Following on from attending a meeting for parents at the Village Primary School about Cyber Bullying we have decided to post our own page of advice and tips for both parents and children.

There are a number of ways children and in some cases adults are bullied on the internet or by phone.

If your being bullied then the first thing to do is take a step back, think about what has been said or done,do not reply. Tell someone ,your parents ,teacher or an adult who you can talk to and show them the messages. Block the offending person or persons so you dont get any more messages.

Text\Video Messaging

• Don't reply to text messaging (also known as SMS or EMS) or video messaging (also known as MMS) that is abusive  or obscene. Your mobile service provider e.g. Orange,  T-Mobile, Vodaphone  etc. should have a number that you can ring to report abusive  messaging.  Try their web sites for details.
• Be careful who you give phone numbers to and don't leave  your mobile  lying around when you are not there

Chatrooms or Instant Messaging (IM)

• Do not give out personal information
• Give yourself an alias that doesn't give out anything about your  age, gender or location
• Don't respond to abusive posting - ignore them or log off. If you  don't take time off and calm down you'll end up writing  something you'll  regret which will only make the situation worse
• Think about what you write - it is very easy for people to get  the wrong idea about what you write or how you write it

Email

• If you receive a nasty or abusive email (known as being flamed),don't reply. If it's from someone you think  you know,  like someone at school, they'll want some kind of reaction,  just like  they would if they were standing in front of you and bullying  you. Don't  give them the satisfaction of replying, and they'll probably  stop
• If they don't stop then you need to find out where the  email is coming  from. Using an email client like Outlook or Outlook Express,  clicking  the right mouse button over an email will reveal lots of  details about  where and who the email came from. You can then get your  parents to  contact the school or the service provider of the sender of  the email
• The email can also come from people that you don't know,  (known as spamming) - email addresses are fairly easy for  companies to  obtain on the internet, using software called email  harvesters. They  are also surprisingly easy for specialist computer programs to guess.  Under no circumstances should you reply to these types of  email, even  if they have a Click here and stop receiving this email link  - this will just confirm your email address as a real one. The individual  sending it can then sell or pass it on to other people and  you'll be  flooded with even more junk and abusive emails
• You can delete the emails, but if the situation becomes  serious,  you should save them or print them off so that, if you do need to take  action, you have some evidence
• Learn more about your email program from the Help menu -  you should  be able to find details of how you can create folders, email  filters  and folder routeing. This won't stop the emails but it can  help to shield  you from them

Web

• If the cyberbullying is on a school or community website,  do as you  would do if the bullying was face to face - tell someone like  your parents  or teachers
• If it's on a site that you don't know about, you have to do a bit  of research to find out who hosts the website. There is a good article  at Bullying  Online about general online safety, with a section on how  to get  more details on possible owners of the website.

Neighbourhood Police

Phone 302930