Has Cyberbullying Become an Epidemic in Schools, Workplaces and Businesses?

In Family Dispute Resolution, Workplace, Corporate Relations or Civil cases Mr. Simon Smith aka eVestigator explains that he has witnessed some of the worst behaviour that one could ever see, just for the purpose of attacking one’s character. "Many of my customers are in complex disputes and require my services to assist more with the strategy of fixing and finding correct online evidence or omissions done in malice by one of the parties that have misdirected them rather than the actual evidence itself", Mr. Smith said.

Take Family Dispute Resolution cases "gone wrong" for example. "This is just one area that I choose to devote my time to, but I do this for the children, as they are the ultimate losers in these cases. I often have cases where there are 2 or 3 intervention orders flying around, amongst conflicting family court orders. Also, dare I say, respectfully negligent or uninformed lawyers who have not helped the problem by failing to listen to client instructions, file documents, or protect their clients’ interests, or the ‘best interests of the child’ in many cases – some of which I might have resolved at the beginning." Being a Commonwealth Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner, "mediation is getting less favourable to mudslinging in this space", Mr. Smith said. "Family is complex and there are no black and white answers", Mr. Smith explains (who is also ironically a Marriage Celebrant). However, the epidemic of mudslinging goes far and beyond this area of his cases. He has noticed an increase in cases of cyber bullying in the workplace, in schools, and believe it or not, in the corporate world. "Much of my work is now directed at very serious defamation cases where Corporations are facing the injurious nature of the danger when one disgruntled employee or competitor posts a false review which skips any verification, and what it can do to their bottom line. In fact it has created a new industry (ORM) – Online Reputation Management."

Without mentioning any names, Mr. Smith states that he is preparing the possibility to give evidence for one of his clients’ against one of the worlds’ largest "Goliath" Companies regarding defamatory material reproduction, assisting in the calculation of the forensic quantification of damages. "I then look at my cases that cross over to the workplace, that show complete disregard for the Human Rights Charter or Fair Work Act. This week I was extremely disappointed to hear about the conduct that had been occurring against a young girl who was an employee for many years with a story of dismissal and long term cyber bullying against her over the last four years." Mr. Smith explains that in this case, he put stop to it fast - and ensured that the relevant award conditions were met and proceeded to investigate the Company and found many other breaches, such as non-compliances with Workplace Health & Safety, pay rates, superannuation entitlements and more.

"I have also been involved in cases involving cults, child-stealing and mind manipulation, death threats, people held at gunpoint, all of which start off with an innocent chat on the internet, which turned into cyberstalking and/or extreme cyberbullying." Mr. Smith talks of a case which must remain anonymous that he has been requested by his client, at the request of the police (due to its size), to put together a ‘simplified’ format timeline VIS (Victim Impact Statement) to report the enormity of the crime spanning 4 years. Such a statement has taken months and consists of a series of traumatic events that could potentially end up leading to a lifelong jail sentence to alleged offender when and if prosecuted. Such allegations consist of multiple counts of online stalking, online defamation, online impersonation, perjury, extortion, drug cultivation, online identity theft, rape, being held hostage at gunpoint, financial crimes and much more. Mr. Smith explains that dealing with the victim and extracting the information and evidence in itself is "a challenge to say the least, and a learning experience in human nature" and looks forward to his client gaining justice.

"Why is it that there is so much fun in hate?" Mr. Smith says. "There are websites that are built to report false crimes that harbour a new industry of online negative SEO extortion businesses that purport to remove your entry from search engines." Mr. Smith strongly recommends to not be fooled by any such scam and states that he has succeeded by professionally removing unlawful content from the internet via proper means, and further identified defamatory publishers, even without an IP address and provided evidence before courts in Australia in relation to posts relating to identifying Facebook posts and more. He has further identified the original owner of multiple fake Facebook accounts and cyber stalkers, and assisted his clients by directing them to the process of gaining IVO/AVO's and/or reporting correctly via the police or ACORN. 

He has also successfully worked on cases closely with counsel to find the evidence needed to identify the person responsible for posts and threats on almost every social network platform there is, as well as all the popular free email providers that exist which block the senders IP address. After succeeding in his last case, finding a cyber stalker who thought he was smart using a VPN, and further finding a purported hacker who left his GPS coordinates in his work Mr. Smith has one statement to make to these people.

"I have news for all stalkers out there. If you think you are safe behind your VPN or TOR browser, as a developer of an Apple iOS App Store, and expert programmer of 20 years, and based on other cases, it will not stop me from finding you!"

Mr. Smith is a Computer Digital Forensics Expert. He is http://www.evestigator.com.au, an expert in security, fraud investigation, a Certified Cyber Investigative Expert, Ethical Hacker, Private Investigator, Nationally Accredited Mediator and Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner and is briefed as an Expert Witness by Lawyers or directly engaged in High-Tech crime cases or family related technical dispute case disputes.