Cyber bullying is NOT just a different form of "spam".
The goal of spam tends to be financial gain (bank accounts, credit cards).
The goal of cyber bullying tends towards individuals or groups deemed "inferior".
The targets make up the difference:
Spam casts a broad net with an audience of just a few individuals gullible enough to give out personal and financial information.
Cyber bullying has a more personal target - usually someone the offender already knows.
The worst part of cyber bullying is that the evidence remains permanent - residing on web sites, on forums, within social programs like face book.
Sadly, the internet is not patrolled. It is next to impossible to find the "owner" of the media and remove the "graffiti".
What can be done?
The administrators of each web site must be held accountable for the content.
They must be accessible and responsible.
There needs to be a method, be it "human approval" or programmable scanning for harmful posting.
And the poster, the offending cyber bully, must be charged. It is a crime. There is damage. And they must be held accountable, no matter what their age.
If nothing else, we all need to be aware of the harm that can be caused by "alphabet crimes".
Jerrold Schiff
http://www.schiffkey.com
