A misconception has spread through out the Internet that ‘anonymous’ services are truly anonymous and untraceable. Wrong! That fake Facebook profile that you have set up, if you cause enough trouble and the Police start to investigate, they can and will track you down!
No matter which website you go to there will be certain logs of your activity, where they originated from, e-mail address used to register and so on. There is nothing anonymous about what you do on the Internet, it’s just all about whether you become ‘interesting’ enough to investigate.
BBC Panorama recently dedicated a program to Internet bullying and more specifically – bullying through social media websites such as YouTube and Facebook.
In it, among other things, the track down a so called ‘internet troll’ who has used to social networking site Facebook to post offensive comments on tribute pages for people that have died, including a particularly vicious racist comment to one person. When confronted, he stated that everyone is allowed to have their views and say what they want. But that is only partly right.
Yes, we have free speech in this country, but the laws that apply in real life also apply online. So if you start making racist / homophobic comments or harassing people using the Internet then you are just as guilty of the offence as if you did it in real life.
The program shows the true devastating effects that cyber bullying can have on people, especially children. It shows how a worldwide bullying campaign was waged against a girl from the United States, aged 11.
The BBC Panorama documentary is available on YouTube: