Dealing with Online Harrassment

If someone is bothering you through email, or instant messanger, there are some things you can do about it.

1. Keep a record of everything.  On a piece of paper, write down all the times, and dates that this person has contacted you.  If they are being verbally abusive, or threatening you, save the evidence!  Copy and paste their message to Word, or Wordpad so that you have a separate record of it.
   
2. Find out where they are coming from.  If the person is abusing you through email, you can do the following:
   • In Hotmail, if you look along the top it says Home, Inbox, Compose, Contacts, Options, and Help. 
   • Click on Options.  You'll see a screen pop up with three columns on it. 
   • The top of the third column is called Additional Options. 
   • Look down the column and click on Mail Display Settings.
   • When that page comes up, look at the section called Message Headers.  Click on the button that says Full and click OK.  This will give you the person's ISP number and all the routing information which tells you which computers your message came from and passed through before it got to your inbox.
     
3. Report the abuse.  If the person abusing you has a Hotmail account, send an e-mail to abuse@hotmail.com  Write them a note that this person has been abusing you.  Give them a record of the dates and times.  Copy and paste any abusive or threatening emails or instant messages.  Be sure to include all the header information with the person's ISP number.  That will help the people at Hotmail track this person down.
   
4. Contact their ISP.  If the person does not have a Hotmail account, you can write to their ISP directly using abuse@ in front of their ISP name.  For example:  if the person has a yahoo account, then you write them at abuse@yahoo.com, if the person has a telus account, then you write to abuse@telus.net ...  and so on.
   
5. Once you've reported the abuse, you should get a confirmation by email.  KEEP THIS EMAIL.  If the person who's been abusing you does it again, reply to the confirmation email, and include the new information.  This makes it easier for MSN, Hotmail, or whoever to keep your record straight, and you don't have someone accidently opening a new record for you.  MSN or Hotmail will send you a CST number.  Keep that number.  It refers to the file they opened to deal with your problem.  Everytime you talk to them about this problem, refer back to the CST number.
   
6. Keep your dealings with your contact at MSN, Hotmail, or whatever polite, businesslike, and to the point.  No matter how abusive the other person is to you, you want to make sure that your contact at MSN or Hotmail, etc sees you in a favourable light.  Sometimes, they can't help you in the way you might want them to.  But they'll want to help you more, if you're nice to them.

What should happen:

The first time you put in a complaint, the other person might just receive a warning, unless the abuse is really beyond the pale.  If the abuse is really bad, or they keep doing it then the following things could happen:

• they could lose their Hotmail account
• they could get banned from MSN  
• their Internet Service Provider may cancel their internet access
• in extreme cases, the local police may get involved and the person may even have a restraining order placed upon them - based on local laws on stalking and harassment