Rosemary

My daughter has told me of a young girl who has committted suicide due to internet bullying on a site called ask.fm which even the owners of the site themselves admit is out of control and that they are unable to trace due to the anonimity of the users. Some of the messages that she received are sexually explicit, many were very abusive and others instructed her to kill herself because she was a worthless human being. Young teens have a hard enough job sorting out their emotions without this sort of thing happening.

There is a petition which I would appreciate people taking the time to sign in order to get the government to take action. If you sign they send you an e-mail to confirm which has a link and that is when the petition actually receives your name.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...96&h=QAQEuG4gI

Thank you.

Rosemary

Pocaloca

I'm deeply sympathetic to anyone who is the victim of bullying but I'm not sure if petitioning the British government to block Ask FM in the UK is the answer? It would set a dangerous precedent if the govt starts blocking social network sites enjoyed by millions just because they are abused by a few.

What seems to be needed on Ask fm is a Report Abuse button so the site managers can close the accounts of the abusers, like on Facebook. But of course they can always create new accounts and come back.

Users should close their accounts if they are getting abused online, and of course be more careful about what information about themselves they post in the first place. The govt, schools etc, should maybe have a public education campaign about this?

There is some more info about the site and the suicides (which took place in Ireland) here.

rugbymatt

One forum I am on, in fact its now the only other forum aside from this that I am still on, won't let people join from "free" email addresses, things like G-mail and Yahoo are banned, its the way they keep control of the posters as paid ones tend to have more control over private details and are much more traceable, not completely I know but much more certainly.

Domino

Surely the people running the site can tell at least the basic URL information on where these people are coming in from, even if they can't get the complete location down to pc ?
To say they are unable to trace due to the anonimity of the users is a cop-out and they are deemed to be complicit in what is happening

ask.com is associated with askjeeves.com and markmonitor.com
some information in the public domain is
Registrant:
DNS Manager
Ask.com
555 12th Street Suite 500
Oakland CA 94607
US
[email protected]
and also

MarkMonitor is the Global Leader in Online Brand Protection.
Domain Management
MarkMonitor Brand Protection™
MarkMonitor AntiPiracy™
MarkMonitor AntiFraud™
Professional and Managed Services

Visit MarkMonitor at www.markmonitor.com
Contact us at 1 (800) 745-9229
In Europe, at +44 (0) 203 206 2220

So as they can be identified so can the posters concerned
I hope this gets sorted, but the one thing parents have to do is to get back to talking to their kids again. A difficult thing, I know I had problems with talking to mine decades ago.

`

Pocaloca

It's not Ask.com, it's Ask.fm. I don't think they are connected in any way.

"Ask.fm is an interest-based social Q&A website, launched in June 2010 and based in Latvia. Users invite questions from other members of site. The responses can be received anonymously."

Rosemary

I have had a message from a friend:

Thanks for sharing this with me as this is something I feel strongly about. Some of the things people get are nasty especially the change letter / email things. We had one of our girls name & contact info put on a site saying she was offering a good time to ANYONE. We tried to get her name removed but had no answers from anyone we contacted about it. After a few weeks her details must have got buried under a very long list of other people's info so eventually they stopped contacting her. She was fifteen at the time ! One of her friends must of thought it was a great joke. She did not. We never found out who did it.
Please pass our first hand experience on. The only other info I have two years on is that the police are now active and if we had the units contact details then I would have used it.

Rosemary

Domino

apologies to all

Ask.fm is listed as a website but there is no ICAAN information available at this time so no way of going for reporting abuse

Rosemary

I know that many will be saying what is the point of this petition as it will probably not do any good but if you were the sister of the latest victim you would be doing anything at all to prevent another family suffering in this way.
This petition was started by the boyfriend of the young victims sister because he has managed to read the messages that she was receiving and was absolutely disgusted and wants to lessen this methos of undermining youngsters. The youngster and her sister were customers and friends of my daughter so she is supporting them by having the petition in her shop.

Rosemary

megmet

I understand where you are coming from with this Rosemary, but rather than petitions it would be a much better idea if parents took responsibility for their offspring and monitored what they are doing on the web.
Much of this behavior goes unnoticed simply because the youngsters are hiding away in their bedrooms accessing the Internet unsupervised.

sujee

I can see how the family of this girl are upset but I taught my own kids that words can't actually harm you. they attended a school I taught at and had to hear all the crap about me from classmates I had disciplined. Once they realised that I wasn't hurt by what was said they actually stood up to people bullying others and never suffered from it themselves.

Parents must take responsibility for their children's online activity
and teach their kids to either get a thicker skin or get off the social networking sites. After all we have had incidents of bullying even on this forum.

angiescarr

Couldn't agree more. We have to talk to our kids and explain to them what bullying is. And what value to place on it. And, especially to place very little value on the rantings and stupid comments made on the internet.
We all need to accept that other people will say things that we don't like. This is especially true of religions. With the 'sticks and stones' approach to what other people say maybe some of the religions also wouldn't get so 'rattled'. I think we should all learn to take a little teasing. That is not to say I condone Bullying. I think it should be rooted out and people shown the error and at least temporarily banned from the internet or school or wherever they are committing the bullying.
We need to look at it from both sides as there will always be bullies. Not only people who bully kids but adult bullies in the workplace too. If you haven't learned to cope with them by adulthood, life can be very hard.

Dick Dasterdly

There is also another side to this issue, which is the huge amount of police time and resources being wasted on internet bullying and texting.
I have read some articles by acting police officers who are in despair at the amount of time this nonsense takes up.
Huge numbers of seemingly serious threats are constantly flowing freely between these youngsters and whilst most of them never come to anything, the police are bound by rules and regulations to thoroughly investigate each and every one which results in a complaint, including interviewing all parties concerned and typing out endless reports.
I am at a loss to suggest the answer to this modern day problem, though no doubt much stricter controls, supervision and deprivation of use for a while would certainly help.

jackytoo

Absolutely agree Dick. What with internet complaints and inquiries going back years not much time for a pensioner getting mugged

Fredbargate

First of all let me express my sympathy to the family referred to by the OP and to anyone else in this position.

There is always the Off Switch to any appliance

Failing that my I suggest the perpetrators are Birched

rugbymatt

Slightly off topic but the results pertain to the thread.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-n...wales-20207408