Cyber Bully and Harassment

How important is your social media handle to you. Perhaps the question is how important is your instagram, youtube or twitter handle to someone else. A desirable social media handle on twitter or instgram can fetch a few thousand dollars.

Darknet Diaries has an episode recorded of a ring of cyber bullies that were out to get social media handles that they could resell. 

These particular bullies were eventually caught but caused a huge amount of damage in their quest to obtain desirable social media handles. The disaster even included the death of one of the people they targeted.

The episode gives the account of two people whose experience included the cyber bully contacting and harassing family members. The height of the attack was a call to 911 resulting in a SWAT team and police raiding the unsuspecting victim.

This cyber bullying is known to happen over gaming disputes. But cyber harassment is not contained to arguments between known people. Bullying over the internet spills out to complete strangers and unsuspecting victims. Cyber bullies make life a living hell.

Schools are a hot bed for cyber bullies. The internet apps and social media connections allow school bullies to attack in a unmanaged environment making the victims life unbearable. In our small community a young man took his life because of the impact of cyber bullying.

Here is a part of the transcript from the episode.

He was inside watching TV with his girlfriend.  He heard something going on outside, but didn’t know what.  It sounded serious though, and he was a little worried.  His daughter explains what happened next.

DAUGHTER: He went out the house with a gun because he heard someone was on his property, and he sees all these cops around him.  They ask if he is Mark Herring; put your hands up.  So, he tosses the gun away from him to show he’s not a threat.  Hands up.

JACK: Mark was scared.  He didn’t know why all these police had guns drawn on him.  He threw his gun away, but that could have easily went wrong, and he knew it.  His pulse was racing.  His adrenaline was spiked.  The officers shouted at him to keep his hands up and to come towards them.  He couldn’t get the gate open on his back porch to come towards them.  He shouted back; it’s stuck.  The police said jump over the gate.  He shouted back, I’m a sixty year old fat man; I can’t do that.  He was getting increasingly worried and more upset.  The police had their weapons pointed right at him and he could see that.  He had absolutely no idea why the police were locked on him.  The police told him to crawl under the fence towards them.  He tried, but it was a small opening under the fence that he had to lay down on the ground and crawl on his belly to get through.

It wasn’t easy for him, but he eventually made it through.  As he stood up, on the other side, he had a heart attack and collapsed.  The police raced him to the hospital but it was too late.  Mark Herring died from the heart attack.  He died because someone was trying to bully him to give up his Twitter account so they could make a few thousand dollars on it.  The police found no dead woman in the house or pipe bombs, and figured out this was a fake emergency and notified the FBI.  This allowed the FBI to collect even more evidence on this criminal or group of criminals who did this.  It turned out that Mark had received a bunch of text messages from someone demanding they give him his Twitter account, and he refused of course, which led to this.  But this was more evidence the FBI was able to collect; more phone numbers, more 911 audio, more usernames from chat logs.  This kind of stuff can be tracked by the FBI to figure out who all this belongs to.  It was with this extra evidence that the FBI was finally able to crack the case.

Darknet Dairies finishes the episode by raising the fact that cyber bullying and harassment is all over the net and is a huge problem that needs to be addressed. The gang involved in the story above consisted of two teenagers. 

Part of protecting yourself is the cyber security precautions of passwords & antivirus, backups, admin accounts and patches and all the other good cyber advice. 

The other protection is "safe internet surfing". Don't go where there is trouble. Keep your own information as private and secure as possible. Be suspicious and contact the police if you do experience criminal activity toward yourself. Don't wait until it's too late.

And lastly be aware of those around you and make sure that they are not being impacted by cyber bullies.