Cyber Law

Facebook.com now has over 350 million active members. With that many people interacting over the Internet it's obvious why so many cyber stalking cases take place over the Facebook social network system. But with so many instances of cyber stalking occurring everyday are the owners and managers of the popular social network helpful to their members is locating and identifying the cyber bullies? Unfortunately like all the est of the Internet giants they are not helpful at all. The standard line is that they will cooperate with law enforcement and comply with court orders and subpoenas served on the Custodian of Records.

It sort of becomes a catch 22. The police will sometimes say that they cannot open a case until you can identify the person stalking you and the ISPs or social networks will not release account holder or members information unless it's in compliance with a search warrant. The victim of the cyber stalking crime is once again victimized by this system of "pass the buck". In a civil litigation a lawyer will probably not take on a case unless you can identify the person you want to sue.

There is hope though. A victim of a Facebook stalker can turn to a private investigation that specializes in Internet investigations and locating and identifying people online. In the case of Facebook, most accounts will have an email address that is visible to other members. The email address used to open the Facebook account had to be active and working at the time the account was opened and the page was created. If that is the case the email address can be traced back to the owner using a standard reverse email search investigation.

If the email address is hidden from public view the private detective can still contact the Facebook page owner via the private messages system and can use a pretext to either trick the cyber stalker into revealing their identify or they can lure the stalker over to a pretext web site. These sites are created with features that can trap and trace a visitors identifying information. This information can be traced to the stalker or perhaps compared to identifying information about a person you suspect is the cyber stalker.

Once the investigation has been completed the investigator can reduce his findings to a report that is in acceptable form for the police to continue the investigation and make an arrest. So even if Facebook is not helpful in a cyber stalking investigation there are PIs that will help you. Of course it would be so much simpler if large social networks would just police their forums and keep things nice and safe and friendly however that is just not the case.