In an ideal world, there would be no bullying. People would get on with one another and would show others respect. Sadly, bullying is all too common, whether it’s among kids at school or even adults in the workplace. Even though a lot of work is being done to prevent it, the fact of the matter is that it will always exist – there will always be bullies out there. Unfortunately, many people use the inter-net to stalk, harass and threat others. This is referred to as ‘cyberbullying’ and is a huge problem as it makes it much easier for bullies to communicate with their victims.

Forms of Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is a term that covers a wide range of acts and practices that are carried out online and are intended to harm someone. There are several main types of cyberbullying:

• Cyberstalking. What this refers to is the act of stalking someone online. The bully re-peatedly sends messages to the victim through one or more channels (such as social media sites). If the victim blocks the bully in any way, the bully simply tries to reach the victim through some other platform. Messages can become threatening and abu-sive, and the bully may even encourage others to send messages to the victim.
• Doxing/Outing. This is when someone reveals sensitive or personal details about someone else online without their consent. It’s done to embarrass, humiliate or upset the victim. The information revealed can be anything that the victim doesn’t want to be shared, such as private messages and photos, or details about their beliefs, sexu-ality or family history.
• Fraping. The term ‘fraping’ comes from the words ‘Facebook’ and ‘raping’. It refers to someone posting content through someone else’s social media page without their consent. The content posted can be harmful: for example, the bully may post offen-sive messages or may directly attack someone the victim knows.
• Masquerading. If someone is masquerading, it means they’ve set up a fake account and are pretending to be someone else. They do this in order to bully someone, but keep their actual identity hidden from the victim at the same time.
• Trickery. This is when a bully initially befriends the victim online and tries to build up trust with them. They then abuse the victim’s trust and share personal details about them with others without the victim’s consent.
• Harassing. Online harassment can involve many different things, including the bully posting messages online mocking a victim’s race, gender, sexual orientation, back-ground, beliefs, disability or something else about them.
• Exclusion. This is when a bully deliberately excludes the victim from some sort of online group or doesn’t invite the victim to a real-life gathering that other friends are invited to. Exclusion is meant to make the victim feel left out and upset.

These are just a few examples of the sorts of things people do online to bully others. The list is by no means exhaustive; the examples we’ve listed are some of the more common ones. Basically, if someone does something online to harm, harass or upset someone else, it’s cyberbullying.

Combatting Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is a very big problem, affecting millions of us. It’s particularly common among chil-dren and teenagers. Younger people tend to spend more time online than older people, and are more likely to have accounts on multiple different social media sites (where a lot of cyberbullying takes place). In fact, it’s been found that just over a third of American children aged 12-17 have experienced it some form.

Just like real-life bullying, cyberbullying will always exist. The good news is that a lot of work is be-ing done to make it less prevalent and to help those affected. Schools, universities and other educa-tional institutions offer a range of resources, information and help for those being bullied online, as well as those who have witnessed others being bullied.

Many of the major social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, have features that can help crack down on cyberbullying. For example, Twitter has a bystander reporting feature, which lets you report an account whose owner is being threatening or abusive to someone. There are also many different privacy features: you can block other accounts, delete your own posts or hide them from select others and decide who can see and access your profile.

Just about all kinds of social sites, such as messaging boards and forums, have policies about re-spectful conduct. Anyone whose behaviour goes against the site’s rules will have their account de-leted sooner or later.

If you’re getting bullied online, reach out to someone you know or look online for help. Make use of a site’s services and features to reduce contact with the bully/bullies. Also, think carefully about what you post online; it’s always a good idea not to post things that are too personal, for example.

To sum up, cyberbullying can take many forms, but there’s a lot of resources and help readily available to those who are being bullied online in any way.

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Like death and taxes, spam is something we all face. Since spam makes up over a quarter of all email traffic (back in 2008 it accounted for more than 90%), most of us who regularly use the inter-net will have encountered it at some point. A lot of the time, it’s actually harmless but in some in-stances, it can be dangerous. In this post, we’ll run you through the main types of spam and show you how to be safe and not let the dangerous types harm you in any way.

What Is Spam and Why Is It Used?

Spam is any sort of unsolicited message that you receive or encounter online. It’s most commonly associated with emails, though it can come in many other forms. For example, you can receive spam through your phone as text messages, through social media sites, through internet forums, through blog comments, and through many other means.

Most of the time, spam isn’t just a single message sent to a single person; it’s a single message sent out to a large group of people at once. The term ‘spam’ can also refer to a message being posted a large number of times in a single place, or being posted so often that it becomes annoying or frus-trating.

The people who send out these messages are called ‘spammers’. What they do is they collect email addresses from different sites and send out messages to everyone in their list at once. The market for email addresses to send spam to is very large. Many spammers, instead of spending time put-ting together their own list, will purchase one instead. Some of these lists can contain thousands of addresses, all of which will get spam messages sent to them.

So why do people send spam? There are several reasons:

• Commercial. This probably the main reason spam exists. Companies send out spam messages to advertise a product or a service. The idea is simple: get a large enough number of people to read the message and hopefully some should become paying customers.
• Social. Spam isn’t just about money; many people use it to influence others’ belief systems and change their religious and/or political views. These messages are quite harmless, though many people find them irritating.
• Phishing. In case you’re unaware of what phishing is, it’s the practice of trying to de-ceive a person into handing over personal/sensitive data, including bank details, usernames and passwords. A phishing email will be disguised to look like an email from a reputable source, except it will have some sort of link that you’re encouraged to click on; when you follow this link, you’re taken to a site where you’re asked for your personal details.

As you can see, a lot of spam messages aren’t actually anything to worry about. They can be frus-trating, yes, but they won’t do you any harm, even if you click on them. Having said that, it’s still worth getting into the habit of ignoring spam.

How to Recognise Spam and What to Do With It

Fortunately, it’s quite easy to tell if something is spam or not. If you receive an unwanted email or any kind of message from an unknown address, it’s spam. If you’re in an online forum or any simi-lar place and the same message is being posted all over the place, that’s spam too.

When it comes to messages you receive, always check the address of the sender before opening. Bear in mind that spammers often use addresses that are very similar to the ones used by respon-sible companies. For example, you may get a spam email from a spammer using an email that looks just like the one you receive bank communications from, only it’s got a few different letters. Some spam emails can contain things like viruses, so if you think an email is from a spammer, it’s always best not to open the message – just delete it straight away.

Spammers may use typological errors to get around spam-blocking software. For example, a spam email may contain ‘Paypal’ instead of the correct ‘PayPal’. Other things to look out for include spelling mistakes, messages with unknown attachments and messages telling you something that’s too good to be true, e.g. inviting you to open the email to win some money.

Never hand over any kind of personal details, unless you’re 100% sure the site you’re at is genuine. By all means, enter your card details when you’re on your bank’s own official site, but if you’re at a site that looks dodgy and suspicious, you definitely shouldn’t enter any details. Email service pro-viders have ways of filtering genuine messages from spam. However, some unwanted messages may still make their way into your main folder. There are also lots of different software programs you can use to help filter out spam.

No matter how many tools you use to block spam, it’s always good to be able to recognise it. Delete these emails, keep your details to yourself and don’t hand over anything to anyone you don’t know or can’t trust.

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The majority of the world’s population are connected to the internet. We use the world wide web for a growing number of purposes, whether it’s for work or leisure, communications or commerce. Most of the time, when you go online you shouldn’t encounter any issues. However, the internet isn’t completely safe and secure – there’s harmful content, there are dodgy sites and there people trying to commit criminal acts, such as theft and fraud.

Here at iLOOKBOTHWAYS, our goal is to make the internet a safer, more reliable place for everyone. In this post, we’ll go over some general dos and don’ts about using the internet safely. First, we’ll look at some of its dangers.

Dangers of the Internet

As great as the internet is, it’s not without its flaws. There are many things about it that can be harmful, upsetting, offensive or destructive to people. Below are some of the more common online dangers:

• Cyberbullying. This is when people get bullied online through messaging platforms and social media sites. Bullies send harmful messages, make private information public and can encourage others to target their victim.
• Grooming. This is most common with children, though it can happen in adults too. A groomer contacts someone, builds up a relationship with them, then encourages their ‘friend’ to do things such as meeting up and performing sexual acts.
• Scams. There are many types of online scams, most of which involve a person being tricked into giving up sensitive details, such as passwords or bank card information. Some scammers even attempt to get people to hand money over to them.
• Extreme content. People using the internet can be exposed to extreme content, such as pornographic material, violent/graphic images or written content that expresses extreme views.
• Privacy. Personal details that you give to a website may end up getting passed on to others and could be used against you. Photos and videos can also be compromised.
• Identity Theft. This is where someone acquires your personal details and pretends to be you by using these details without your permission. More often than not, identity theft is carried out to commit crimes; the idea is that if it appears you have committed the crime, the actual perpetrator escapes punishment.
• Blackmailing. Someone may obtain sensitive details or data and blackmail you into handing over something (usually money) so that your details don’t get publicly released.
• Mental Health. The internet can be addictive. We typically spend hours and hours every day online and internet addiction has been classed as a real psychological condition. Spending too much time online can have a negative impact on a person’s mental health, as well as on their physical wellbeing.

Anyone can be a victim of internet crime. While children and the elderly are seen as most vulnera-ble, anyone else can easily become a target. Some dangers, such as grooming, are long-term, while others, such as scams, are short-term or near-instant.

Using the Internet Safely

We don’t want you to be put off using the internet, despite its many dangers. What we want is for you to be able to use the internet safely and to avoid these dangers, which, thankfully, is easy enough to do.

The most important thing is that you’re aware of the potential dangers associated with going online. As you can see from above, there are quite a few, but don’t let them scare you: the internet is still very safe and secure. So long as you know what to look out for, you should be able to have a safe internet experience. You may still encounter some dangers – it’s impossible to avoid them all – but as long as you can identify them, you should be able to ignore them and not let them become a major issue.

You should also make sure you’re sensible whenever you’re online. Think about what you’re doing and what consequences, if any, your actions may have, whether they affect you yourself, or someone else. Also, make sure you’re careful with things such as personal details and money, as these can be valuable to criminals and can be easily compromised if you’re not careful. When it comes to uploading content online, it’s always best to be selective and to think about what you’re posting before you post it. What’s really scary is that things you posted months ago, or even years ago, can be found by people and used against you.

If you have any concerns about being safe online, we’re here to help. Don’t hesitate to get in touch and make sure you look around our site, as we have plenty of other pages on various topics to do with online safety. We’re very experienced in this field and know what we’re talking about; we’re here to help you out and make your internet experience as safe as can be.

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Welcome to iLookBothWays! If you’re after some tips and advice on how to be safer online, you’ve come to the right place. The goal of this site is to provide you with all the information and resources you need to avoid things like scams, fraud and hacking when surfing the web. We know that the internet can be a dangerous place and it’s our mission to make it as safe as possible for everyone.

Many of us use the internet in our everyday lives, whether it’s for work, shopping, communicating with others, keeping up with the news or just general browsing. It’s become a vital tool that many of us rely on, and that’s why it should be safe for everyone. It’s hard to imagine 21st century life with-out it.

Unfortunately, there will always be people trying to use the internet to commit crimes, from carrying out scams, to stealing identities and having sensitive information compromised. What’s encouraging is that there is always a ton of work being done to make the internet as safe and secure as possible for everyone. There are all sorts of companies that produce security software that protects digital assets such as money and data. The biggest tech companies constantly come up with new soft-ware and protocols that offer users as much protection as possible.

Generally speaking, the internet is very safe. Whenever you go online, the chances are that nothing untoward will happen. However, it’s still worth staying alert and looking out for anything suspicious. What trips many people up is that something that’s actually harmful can look completely ordinary. Here at iLookBothWays, we want to educate people on how scams and fraud are committed, so you can tell whether something you come across online is potentially harmful or not.

What to Expect?

So what will you find on our site? Head to the About Us page to learn a little bit more about who we are and what our history is. We also have some blog posts covering a range of topics to do with internet security and staying safe while online. Our site is designed to be a useful resource for any-one who wants to improve their online safety. Spend some time here and you’ll no doubt pick up some handy tips and information that can help you better protect yourself.

With iLookBothWays, the internet can be a much safer place for you. Just read some of the infor-mation on our site to find out how you can navigate the internet in and how to tell whether a sit is reliable and trustworthy or not. What’s great about the help and resources we offer on our site is that they’re very easy to understand and follow. You don’t have to be a genius to understand how you can make your web browsing safer – absolutely anyone can visit our site and benefit from the inter-net safety support we offer.

If you’ve been the victim of some online scam before, or if you’ve never had a problem but want to safeguard your device and details from being compromised, you’ll no doubt find our site useful. We regularly update it and are always looking out for the latest stories in internet safety. Stick with us and we’ll show you how to make the internet a much safer and more trustworthy place.

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