Dear jaymom,
Google Answers Researchers are not allowed to divulge any private
details on an individual. However, my answer is intended to help you
and your child.
Hate mail is a violation of laws, and matter to the police and to the
ISPs. Hate mail and hate language are not a funny thing. There have
been cases whereas hate emails were the first step towards much more
violent acts and in general, it is not different from stalking and its
possible dangerous consequences.
Referring specifically to your case, email users can enter whatever
data they want in the registration boxes of AOL and other free
web-based email services. They could mask their identity, lie in the
registration details (for example, posing to be adults when they are
minors, or adults posing to be children in order to lure minors). You
could try it yourself and register anonymously without much trouble -
pretending to be a 16 year old male from Alaska, while you are
actually an adult mother from California. In other words, it is
sometimes very hard to track the true identity of an abuser in these
services.
Moreover, as recent cases have shown, ISP usually let the details of a
user only under court order.
The first law in responding to hate mail or instant messages is to not
respond. This is would only encourage the flamer even more. In another
forum I have
found an opinion that by responding to hate emails "we waste our time
responding to people whose minds cannot be changed"
(http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-halifax/2001-October/000390.html).
If I understood correctly, this person is using AOL Instant messanger.
Please determine if what happened consists of abuse or harassment at
http://www.haltabuse.org/help/isit.shtml.
Make sure (and document) that your child has clearly asked this person
to stop, if this is not a clear cut case.
Then, collect evidences. In order to do that, press alt+printscreen (a
button in the upper portion of your keyboard). This will take a screen
shot of you computer. Paste it in Word or another program save it,
and print it out.
Then contact AOL <http://www.aol.com/info/feedback.html>, with the
evidences you have.
I would also recommend changing your child's settings (under
preferences ---> privacy on the AIM) on IM to only allow people in his
or her buddy list to contact him or her. That should prevent
harassment.
AOL have a guide on how to ensure online safety:
http://www.aol.com/info/onlinesafety.html
Their guide also provides information on whom to contact on the next
stage, since I am not sure that AOL would do anything, except maybe
blocking this username:
http://www.getnetwise.org/trouble/contact
You should also consider contacting the police. You could contact
police in your state, as well as the FBI, through this site. In order
to file a complaint and to succeed in it, you must maintain
documentation of the hate messages (as mentioned before). Whether to
contact AOL or the police first is a tactical question: if you contact
AOL first, they might just block this person's email address, and he
might move his "business" elsewhere without stopping to harass you.
There are also sites and support groups that deal directly with the
problem. For example, http://www.emailabuse.org/default.asp is very
comprehensive. You can also find many such sites in this directory -
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Abuse/
This is also a good guide on how to protect yourself from mail abuse
(or any other type of cyberstalking) -
http://www.onlineharassment.com/ This FAQ (frequently asked questions)
deals with all sorts of abuse - like Spam, harassment etc.
http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/emailfaq.html
http://www.haltabuse.org/index.shtml also provides some sound advices,
and unlike some of the other sites mentioned before, it also refers to
IM harassment.
To sum up: You asked how you could track down this person/s abusing
your child and their IM service. I suggest you'll report them, and
then you'll not
only track them down - if it's possible, with the help of experts -
but also would set the law and their servers against them. Do not try
to retaliate, because it could cost you badly, as I have noted before:
this is not different than "regular" harassment. This answered your
question; however, if you feel you need clarifications, please contact
me again.
My search strategy in this case was to search for specific
applications to instant messenger (using terms such as <aim aol> or
"AOL instant messenger" or just "instant messenger") with relevant
search terms such as "abuse" "harassment", etc. |
