blogger
• Almost two thirds of Blogger’s traffic comes from outside United States .The 2nd place is occupied by Brazil, followed by Turkey, Spain, Canada, and the U.K.
• The most important sport in Blogger is football, which is written four times more than the baseball (2nd popular sport)

(adopted from http://www.techno360.in/some-interesting-facts-about-blogger/)