Telling the Difference

Flaming, cyberbullying and harassment and cyberstalking

It’s not always easy to tell these apart, except for serious cases of cyberstalking, when you “know it when you see it.” And the only difference between “cyberbullying” and cyber-harassment is the age of both the victim and the perpetrator. They both have to be under-age.

In deciding whether to get law enforcement or others involved, you can review this checklist. If the communication is only a flame, you may not be able to do much about it. (Sometimes ISPs will consider this a terms of service violation.) But the closer it comes to real life threats the more likely you have to get involved as law enforcement. We recommend that parents answer the following questions. The answers will help guide you when to get law enforcement and others involved. (Our CyberLawEnforcement program recommends that law enforcement agents handling a first response ask parents these questions as well.)

• The Kind of Threat
• The Frequency of the Threats
• The Source of the Threats
• The Nature of the Threats

The more repeated the communications are, the greater the threats (or enlarging this to include third-parties) and the more dangerous the methods, the more likely law enforcement or legal process needs to be used. If personal contact information is being shared online, this must be treated very seriously.

If the child thinks they know who is doing this, that may either make this more serious, or less. But once third-parties are involved (hate groups, sexually-deviant groups, etc.) it makes no difference if the person who started this is a young seven year old doing it for a laugh. It escalates quickly and can be dangerous.