Child Protection e-mail issue

[olivarrr]

Hi guys,

 

We have a pupil who is being sent abusive emails over a hotmail account from another hotmail email account.

 

Does anybody know of any way to contact microsoft to track who set up this account? we dont know where to turn!

 

Thanks in advance

[jsnetman]

I doubt it. You should not be letting your pupils use hotmail within a school for this very reason. You need internal email setup or external webmail that can be monitored for this type of abuse.

[olivarrr]

they cant use hotmail in school, its blocked. the only account they can get to is their school email account

[pete]

They're legally bound to not release the information to you - you'll need a warrant / the police will have to obtain the info.

 

They may (however) remove the account if the user breached the t&cs (which is not of much use to you and it's easy to get another).

[witch]

Sorry - but if the child isn't accessing it in school, why is it your problem?

The only thing your child can do is block the emails, I'm afraid

[plexer]

If this is happening outside of school and the abusive emails are not coming from one of your other pupils then I fail to see how the school can be expected to do anything?

 

It's a parenting issue.

 

Ben

[elsiegee40]

As witch says, this may (apparently) be between pupils at the same school, but you can do nothing about it as the accounts are wholly outside your control.

 

If the parents have issues with cyber-bullying using accounts outside school, their only option is to take it to the police.

 

Actually, there is a second option - get the child to open a new hotmail/gmail account and tell him/her to be careful about who they pass the details onto!

[apoth0r]

Give them a guide regarding e-safety, how to block unwanted emails and let them know that unfortunately it isn't a part of your job to monitor external email accounts.

The user could contact Microsoft to complain about the abuse

[tom_newton]

Start with your web filter logs. IIRC hotmail only starts HTTPS then drops to plain HTTP - if the miscreant is in-school, they are likely to check for responses from their victim. This could be shown up fairly easily in the logs. Would be happy to help out with web log forensics if need be.

 

Another good trick is to send an email to their address with a web bug - just hotlink an image anywhere on the internet and then check logs for accesses to that image against username.

[mb2k01]

Sorry - but if the child isn't accessing it in school, why is it your problem?

The only thing your child can do is block the emails, I'm afraid

 

Compltely agree.

If one of the email accounts was a school account you could investigate. If both are hotmail accounts and hotmail is filtered internally, then it simply isn't your problem. If parents want to pursue it further then they will have to log the incidents with the police.

[BlueDragon]

Try getting the parents to install IMSAFER (its free) and will help the parents identify any messaging that they need to know about. It will also identify the handles used by the aggressor so if they are doing this from a number of sources such as Facebook, messenger etc it will identify each account they send a message from. If they go to bbesafe - IMSafer - Protect children on the internet they can get hold of the product plus other good advice.