On a Serious Note: Online Harassment

Just received a link to this article on CIO.com (an online newsletter serving chief information officers and other IT professionals). Please take time out of your day today to read it.

Click here to read the entire article – Online Harassment: Five Tips to Defeat Blog Trolls and Cyberstalkers.

A few excerpts from the article -from CIO.com By Mary Brandel. (***** is to show where the story continues in between excerpts)

Anyone who has participated in the blogosphere in the past two months knows the troubling story of Kathy Sierra, a prominent blogger who was the victim of online threats that included violent sexual acts and murder (“Death threats force woman to suspend blog, cancel talk at O’Reilly conference“). When the harassment spread beyond her own blog to two others that were affiliated with other prominent bloggers, Sierra became so terrified that she canceled an upcoming speaking engagement and took a hiatus from blogging.

But Sierra isn’t the only one to endure online harassment. In fact, some would argue that she’s just the most visible — if not the most historically egregious — tip of an iceberg that has been around since Internet discussions began in the early 1980s. “Between now and the early days of Usenet, the level of abusive behavior has been distressingly constant,” says Tim Bray, a veteran blogger and director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems Inc.

The difference is, with 70 million blogs in existence today and 1.4 new blogs created every second, according to blog search engine Technorati Inc., there are just more people participating in online discussions, and “the more crazy people you’ve got reading them, the wilder the whole blogosphere can become,” says Richard Silverstein, who advocates for a peaceful approach to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his blog.

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While both Silverstein and Sierra are higher-profile bloggers than many of us, it’s clear that anyone who enters the blogosphere needs to be aware of the types of people who get satisfaction out of online harassment. According to Derek Wood, vice president of clinical operations at PsychTracker Inc., a journaling site for people with mental illness, the harassment comes in two general forms: trolls and cyberstalkers. It’s important for blog participants to understand the psychological makeup of both types so that if they encounter any type of online abuse, they’ll have some idea of what they’re facing and how to respond to it.

TrollsEssentially, a troll is a person who posts with the intent to insult and provoke others, Wood explains. The goal is to disrupt the normal traffic of a discussion group beyond repair. “A group is considered to be cohesively destroyed when two-thirds to three-quarters of the messages are a result of [trolls'] comments,” Wood explains. They often target new users, who are more likely to take offense, hence the term “troll” (as in “trolling” for newbies).

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Cyberstalkers can also assume many different forms, according to Wood, although they’re basically characterized by a continuing pattern of communication that the recipient considers to be offensive. Other common traits of cyberstalkers are malice, premeditation, repetition, distress to the victim, an obsession on the part of the stalker, seeking of revenge, threats that make victims fear for their physical safety and disregarded warnings to stop.

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What to do

In many cases, victims feel they have very little ammunition — whether legal, technological or tactical — to stop the abuse. However, there are some things bloggers and other online contributors can do to try to avoid this kind of harassment or at least keep it from crossing into the physical world.

1. Know the trolls’ tactics. According to Wood, the first rule for dealing with trolls is to avoid being deceived by them in the first place. Don’t trust anything you receive or read without verifying the poster through known, reliable sources, he says. Also, ignore postings or private e-mails that are suspicious, such as those that praise, flatter or evoke a sympathetic response.
2. DFTT This is one of the more important acronyms in the blog world, meaning, “Don’t feed the trolls.” “Just like in-person bullies, trolls feed off your reaction,” Tim says. “Under no circumstances should you acknowledge the behavior or repay it with anger or defensiveness. If you don’t react, they’ll get bored and go away.”Even if ignoring the harasser doesn’t get him to stop, at least you won’t fan his flames, Wood says. “The more a person responds, the more they teach the stalker about themselves or divulge information they shouldn’t,” he says.
3. Maintain your privacy. Don’t publish any personal information, such as your address or phone number. If you need to, use a Post Office box number. Wood suggests asking your state’s motor vehicles and voter registry to put a block on your address and phone number. “Otherwise, any person may obtain them just for inquiring,” he says.Some longtime bloggers, such as Bray and his wife Lauren Wood, a senior technical program manager at Sun, refrain from posting photos of their children on their blogs.
4. Block and ban. If you’re experiencing abuse on a moderated blog, you can appeal to the administrator, who can try banning the troll. Be prepared to include a history of the troll’s posts, including full headers.Some blog services offer technologies that enable you to block offensive participants. Using WordPress, Silverstein can moderate the comments of anyone who hasn’t contributed to the site before, which helps eliminate the hit-and-run type of trolls. “That allows me to weed out 90% of the abuse I get,” he says.Another plug-in enables him to ban certain IP addresses. “That’s especially good for the really crazy people, if they post one comment that goes beyond the pale,” he says.
5. Keep a log. Be sure to keep a copy of anything you receive from the harasser, Lauren Wood suggests. If they contact you by phone rather than e-mail, take notes on what they say and how often they call, she says. “You’ll need proof rather than, ‘I think he was calling three times a day,’” she says. “You’ll want a log that says, ‘He called at 9:14 p.m.

“Above all, when you have an online presence, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility of becoming a target, Wood adds. “Just like in the real world, you need to realize which dark alleys you shouldn’t enter at night, and if you do, have protection and know what you should do when,” she says.Adds Silverstein, “you’re very vulnerable as a blogger. You’re out there hanging on the line, and anyone can take a shot at you.”

We must protect each other & do everything in our power to keep the blog world a safe place for all of us to write & entertain each other! I’m going to take this opportunity to also point out that we can not believe everything we see on the Internet. People can post whatever they want whether it’s the truth or not. We must stop these people from invading this place we’ve all grown to love so much.

I apologize for the heavy post on a beautiful Friday morning but it’s extremely important that we stay on top of topics of this kind.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you for not only reading my blog but for being my friends!

Now, pour yourself a margarita and let’s cheers to wonderful weekend ahead!!