Bullying and malicious mobile phone use
Unfortunately, mobile phones are sometimes used by certain individuals for text bullying or malicious calls.
Text bullying
Bullying is not new. But bullies are now using mobile phones to inflict misery on others. Young victims of text bullying – mean, offensive or threatening text messages – are often too embarrassed or frightened to seek help.
Our Responsible Marketing, Content and Use Guidelines include advice to combat malicious mobile phone use:
- Be careful about giving out your phone number and other people's
- Always tell someone you trust what’s happening
- Never reply to the bully
- Keep and save messages
- Take a break from your phone
- Make sure only good friends and family are in your phone address book
- Be careful about who you allow to use your mobile.
Local campaigns to tackle bullying
Vodafone leads a UK initiative to reduce bullying among 13 to 17-year-olds. The CUT-it-Out campaign is a joint initiative between Vodafone and leading UK charity, BeatBullying, that aims to reach people who are being bullied, their friends, and the bullies themselves.
Vodafone New Zealand works with the internet safety group, NetSafe in an effort to tackle text bullying. NetSafe provides advice to parents, students and schools, and runs a confidential advice hotline. Vodafone New Zealand produced a brochure, distributed in schools by NetSafe, which provides practical advice on how to deal with text bullies. The brochure encourages children to report bullying and save messages as proof. In addition, Vodafone New Zealand helped agree a common process for handling complaints about text bullying with the police, NetSafe and Telecom. Vodafone New Zealand has procedures for investigating complaints and can send formal warnings to those responsible. See Vodafone New Zealand’s brochure on text bullying.
Malicious calls
Malicious calls between individuals are difficult to control, but we can provide support for customers who are victims of harassment via their mobiles. We assist police in taking action against the people responsible if malicious communications are coming from Vodafone customers. If they come from mobile users on another network, we will identify the other network to enable follow-up by police.
