Most people associate the word cyberbully with a disgruntled young person texting and emailing the object of his malice 30-50 times per day and setting up smear campaigns on social networks to destroy said object's social life. While this is the accepted portrait of the young cyber bully, there are also other, older people being victimized as well. Adults are reporting that they too have been victimized by a cyber bully in the course of their dealing online, on social networks and in electronic media. Many of these adults report a cyber bully "stalking" them from network forums and group discussion sites to Facebook and email. Others report that hateful, negative and derogatory comments have been leveled at them for taking a stand on issues such as animal cruelty, horse slaughter or other controversial topics. Another adult reported that she was in a domestic custody dispute over a child, and that she had to block access to certain parties from harassing her night and day. Another made enemies of a cyber bully who signed her up for adult porn sites and mail ordered items in her name, having them shipped to her home address. She is still getting intermittent messages through other channels, and proxy servers from this cyberbully.
Ways for adults to prevent cyberbullying range from closing forums to the public to making discussion group websites available by "invitation only". One of the only ways to prevent cyberbullying is to block the bully's access to these social forums. One woman stated" if they can't play nice and be respectful, they will not be allowed in". The woman in the domestic dispute was forced to cancel her email accounts and get all new account names, blocking the cyber bully from access to her phone, text and email accounts and reporting the cyber bully to the authorities and web carriers in an attempt to have that person banned from using these sites as they are in clear violation of the user agreements for the websites. The only true way to prevent cyberbullying is to have and enforce a zero tolerance for the cyber bully and his/her activities on all electronic media, websites, email and social networks. This is not only a youth problem, and must be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. Showing a zero tolerance will put a clear message to the culprit that this type of behaviour is not worth it.
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