Here today is Kelly Masada, who will give a presentation on digital citizenship.
Hi everybody.
This is going to be a very interactive conversation, so please do not be shy about raising hands, offering commentary, whatever you need to do.
Just no heckling, please, from the back of the room.
Before I get started in this talk, I want to share with you a little story that I discovered yesterday.
It actually was an aha moment.
Back when I was eight years old, I realized I had this intense fear of flying.
And yesterday when I was on the plane coming in from Boston, I noticed that I was unusually calm, and that I was actually looking out the window, enjoying the scenery as the plane was taking off.
And I think what the aha for me was, was that after years of being targeted by a cyber stalker, and being tormented in that space, that my fear of flying no longer exists.
So if there's any upside to this situation that I've been enduring, it's that my fear of flying is now gone.
So our conversation today will be based on my journey as a target of cyber stalking, the experiences that I had working with different agencies, and some discoveries I found along the way.
So again, please interrupt me with any questions.
I'm sure some of what I'll share today won't surprise you, but I hope you'll take away some ideas, some insights of things that you'll be able to use in the work going forward.
I also hope that you'll be able to now have a face of a cyber stalking victim, and hopefully you'll be able to get something from that when you're thinking about risk assessment, because it really does affect people's lives.
Digital citizenship, information security, information assurance, data privacy.
These are huge issues.
We hear them in the news all the time.
You're living and breathing it here at Purdue.
Much of what we don't know, though, is still underwater.
We're really just at the tip of the iceberg with all of these issues.
But if we take a moment, maybe shift our thinking a little bit, and shine some light under the water, we might be able to discover some new things.
So in today's conversation, I'm going to give you a cautionary tale.
It won't be that scary, I promise.
Nothing like the Blair Witch Project, or I forget what new movie's out, Black Widow, or something crazy.
I'm going to give you what I did toward a path for answers.
And what I found is a very similar path that other victims have also taken.
I'm going to share with you some of the discoveries that I found when I pulled back the screen, and really started taking a look at the issues around cyberstalking and the profound effects on people's lives.
Then, of course, I want to leave you with some things to hopefully do.
You know, there's lots of times where we can sit in rooms and talk and talk and talk, but I'm hoping that you walk away with some inspiration and some new ideas to go and do, go and act.
So let's get started.
This is my journey.
In 2007, I was working in Silicon Valley at an exciting time in the internet.
A colleague in my office was friendly and took a lot of interest in me, and we developed a friendship.
Looking back in 2007, there are lots of things about his personality that I just dismiss as weird quirks.
You know, you just kind of have that feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Looking back, I now can see that those were things that I probably should have paid attention to.
In 2008, my company had a layoff, which actually was a great opportunity for me to sever ties with this person and move on to my next company.
But this person, as you can imagine, persisted in my life.
He became a nuisance, an annoyance, someone I just couldn't shake off.
At this time, it was just sad and pathetic.
Over the course of the year, I kept telling myself, he'll get bored, he'll find somebody new.
When he got threatening or irrational, I re-engaged.
I said, just calm down, we'll still be friends.
I did whatever I could do just to exit the friendship.
For me, I thought it was the best way to make a bad situation disappear.
And part of that was hitting the delete key.
Every instant message, every email, everything in the year of 2008, delete, delete, delete.
Then, in 2009, this nuisance went to becoming scary.
He decided to go anonymous, creating an identity of a concerned friend.
Somebody who didn't want to be identified.
A friend with information about my private life.
And somebody who was really interested in sharing those details, whether true or false.
These disgusting and angry and sexual in nature emails started appearing in inboxes of my family, my friends, friends of friends, the president of the company I was working for, and some people I barely even knew.
It wasn't just me, it was anybody that was in my circle.
By the end of 2009, after harassing me and anyone around me through emails and text messages and phone calls, he launched a campaign using my deactivated Facebook account.
What had happened, does everybody remember in 2009 when Facebook had the upgrade or the shift over and everybody's privacy settings went back to the default for a short period of time?
Well, I suspect that that was his opportunity to download my friends list.
Because prior to that, he was blocked.
So at the end of 2009, he launched a campaign.
In over a 30 day period, every day, I would get messages from friends or family.
I got this mysterious message through Facebook from Jane Smith.
What's going on?
After the Facebook campaign, I have to tell you, it was a pretty low point in my life.
I wasn't sure where to turn.
Every single disgusting, nasty email I got, or that was forwarded to me, was passed on to the abuse lines at Facebook, at Google, at Yahoo, wherever his source came from.
But in January, I received a call from one of my friends, who's an attorney in San Francisco, who had received one of these messages.
She shouted on the other end of the phone, she said, you do not have to take this.
You are a victim.
He should not get away with it.
Stand up.
Prior to hearing those words, I just felt that because it was happening through the internet, and because I knew this person, I had to live with it.
I just had to keep hitting the delete key.
Recalibrating my mindset from being somebody just taking it, to being a victim was a huge shift.
Now I could take action.
So I started to reach out.
In a few minutes, I'll give you some details about exactly who I contacted.
Throughout the year of 2010, messages were very timely.
Mother's Day.
My birthday.
It was an awful time, because not only was he impacting me, he was impacting my children and their community.
It was like, every time a message came through, it felt like somebody was taking a bat to my knees.
Just wiped me out.
By 2011, I decided, enough.
I wasn't ready to hear one more story on the media about a kid being cyberbullied and committing suicide.
That was a huge turning point for me, because not only was it tragic in just the frame of that, but I knew how they felt.
I knew what it was like to be stalked by somebody.
So I said, enough.
I'm done.
I'm stepping out.
Some of the people I asked for help from had no idea what to do.
So it was up to me to figure out the system, figure out the technology, figure out the law, figure out the victim support.
I made the conscious decision not to let a faceless, pathetic coward torment me or my children any longer.
And I was not going to stoop to his level.
There are people in my life that said, set up a fake account of your own.
Contact his spouse.
Contact his employer.
Fight back.
That's how I was told to fight back in 2011.
This is last year, guys.
I decided I wanted to speak out.
I wanted to help people understand what it looks like, what it feels like, and the path I took in this journey, because there's still a lot of work to be done.
Today, I'm still here.
I didn't let the bus hit me across the street, even though a few times I walked across my street thinking, just drive a little bit faster.
I'm still smiling.
I'm speaking.
I'm working.
I'm being a mom.
All working to find an end to this chapter in my life.
Does anybody recognize this band at all?
Okay, good.
I thought I was totally dating myself.
Let me tell you what it's like to live behind the mask, and the reason why I love this photograph so much...
I wasn't a huge KISS fan, but my brother was.
But what I loved about this photograph is that these guys are standing there in the business suits.
They look like regular people, right?
But they have their face makeup on.
We didn't know for years who these guys were.
My life was like living behind that mask for three years, where no one could see the effects of what it meant to be stalked this way.
Many people didn't understand it, and so I just tried to live as if everything was okay.
You get up, you have breakfast, you take your kids to school, you work, waiting for the next email, waiting for the next text message.
Unlike physical stalkers, where you can point to the guy sitting in the car across the street, I carry my stalker in my bag, through my device, through my smartphone.
Standing in the grocery store, just randomly checking my email to all of a sudden get another message.
Took the wind out of my sails.
I also, during this time, it was my responsibility to prove who this was.
I knew who it was.
I had all the evidence.
But the systems that are in place right now still puts the ownership on the victim to prove who is on the other end of that device.
I had to learn what to do.
I'm pretty technically savvy, but I'm not a technology professional, like all of you.
But I had to learn about the anonymizing tools.
I had to learn about the statutes and the law around stalking versus cyber-stalking.
I had to understand where to go each and every day.
It's unfortunate that with the beauty and the accessibility of the internet, that sometimes it makes you feel as though you're hunted.
It's not illegal for somebody to do a Google search on your name, or admit to doing Google searches on your name.
It's not illegal for somebody to troll around your LinkedIn account.
For a victim, when you see your attacker's face show up, it's damaging.
It affects you.
It feels like you're being hunted.
But the biggest question is, when is it going to stop?
And how far is it going to go?
Well, you know, some stalkers, they just kind of move on.
Some stalkers go to the next level and go to physical abuse.
Some of them fade into the sunset.
Who knows?
In addition, some stalkers just prey on one person.
They pick one person, it's one-to-one.
For me, it impacts my children.
My family.
Not just impacts, these are people who are getting direct contact with this person.
Friends.
Friends of friends.
Oh my god, my babysitter from like six years ago got one of these messages.
Work.
My employer.
Groups.
Social groups.
Professional groups.
Acquaintances.
People I don't even know.
Because in some cases, you would reach out to people a few layers down in somebody's Facebook friends list.
Thinking, oh, you must know Kelly.
One of the funniest ones, though, talking about friends, that this was a nice chuckle during this whole horrible nightmare, was that he reached out to a friend of mine who's gay.
With a message that says, you must be sleeping with Kelly.
He said, well, you know, she's not really my type.
And then the internet.
The Google search.
My name, my reputation, my life was crafted by somebody with such malicious intent all over the internet.
Here are a few examples of the emails that were created to slander me.
And as you can imagine, when you get a message that is from somebody's name that you recognize, most likely you're going to open it, right?
My family and friends had no idea until they opened up these messages.
But amazing how easy and accessible it is to anonymize our identities on the internet.
And this is a huge debate, don't get me wrong.
I understand that there are pros and cons to anonymity on the internet.
Where I sit, when tools such as Tor are being used to harass and defame somebody, you have to step back and say, enough is enough.
People who do this are like actors in the scene, and they create these personas, and they create these worlds of their own versions of the truth.
And there's little fear of being identified.
So what do we do from here?
Here's the path of answers.
So internet providers, okay.
Google, Yahoo, of course.
Windowslive.com, Microsoft company.
Interesting.
Do you realize that in order to report abuse to them, you have to write a paper letter?
I reported abuse to them, they sent me back to their abuse email, sent back a response.
We need you to put this in the writing and send it to us in the mail.
Here's the address.
Other accounts that were opened up.
Facebook was really challenging.
I got zero responses from Facebook.
Even after an account was opened in my name.
Law enforcement.
I filed a police report in 2009, I filed another report in 2010, and I had a restraining order for a short period of time before it was vacated.
I tried.
I went in with my binder of evidence and said, help me.
Attorneys of all shapes, sizes, places, everything you can imagine.
And the responses from the attorneys were varied.
You know, Kelly, you're just a woman.
Hang one single person.
And we've got bigger issues on the internet.
Nobody's going to take your case.
Until I found an amazing technology attorney who helped me move things along.
Technology experts.
So again, because everything was coming through the internet and I felt like I knew nothing.
I didn't know what Tor was three years ago.
I had no idea that you could erase your digital fingerprints.
So I reached out to anybody who would talk to me.
Not always just to help, but I wanted to learn.
This is what's so fascinating to me about the work that you're doing at Purdue.
Really, this is so exciting, so keep it up.
Because I wish I knew what you knew about technology.
Online abuse resources.
There's a few.
If by some chance, and I hope this never enters your world, if you have a situation, haltabuse.org is one of the best online resources for lay people.
People who don't know the technology, because they will guide victims through how to expand headers, how to reach out to report abuse, things like that.
So haltabuse.org, by any way if you need help or know somebody, please reach out to them.
Mental health professionals.
I would reach out to people and say, you know, I think I'm really losing my mind here.
They said to me, we do not know how to deal with cyberstalkers or victims of cyberstalking, so we can't help you.
I didn't fit in that box.
If you're physically assaulted, there's all sorts of resources, and there's all sorts of laws, and there's protocols to follow.
You get a checklist.
If you're a victim in a cyberstalking situation, you don't have that.
And victim support services.
I wanted to find people like me.
Right?
You want to talk to somebody else who understands where you're coming from.
As I mentioned a few minutes ago, 2010 was really the kick in the head for me.
That I had to wake up and say, cyberstalking is a crime.
So I decided to take a different course of action and educate myself, and let me share with you some of the things that I discovered.
Cyberstalkers, typically middle to upper class.
Caucasian men.
Stable employment.
Firm ties to their community.
And have a decent level of computer efficiency.
What I found so interesting about this, is that throughout my journey, not once did anybody ask me what he looks like.
Everything is through the technology.
And that's where everybody's focus would stay.
So I was always interested in looking at, wow, let's put a face to a cyberstalker.
Maybe then would somebody listen.
But it's also interesting how people really do live behind these masks.
They keep their online selves so hidden, and they're so afraid to come out of the dark.
As reachers are still gathering evidence, but in some cases, cyberstalkers are also known to have prior criminal records, history of substance abuse, and personality disorders, such as antisocial, narcissistic, with sociopath tendencies.
A lot to say in one breath.
Pretty much this type of person has an utter disregard for the rights of others, and the rules of society.
They seldom show anxiety and don't feel any guilt.
They only care about fulfilling their own needs and desires.
They're selfish to the extreme.
Cyberstalkers tend to be emotionally distant, but they look and behave like anybody else.
I was working with some kids at a high school, and they said to me, would you recognize him if he was walking down the street?
I said, absolutely.
I said, but you wouldn't, because he looks like everybody else.
Back in the day, when physical stalkers were put on the news and paraded as these horrible monsters, which some of them were, they looked all disheveled and scary, and you had that fear just by looking at their face.
This is not the case.
They get to sit behind these machines, and therefore, in some cases, they look just like everybody else.
But the problem comes when they have these disorders, and then they have an obsession or an infatuation.
And when the person that they're infatuated with doesn't respond or doesn't clear up the perceptions about the relationship, that's when things get ugly.
I had no idea prior to my research that there were actually types of cyberstalkers.
So here are a few.
The vindictive cyberstalker.
This is the one that's most threatening.
They typically use spiteful tactics, excessive spamming, email bombing, identity theft.
They have a high level of computer skills, combined with some indications of mental illness.
The composed cyberstalker.
Calm, poised, unruffled.
All they want to do is cause stress in somebody else's life.
The intimate cyberstalker, you can probably guess.
That's somebody who wants a relationship with their victim.
And last, this one's pretty popular.
I've read several cases where groups of people, sometimes just two, in one case a husband and wife team, teamed up to stalk one individual.
So there's now this frame, after years of sitting in this space and saying, okay, now I went from not being a victim to understanding that I'm a victim to wanting to educate myself.
Now I have this frame of who these people are.
But where does the law fit in?
So that was my next step.
First I'm like, let's figure out this landscape, now let's figure out the law.
Navigating the rights as a victim of cyberstalking is very different and not as easy as for physical victims.
Just a few years ago, legal professionals that I was talking to were baffled.
They would say to me, okay, where does he live?
Where do you live?
Hmm, that's not the same state, so is it local?
Is it federal?
What if the emails are transmitted outside the United States?
Does that make it an international crime?
Lots of people had no idea where to go with this.
And when I started to dive in more, I realized, I thought stalking laws had been in place for, well, quite longer than the 80s.
Because I still remember the 80s.
But the stalking laws only went into effect...
In 1980, John Lennon was assassinated, and that's when some of the awareness of stalking really came to play.
In 1981, President Reagan was... there was an assassination attempt on his life by John Hinckley, hopefully you guys have read about it.
And then in 1989, an actress in Hollywood was stalked for two years by this guy, and he eventually killed her.
That's when the laws came into effect, 1989.
For cyber-stalking, though, the Violence Against Women Act of 2000 was the first time that cyber-stalking was added to the federal statutes and became a federal crime.
The E-Personation Laws in 2010 came into effect in California, New York, and Texas.
And I want to read a little bit of this statute, so forgive me for getting into some legal jargon, but I think it's important for you to understand how complex it is from the legal side.
Senate Bill 411 makes it unlawful to knowingly, without consent, credibly impersonate another person through or on an internet website or by other electronic means with the intent to harm, intimidate, threaten, or defraud another person.
And an impersonation is credible when another person would reasonably believe, or did reasonably believe, that the defendant was or is a person who they impersonated.
So you have to know who you're impersonating, and you have to use electronic means.
It doesn't mean that you can't get online and make an account under the name of Jane Smith.
It just means you can't do it under the name of Kelly Masada anymore.
What's also interesting about this law is that in Texas, it only applies to social networking sites.
So if you set up an email account in Texas, it's okay.
But if you set up a Facebook account, then you fall under the statute.
We have cyberstalking laws in 47 states.
We're getting there, slowly.
The international community is also coming up to speed.
In Australia, the United Kingdom, actually, as far as all the research and, I don't want to say noise, but the conversation around stalking, cyberstalking, there's a lot going on in the United Kingdom, and they have a lot of people in advocacy roles.
Spain as well.
I have no idea why Spain.
It just came up in the research.
Here's a target's view of working with law enforcement.
For targets, we want to hit that delete key and make it all go away.
Right?
Just hit it, it'll disappear.
So even for us, it was like, how do you know when it's serious enough to report?
Do you guys realize that most victims of cyberstalking or cyberbullying, it takes 3 to 18 months for them to report abuse?
Think of how much information is lost in that wait period.
For me, I lost a year.
I lost 2008.
Because I didn't know if it was serious enough.
I didn't know it was a crime.
The fear of not being taken seriously, I think that cuts across many different crimes and victims.
And frankly, it's interesting that if you don't have bruises to show, or if you can't point to the person sitting across the street, how hard it is for people to take you seriously.
And being told, well, wait until he shows up and then we can do something.
I'm like, but he's showing up on my computer.
Can you see it?
Just go the silver route.
Get into the he said, she said conversation because it's not criminal.
The technology is too advanced.
There's amazing, talented, committed people in our criminal justice system.
They're fantastic.
But there are some limitations to the amount of knowledge that they have around digital forensics and cyber crimes.
So what they do is that if somebody comes to them, they do the best they can and then they have to kind of put you aside.
And then you're also left with, you might have to just live with it.
This is also linked to very popular commentary.
Number one thing.
Well, okay, this is really number two.
Number one thing if you're ever cyber stalked is to respond, tell the person to stop and then stop any communication, right?
Then go change your email.
Other people said, just don't go online.
How many of you can imagine a life not on the Internet ever?
Is it possible?
Yes?
No?
I tried.
For a few months.
Drove me a little bit crazy because everybody communicates online.
People were calling me a ghost.
People were calling me on the phone.
Where are you?
Ignore it and he or she will go away.
It's very popular.
If somebody was assaulted, you would not tell them just to ignore it.
How can it really hurt you?
It's just an email.
What about those kids?
Phoebe Prince in Massachusetts.
Where the bullying switched from being online to being at school.
How can it really hurt you?
What did you do?
What were you wearing when you went to work?
You must have smiled too much.
You must have said hi.
What did you do?
Attack back.
This is very, very popular.
These are where the kids are struggling.
Because if kids are being bullied, the first thing they want to do is go punch the kid back, right?
If they're being bullied on the Internet, the first thing they want to do is send a nasty text message back to them.
Attack back.
I chose not to attack back.
I chose to figure out the system.
Because I wanted to protect myself and my children.
And I knew it was a crime.
This was an interesting one.
He or she is going to do it to me because I know you.
People are afraid.
Very smart people can still be afraid of the anonymous unknown of the Internet.
Okay?
Some people don't want to be connected to targets because they think he will get them.
Rational, irrational.
These are the popular commentary from people, professional and non-professional.
Stalking victims over the past years have started to step out.
Thank goodness.
It feels very shameful and there's a lot of fear around it.
But working with researchers, we're now able to determine that many victims and survivors of cyber-stalking suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Which include changes in sleep and eating habits, persistent nightmares, hyper-vigilance, lots of anxiety, a sense of helplessness and fear.
The sense of helplessness in this case is really intensified because we don't have a protocol.
And because there's so much out there on the Internet.
Just Google cyber-stalking.
There's a lot.
How do you weed through it to figure out what to do next?
And the fear of when is it going to stop?
So let's talk about what we can do.
The past is the past, right?
Not really, because it's on the Internet.
The past is forever.
But here are some opportunities and I hope you guys will think about taking some of these on.
Or at least, you know, thinking about them enough to maybe pay it forward.
Cyber-stalking is a growing problem that transcends international boundaries.
And as the media gets a field day with what happens to kids when they're cyber-bullied, we need to start doing some stuff.
You're doing wonderful work in the technology end of things.
And I'm not even going to try and go down that road because I would make a fool out of myself up here in front of all of you.
So I'm going to leave that amazing work to all of you.
We're going to talk a little bit about some training ideas for law enforcement.
Creating responsible digital citizenship.
Helping navigate kids in the digital world.
Redefining the systems.
And adding more voices to the conversation.
So, again, feel free just to raise your hand and ask questions if anything is of interest.
What to do for law enforcement.
There's barriers to break down.
My experience with working with law enforcement is that they're amazing people.
But they're very accustomed to the human-human interaction.
So whenever you add the technology between the two people involved in the situation, they get overwhelmed.
And in some respects, it doesn't feel real.
So there's opportunities.
There's lots of great work happening in digital forensics.
And I know lots of law enforcement agencies do have teams dedicated to digital forensics.
But what I would like to suggest in this area is to bring it down to the front-line officers.
Teach them what an expanded header is.
It's not that difficult.
Teach them the human side.
That the effects of cyber-stalking or cyber-bullying or cyber-harassment are just as real as somebody came up and punched you in the face.
And also teach and train them on the limitations.
We don't have it all figured out on the internet.
We still have lots of questions about anonymity and ethics and all of this stuff.
We need to at least be honest with what the limitations are.
Next is to create responsible digital citizenship.
That's a mouthful.
What do you think it means?
Somebody give me an example.
Come on.
Ideas?
Don't make me call on somebody.
You live and work in this space, you guys.
What does it mean for you on a regular basis to be responsible digital citizens?
The silence is deafening.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
In certain spaces, there's either an enforced comment policy or a sort of a user-moderated space.
But I don't know how that would apply to the entire internet because it's obviously not under single control anywhere.
How does it apply to you as a person?
Well, I can participate in the group moderation by some of the mechanisms provided by the website.
Either upvoting or downvoting or even using my words to tell somebody, you know, this is not okay what you're doing.
Or, you know, as a moderator of a space that I'm in control of, I can filter the incoming content or also just let people know, you know, that's not what we do here.
You're an upstander, which is fantastic.
Thank you for offering that.
And it's about being present.
What we have online is forever.
I'll never be able to completely erase a Google search.
Understanding the power of the written word.
I think this is really diminished in some cases.
When you send somebody a text or you post something on a chat group or on Facebook, people... it's not like the spoken word.
You know, when you say something to somebody, they hear it, they process it, and then you move on.
Some people will play it back in their heads.
But when you have the written word in front of you, you get to read it again and again and again and again and again.
It has a different level of impact.
Even in a text message.
How many of you, and I don't think they can show your hands on camera, how many of you have sent a text message you wish you could have taken back?
Hands, please.
No, come on, you guys are chicken.
Maybe an email.
It's human nature to make mistakes, right?
What we need to realize, and we're being responsible digital citizens, is that the written word really does have more power than you think.
And owning your online self.
I had a high school student say to me, in a digital citizenship class I was doing, he said, Oh, if I want to go to a party, I'm going to post my pictures up on Facebook.
And if an employer doesn't want to hire me because I'm not having fun, then I don't want to work for them.
I said, it's not about having fun.
It's about having the good sense of where to put that fun.
And where to display it.
And about owning your online selves.
So I challenge you all to take a step back once in a while.
Think about your digital citizenship.
Because yours is going to be far longer than mine.
I have at least a few decades under my belt without the technology.
You guys have to live with Facebook timeline.
Kids.
They're coming up the ranks.
Kids don't have, and many of you probably don't remember, telephones with cords attached.
Long cords.
When you got a phone call, you'd have to run from your bedroom all the way down to the kitchen to grab the phone before your parents.
Go around the corner and pull the cord so tightly so somebody couldn't hear you talking.
Some of you, and kids, my children, don't have that sense of the world anymore.
Their world is technology.
So I find that it's my responsibility, the responsibility of all of us, to help them figure it out.
I do not want to see another report of any kid committing suicide because of cyberbullying.
It's not necessary, and I'm done with it.
And whatever I can do to help that not happen again, I will do.
In the meantime, we have to know their worlds.
And for some of us, that's a conscious effort, because we remember what it's like without it.
There's teaching moments.
I know you guys have, you know, lots of stuff going on here at Purdue, and you're very busy.
But if you go home and you're with a cousin or a friend or a kid that you know in your neighborhood, and you see them doing something really not so great on the internet, or doing something great, tell them about it.
Talk to them about the technology.
They need to learn.
Because you know what?
Some middle schoolers walk around like they know everything.
And we all know that middle schoolers do not know everything.
Use it as teaching moments.
But you are the best teachers.
Inspire innovation.
Not everything about the internet is, even though this talk is kind of heavy on the negative side, not everything is bad.
So even though I want kids to be aware and be safe and to be present with their digital selves, I want them to embrace the innovation and what's possible.
I remember not being able to have an iPhone.
Now I love that.
I don't know what I'd do not being able to read my horoscope every day in my hand.
It's fantastic.
And building responsibility and teaching them those critical thinking skills about being online.
We also have some opportunities of redefining the systems we live in.
Ethics online.
How do we manage how people are behaving online?
How do we govern it?
What gives somebody the right to say what he wants about me?
I'm not a public figure.
I'm not in the spotlight asking for fame.
I'm a woman with children working and living in the Boston area.
We really need to think about this more carefully, you guys.
It's really important and it's a big black hole that a lot of us are going to be falling into.
Anonymity.
I sit on both sides of the fence on this one.
I was sharing at lunch with some of your colleagues that anonymity is what's making this nightmare continue in my life.
But yet I have children that I want to be safe on the internet.
So I want them to protect and hide their identities a little bit.
Even if they're just on barbie.com.
So where do you sit in the question of anonymity?
And again, who's going to govern it?
Do we need somebody policing the internet to figure this out?
Freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech on the internet.
How do we do it?
How do we embrace all the amazing, wonderful things about living in a country and living in a society where we can say whatever we want?
Because we're protected.
But when you can't fight back through the internet and when you can't erase somebody else's words about you, how do you deal with those situations?
Victim's Protocol.
This is something that we can do now.
And I'm hoping that in your work you'll think about this a little bit more.
Because Victim's Protocol not only affects just individuals, but it also affects companies.
Because if companies have people in their organizations that are harassed or victimized, it impacts the information security structure, you guys.
Right?
And it also impacts productivity and other issues in an organization.
So this isn't just something that I live with when I go home.
But we can do something.
We can give a checklist.
We can give victims more answers than just change your email.
Offline support.
Everything is on the internet.
Right?
Where do you think a cyber-stalking victim wants to go for help?
The internet?
Oh boy, that's exactly where I'd want to go.
Sometimes I believe that we need to step back to some old ways of doing things and find some offline support for people who are harassed or victimized on the internet.
This is something that I'm very passionate about and hopefully we'll be able to get to.
And the last thing.
More voices in the conversation.
There's lots of pockets of people talking.
There's people in Washington talking.
You're doing great work here at Purdue.
There's social sciences folks talking.
There's research being done.
There's chief information security officers doing great things.
We all need to come to the table.
There has to be a way to start collaborating to figuring out some of these questions.
And some of it is not just talking and talking and talking.
It's also building awareness.
Being aware that this exists is the first step.
So for a being and others like me, hitting the delete key didn't work.
So I went to the system to look for help.
I really hope that this perspective on information security resonated with you guys in some way.
I hope that you'll continue your work and your research in this space.
But also broaden your scope to understand that there's people on both sides of those devices.
And that really some of the really nasty stuff has profound impacts on people's lives.
So I don't know how many of you know Florence and the Machine.
Hopefully a lot.
This is their new song, but I love the quote, It's hard to dance with the devil on your back, so shake him off.
Thank you so much for inviting me to share my experiences and lend my voice to the conversation.
I'm so delighted to be here at Purdue.
You have a beautiful campus and amazing faculty.
Questions?
Comments?
Your own thoughts?
Lorraine?
I never really thought about the reasons why we call this cyber-stalking.
Rather than categorizing it as cyber-bullying, cyber-harassment.
A lot of times when we think about stalking, I think the threat is defined when the action happens.
When we think about stalking, we think it's potential for action.
But perhaps the threat hasn't happened yet.
Have you thought about that at all?
And whether or not that gives you greater power by actually calling it bullying?
You alluded to that in the beginning.
Or anything like that?
The differences are actually quite interesting.
And I have.
I dance around those terms quite a bit.
Cyber-bullying is kid-to-kid in the quote definitions.
Or adults impersonating kids to kids.
But it's the kid part of the equation.
Cyber-harassment, you're right, is more of the nuisance.
It's just a harassing element.
When you get into cyber-stalking, you're talking about threats.
Threats can now come at different levels because of the accessibility on the internet.
Somebody can threaten you by making it impossible for you to find a job and earn an income for your family.
Somebody can threaten, you know, exposing you in ways that are inappropriate.
So the threat, when it's under the cyber-stalking realm, from my understanding, goes along those lines.
It doesn't have to just be the physical.
It's also the persistence.
Is what I've discovered.
Is that harassment tends to be a shorter duration and stalking is a much longer duration.
During our conversation at lunch, you mentioned Tor and actually mentioned Tor a couple of times here.
Can you tell us a little bit more about this part of the story?
How you found out about the stalker news floor and where that led you?
And you mentioned that you talked with the founder of Tor.
Yes.
I found that part of the story fascinating.
I did.
There's been a few times in this journey that I got so fed up, I just picked up the phone and made a few phone calls to see if people would talk to me.
And one of them was the founder of Tor, because his phone number's on the website.
So I just called.
And it happens he's outside the Boston area.
The way I discovered that Tor was being used was that in early 2010, I had sought out some help through one of the law enforcement agencies.
And their digital forensics team alerted me to the tool that was being used.
From email?
Exactly .
Whatever address?
Exactly.
And at that time, it was Greek to me.
You know, they probably shared with me a lot of details that you would have understood, but were totally Greek.
So when they got to that point and said, it's out of our hands, we can't do anything?
They did.
They hit a very large roadblock in the process.
Why didn't they call Tor themselves and ask?
I have no knowledge of that.
They didn't indicate that to me.
But because efforts seemed to halt at that moment, I felt that I needed to take things back into my hands and start educating myself.
And frankly, Tor's fascinating.
Aside from my situation, it's a pretty interesting tool.
For good and for bad.
We need to use those powerful tools for the power of good and not the power of evil.
But Tor is only one of many anonymizing tools, as you know.
But it's frustrating when you're told by experts that the tool is more advanced than their capabilities.
What do you do with that information?
Hi, I saw your to-do list.
I'm sorry?
I saw your to-do list.
You listed the technology as the first.
Do you really think the technology is the solver of this cyber-harassment problem?
Or do you think we should go to legislation?
Well, I believe that the technology has to come to the forefront of everything right now.
Even with the legislation.
But it's so delayed because I think the education in the legislation isn't quite there yet.
I mean, there's a huge language barrier between technologists and lay people.
Some of what you all talk about on a regular basis is completely Greek to the rest of us.
So bridging those gaps of helping legislatures understand what you really mean when you're talking in technology terms I think is an important step as well.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Please.
You said that your stalker had some personality quirks.
Can you talk about that or give an example of a quirk?
I mean , it could be important to the psychology of the stalker maybe so that people can pick up on horny signs and then try to prevent it rather than deal with it as it's going on.
It's an excellent question, really.
Thank you.
The first thing I want to say to that is that we all are built with this incredible gift of intuition.
And when your intuition tells you that something's not right, it's most likely not right.
So first follow your intuition.
Then you can look at certain personality traits.
And the things that I saw were attention to details that didn't seem to matter very much.
A higher level of interest than what was really quite normal.
Some other things, too, that I will reserve commentary on.
But my main message is that if you feel if any relationship or any situation doesn't feel right, listen to your intuition.
I wish I had.
I think the course of my life would be very different.
And by the way, I would choose not to do this if I could.
But I feel compelled to share this perspective.
And plus, I love the technology that you all are working on, so it's fascinating.
What else can I answer?
I'm happy to talk offline, too.
Thank you all very, very much for coming.
I appreciate it very much.