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Protecting Your Online Privacy

The Internet sees millions of users logging on each and every day and more and more, the laws of the United States, and throughout the world, are struggling to keep up. With the explosion of the Internet over the last few years, with more people logging on for the first time each and every day, there is also an equal explosion of misuse of the Internet and crimes against people and property. These crimes include the misuse of this form of communication to other people - these crimes are called online harassment and cyberstalking.

Online harassment impacts the life of a person and makes them a victim. It is not uncommon for online harassment to have the victim fearing for their safety and security, having anxiety over the harassment and feeling a sense of insecurity, unpredictability and uncertainty about their every day life as someone begins to cyber stalk them.

The Internet is really a treasure trove for online harassment - people feel indestructible on the net and can feel familiar with people that they've "met" online. People talk freely about themselves and give a lot of information about them, more than they would to a stranger on the street.

While there is no simple definition of cyberstalking or online harassment, the most simple definition was made by Maxwell in 2001 which defines online harassment as "...the use of electronic communication including pagers, cell phones, emails and the Internet, to bully, threaten, harass, and intimidate a victim."

Currently, there are no laws or statutes that provide for online harassment; however there is a bill that has been filed with the United States Senate that would ban online harassment.

There are countless people who have 'jumped on the bandwagon' to promote the cyberstalking and online harassment and the need for a law that will ban and provide law that can be upheld in countless cases of these crimes. It seems, especially when you search the Internet for cyber stalking and online harassment that the target seems to be teenagers, and using social sites such as MySpace and FaceBook as well as a plethora of other social websites where people can post their profile and chat and meet other people in the 'community'.

Online harassment can be either direct or indirect. Direct online harassment would include threats, intimidating messages and bullying that is sent directly to a victim via email or other forms of online communication or by hindering the service of the Internet, such as hacking. Indirect online harassment includes rumor spreading in forums and social websites on the Internet, signing someone up for unwanted services or posting private information about a victim online without permission. If you ever get a call from a harassing number you can enter the phone number here to find out who owns it. Currently, this reverse phone service does not work with VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol should your harasser be calling from over the internet.

Terry Taggert writes informational articles about people search, privacy, reverse phone lookups, and other similar topics. Conduct an instant reverse cell phone lookup at http://www.ReversePhoneDetective.com

posted by george-gomez54307 @ 8:56 PM