Danger in an AOL Chatroom?

Chat rooms have become one of the basic methods of meeting people in this current day and age of the Internet. With more people “online”, chat rooms have cropped up everywhere, from Yahoo to AOL to AIM and MySpace. Chats can be found about any topic or region from legal issues to romance in your town. Many of these chat rooms have developed from years of use into “online communities” with the same people who have used the room for years to new people joining every day.

A current trial is underway concerning one MySpace account that was used to harass a teenager who later committed suicide, presumably from the comments left on the site by an adult claiming to be a teenaged boy. Tons of articles have been written about protecting children from predators and bullies online, but very little has been done about adults who target other adults.

The act of making friends online means you often give out personal information. Through continuing conversations, you may give out your phone number, your location, the names of relatives, what kind of vehicle you drive, and even the names of people you may have a common connection. Unfortunately, over a period of time an unscrupulous individual can gather enough information to pinpoint who you are in the real world.

Of course, if you find yourself being targeted by another adult, the easiest thing to do is to vacate that chat room and find another one. If that does not work, you can always change the screen name you are using to something else. However, what do you do when you are actively tracked down and the harassment begins anew? Do you continue to change where you go to talk? What about friends you may have gained through your interaction in a chat room? Do you change your screen name and hope the person(s) looking for you do not find it or realize it is you?

Many are facing this dilemma today. After finding a room where you are comfortable and have developed friendships among the users of the room, should you be forced to move on only because someone has decided you are their target for bullying, harassment, sexual innuendo, or the publishing of any personal information they may have garnered from you or others? What recourse exists to protect your information once it has been given out? What laws protect you from having your personal information about a job, vehicle, legal issues, personal health problems, or anything else that identifies you to others from being spammed on the Internet using blogs or web pages? Is there any question how dangerous this can be?

Apparently, very little.

The act of bullying, abusing, and bashing of a user of any chat room or forum on the internet has always been a part of most Internet companies Terms of Service, also known as TOS. If a member or user of those companies violate the TOS, their account can be restricted or deleted permanently. Yet, what happens if after hundreds of complaints have been filed against a person or persons and nothing is done?

One example is found in AOL’s Community Terms of Service, which states, “Do not harass, abuse or threaten another member. If you disagree with someone, respond to the subject, not the person.” However, what if you are the subject of the member who actively harasses, abuses or threatens you in some manner? What if your screen name is cloned but with an additional word that is derogatory? What if your children’s names are created in a manner specifically to harass you as the parent of that child? What if threats are made against your job or you have strangers calling your workplace? What if your medical information is being published on the Internet?

AOL has a suite of tools one can use to notify AOL of this activity. Unfortunately, there seems to be no one at the other end who is taking care of the problem by censuring the offender or deleting accounts. Yet, they claim to have a “zero tolerance for illegal activity on the service”. It would seem harassment and abusive behavior is not illegal.

One AOL chat room, known as the Romance – MarylandersOver35 room was originally created to form friendships among people who lived in the same general area. Instead, it has spawned countless blogs and even a website that was created in order to post the real names, addresses, job locations, and other personal information about other users of the room, along with vulgar photographs and language directed to those individuals. This is not being done by children, but by the actual account holders of the screen names being used. AOL has not responded to repeated requests to have the offending (and illegal) information removed, not even when the content has contained physical threats of harm or death toward others.

GoDaddy.com, a popular web-hosting site, claims they will delete accounts that are used to harm others. Their own Universal Terms of Service states in part, “activities designed to defame, embarrass, harm, abuse, threaten, slander or harass third parties; …. activities that are tortuous, vulgar, obscene, invasive of the privacy of a third party…”. However, when the website hosted by them at http://www.marylandersover35.com had complaints filed against it because of posted identifying information and vulgar photographs concerning third parties, nothing was done.

Depending on what happens with the MySpace trial, the outcome may have a far-ranging effect on the Internet and the users who use it to hide behind an anonymous screen name in order to harass or intimidate other users. Even though some states have passed laws supposedly geared against cyber crimes, including harassment, there is little that is actually being done to stop it. This may be because most police agencies do not understand the effects harassment or bashing has on the ordinary citizen. They can understand the law concerning slander or harassment in their communities, but it is apparent that the Internet and laws targeting internet crimes baffles the majority of law enforcement agencies.

Laws should be in place that are readily accessible to users to find out whom and where their attacker is and the means to have those persons charged and convicted of the crimes they are committing. No one should have to live with a threat that their children, pets, homes, jobs, or anything else may be at risk because of an active ongoing harassment by another party. The fact that the “scene of the crime” may be an Internet chat room should have no bearing on whether a crime has been committed. The bottom line is “harassment is harassment” (or any other threat or crime) and it should not matter whether it is being done by a neighbor, a colleague, or an unknown person who is hiding behind the anonymity of a screen name. It behooves every user of the Internet to remember that criminals can be anywhere and not all monsters are found in storybooks.

Sources:

America Online Terms of Service – AOL Community Guidelines

Godaddy.com Universal Terms of Service – Legal Agreements

MarylandersOver35 Website