Your profile on Facebook or Twitter gets hacked.
You get a suspicious friend request from a perfect stranger; the next day you get a Facebook warning about your "abusive, highly offensive behavior";
You keep getting hateful, vicious comments from other users, in response to your posts or photos, maybe even threats;
You have an online conflict and notice, later, that other users connected with the user you had the conflict with, are suddenly deleting you from their pages, even blocking you;
Users of the opposite sex keep appearing on Chat, pumping you for personal information, even your home address to inquiring about your sex life;
You get messages on Chat telling you that you have been tagges in a video and, providing links, ask you to view it;
You see a notice that seems to be from Facebook asking you to verify your account for you are about to be deactivated, with a link for you to click;
You wake up one morning to learn, to your dismay, that your computer appears to be on and later, you discover that someone has accessed your bank account!
You get the picture. We use social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and others, to connect with people and to satisfy our varying agendas for using these networks. Yet we are likely to encounter hackers, scammers, spammers, bullies, and even criminals, or users who are merely unfriendly or unstable.
Let me share a few of my online experiences, which I'm sure are similar to things others experience online, unfortunately. Many months ago, I had a major conflict with an online user over a certain issue. Days later, I found that a number of other users with connections to this user, were removing me from their friends lists, even blocking me. This hurt tremendously, as it was all based on a misunderstanding and I had no way of knowing what was going on, only circumstantial evidence. And it reinforced in me a feeling of who could I trust? For months, I lived in fear of my online reputation being destroyed and became paranoid of others in my network. I did NOT see this is "just Facebook stuff"! Lesson: Do not trust anyone you don't know outside of social networks until you spend lots of time building trust and are reasonably sure of these users and their characters.
This past summer, on the eve of my birthday, June 29, I had logged into Facebook and was checking out my homepage. Suddenly, I saw a very offensive profile, bearing a pornographic profile picture; the user called himself a screenname that is not fit to put in print. Upon the urgent request of the person who shared the offending user's profile, I pulled up this user's profile, checked it out, hitting the "Report" button to submit my report to Facebook concerning this user's profile and photos. Minutes later, I received a friend request. I checked it out and took note of who sent it: the user I had just reported! I let this request sit on my profile, unanswered: I had no intention of ever accepting such a friend request.
The following morning, my birthday, I woke up and after awhile, I logged into Facebook. I posted on some group and fan pages, intending to leave my wall clear for birthday greetings. To my dismay, I visited my homepage and saw a warning sitting on top of my page. To paraphrase, I was told: "You have uploaded offensive or pornographic material that is offensive to other users or is abusive. If you do not remove this material, your account will be deactivated."
I remembered the suspicious friend request I received the night before and knew exactly who was behind this, and why! The user whose profile I had reported, no doubt to get even with me for my report, had gotten hold of my online identity and Facebook now had me down as a sex offender! I was distraught and upset and did not know how to fix this. I composed a note about my situation, which received only one comment, which had nothing to do with my actual post. What a "birthday gift"!
Eventually, the warning on my homepage concerning the false accusations against me, disappeared on its own, but I continued to feel quite disillusioned and fearful about my online reputation because of my stolen online identity. Worse, could this end up on my criminal records under my Social Security Number? Lesson: When you receive a suspicious friend request, you need to do something about it. The options for this are marking these requests as spam or even blocking the sender so he or she cannot see you to do anything to you.
In strict terms, cyberbullying is a term reserved for children and teenagers. Cyberharassment is the counterpart term used for adults. In any case, it is up to us as adults to protect our minor children online, while we must take total responsibility for our own online safety.
Numerous resources abound that show us how to keep ourselves and our families safe. Here are just a few:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/security NEW WARNING: This page appears, itself, to be a hacker site! Facebook users, including I, have been receiving scam messages via this page.
https://www.facebook.com/#!/Facecrooks
http://www.staysafeonline.org
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