Kids in Wrexham bullied on Ask.fm
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Posts
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@zinger 8554 wrote:
As a grandparent I would like these stupid sites wiped out. Children are vulnerable & without the maturity that age should bring, do not know how to handle things that are said by anonymous people. It could someone from school or it could be a paedophile masquerading as a school child.
I think ‘anonymous’ is the key word here TBH, if someone perceives they have total anonymity I would imagine they will feel that gives them a free reign to act however they want. Sites such as Ask.fm which allow users to believe they are posting anonymously are clearly going to be a draw to a certain type of person. People can join up using disposable email addresses or log in using fake Facebook or Twitter accounts and believe they cannot be traced. Perhaps these sites should detect any users country, area and IP address and clearly display this when they log in? This may just give them the idea that they are not quite as anonymous as they might like to think they are? Can’t see many people who act in this manner being intelligent enough to connect via a proxy server TBH and even these can usually be detected and posting prevented if these sites really wanted to tackle this problem.
Still think there should be laws put in place to deal with people who act in this manner, shouldn’t have to wait for another poor kid to take their own life before whoever drove them to it gets a ‘knock on the door’.
The nature of the internet allows everything to be spoofed. Even an IP through a proxy. Also if you’re in a public wifi or internet area the IP will not be tracable to a person.
@Born Acorn 8596 wrote:
The nature of the internet allows everything to be spoofed. Even an IP through a proxy. Also if you’re in a public wifi or internet area the IP will not be tracable to a person.
Sadly this is true although I would imagine a significant percentage of this kind of activity will be done from home connections, contract smartphones etc. It will never be possible to make a connection which cannot be spoofed or traced to a specific person. Although I would imagine many people who act in this manner would probably not think of covering their tracks in that way. As for people behaving inappropriately when they think they are anonymous, check out those joke rap videos that actor from Coronation Street made. Now he’s been ‘outed’ they will probably end up costing the fool his job.
This is purely, 100% a parental responsibility issue, not an internet issue, if your child is looking at porn, getting bullied or generally looking at stuff not appropriate for their age, then this is nothing more than bad parenting and not accepting your responsibilities as a parent.
If parents think they do not have the technical ability to implement simple site blocks via there router or even just monitoring there childs web habits, then they should learn or cut the cord and not expect laws put in place due to there ineptitude.
Also, the suicide of Hannah Smith, earlier this month after she was allegedly bullied on Ask.fm, turned out to be false, she had in fact sent most of the bullying and abusive messages to herself, we then get our ridiculous PM condemning the site without knowing any of the facts.
@Rob 8538 wrote:
The aim of such email verification is to primarily stop spammers, but secondly ensure there is a valid point of contact if required.
I am going to suspend the current account you have – but please drop me an email on [email protected] with real contact info and I will re-enable.
So you have essentially just banned someone from posting, due to them wanting to keep a basic level of privacy and not be hassled needlessly, even if you ever do have any sort of valid reasons to contact members, this should purely be opt in.
You want to grow the user base here, not impose draconian measures on members that have bothered to sign up and post
Mailinator looks dubious since it doesn’t use a password system at all – to read email just just need the email address.
But still, anyone can do the same thing through gmail or hotmail – a one time, “disposable” email address to register on a social network or forum. People dislike providing their emails to third parties in case of spam or theft of personal details.
Hi Gas Man, interesting points you raised there. Just read this article which is worth looking at:
BBC News – Cyber-bullying: Horror in the home
Regarding Hannah Smith, I did not think it had been conclusively proven that she sent those hate messages to herself just that most had been sent from what appears to have been the family IP address (jealous sibling, stepfather perhaps?). Even if she did sent those messages to herself what is to be concluded from that? It would appear to me to be a way of self harming with a potentially worldwide audience, surely that in itself is something which needs to be looked at?
I have had a quick look at this Ask.fm site and as I previously mentioned believe it is in danger of being made some kind of scapegoat by the UK media right now. However I can see the danger of this particular site, I logged in used a Facebook account (not in my name BTW), I then typed in the village in which I reside and it brought up a list of members (many of them teens) with their profile pictures. Some I recognised, the idea that I could then send them messages knowing they would have no idea who was behind them was concerning. Especially as messages could contain things which indicated I knew who there were (has your dad still got that red Vauxhall Vectra? etc.), how creepy would that be? The thing I would imagine that bullies get their kicks from is seeing a victims response, online bullying would seem to take that aspect to a new level.
The parents have a duty feeling is true to a degree but in my experience kids are usually 100% up to speed on this kind of digital interaction and their parents are not and do not really understand these dangers. Being naive does not make someone a bad parent in my view but perhaps a bit more educating on this issue for parents as well as kids is required? This unplug the router answer is unlikely to work IMHO, there are just so many ways kids can access the internet these days, turning off one of them will achieve little. I believe there needs to be a huge rethink into this issue and things put in place to make it more difficult for people to act in this manner. I am not an expert on these matters but the other day we appeared to have someone on here that was, would be interested to hear a bit more from him and his comments on our views. Stating that a particular case is sad/tragic whatever and moving on only for a few months later to hear of another one is not the way forward in my view.
@Gas_Man 8631 wrote:
So you have essentially just banned someone from posting, due to them wanting to keep a basic level of privacy and not be hassled needlessly, even if you ever do have any sort of valid reasons to contact members, this should purely be opt in.
You want to grow the user base here, not impose draconian measures on members that have bothered to sign up and post
The person in question has read this thread since then but decided not to get in touch.
The inital post was promoting something in a round about way after we had it emailed and tweeted. Incidently by a self proclaimed expert – I know hes said hes never referred to himself like that but his PR emails he sent himself say otherwise.
Anyway, the ‘expert’ and initial poster have shared the same Interner Service Provider at one point. Thus I suspected that it could be the same person, which would put a different slant on things.
The expert then signed up via a mobile phone and O2 to explain that was not the case at all.
It would be great if the inital poster could just pop a very simple email then it can be reenabled.
Interestingly all quite relevant to the thread topic really in terms of knowing perhaps who you are talking to online, and if they are real people.
Similarly it is handy to have a more direct point of contact that can be relied on rather than going via ISP’s which is a longer process.
Just noticed I wrote ‘there’ instead of ‘they’ in my last post and cannot seem to edit it? Hopefully the grammar police don’t operate on a Sunday morning. Should probably refrain from posting while hungover.
Also noticed Sylosis coming to Wrexham and tickets are only £7, saw them a couple of months ago but well up for a second helping, cheers for the heads up.
EDIT: can edit this post but none of my previous ones?
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