What Can You Do If Someone Is Harassing You Online?

Courtney H: What’s the best thing to do if someone says something to you online and makes you feel uncomfortable, and won’t leave you alone?JW: My best advice is to visit The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website, cybertipline.com. The National Center has done an extraordinary job of providing information about online safety. Its Netsmartz program teaches three important rules:

• I will tell an adult I trust if anything makes me feel scared, uncomfortable, or confused.
• I will ask my parents or guardian before sharing my personal information.
• I won’t meet in person with anyone I have first “met” online.

Through cybertipline.com, you can also report people who are involved in the exploitation of children online. Exploitation includes obvious crimes, like child pornography, but also means sending inappropriate material to a child over the Internet, or even creating a domain name that tries to trick minors about the predator’s true age or identity.