Sometimes, largely because they feel that they are anonymous people do things online they would never dream of doing in real life. These range from rude conduct and lewd language (flaming), to insults, defamation and bullying (cyberbullying), to creating fear (harassment), to credible threats of actual harm offline (cyberstalking).

Unfortunately, in a majority of the cases children and teens are not only the victims, they are also the flamers, cyber-bullies and cyberstalkers. Depending on what they are doing and how they are doing it, their actions may just be annoying, may violate their ISP's terms of service or school disciplinary code or may even be criminal.

The ways cyberbullies harass their victims expand every day as new technologies are released and the cyberbullies find ways to abuse them. They use e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, bulletin boards, chatrooms, profiles, photo and videophones, text messaging and Web sites. They often pose as their victim, doing things or saying thing to get them into trouble online. They may even break-into their victim’s accounts by either misusing or guessing their passwords, and once there either spam their victim’s friends or even change the password locking the victim out of their own account.

They may use intimate details about the other child’s sexual activities or preferences or relationships or post real or manipulated images at porn sites, on other Web sites and in blogs. They may place sexually-explicit advertisements posing at the victim, or make public very private information and images of the victim. They may also sign them up for pornography Web sites, lots of e-mailing lists and disgusting content.

They even will use the terms of service rules against the victims, by provoking an angry response and then reporting the victim’s angry response as a terms of service rules violation. These are called “notify” or “warning” wars. Often cyber-bullies will also hack their victim’s computers or send them viruses or other malicious codes.