Victims of Cyberstalking in the News

(This clip was not created by me. Click here to watch video on YouTube. Reference: ANews.  Credit goes to ANewsVanIsland for uploading this to YouTube.)

This clip is from ANews. I found this clip while browsing through YouTube.  I thought ANews did an excellent job at explaining what people should do when they are cyberstalked.

Why I Created This Blog (Audio)

Click here to play the audio. 

Future Recommendations

It is evident that there will be a need to create new laws or amend existing laws as more communication technologies emerge.  It is important to be safe on the Internet.  Every action in cyber-space has a consequence.  Additionally, people need to be cautious when befriending people on the Internet.  It is important to remember that information that is sent via these new communication technologies can be recorded and traced to the original sender, which is why people need to be careful what they send.  

I recommend that people only send information via the Internet when it is absolutely necessary.  People should make sure to edit emails, instant messages or posts before they send it.  In most cases, it is almost impossible to edit information once it is sent.  People need to always put their best foot forward when using a public sphere and make sure to be as professional as possible because information can always be traced back to the original sender, especially on social networking sites.  Use the Internet with caution.

Types of Cyberstalkers

                  McFarlane and Bocij (2005) conducted one of the most exhaustive studies on cyberstalkers and stalking victims and found four types of stalkers that emerged from their data.  The four types of cyberstalkers are the vindictive cyberstalker, the composed cyberstalker, the intimate cyberstalker, and the collective cyberstalker (Pittaro, 2007).  The vindictive cyberstalker is a type of cyberstalker that is malicious.  Offenders in this group harassed or threatened victims far more often than offenders in the other groups.  This group was more likely to use spiteful tactics that were intended to continuously harass victims through excessive spamming, email bombing, and identity theft.  They were the only group that used Trojans to gain access to the victim’s computer and deliberately infect the computer with a computer virus (McFarlane and Bocij, 2005; Pittaro, 2007). 

                The composed cyberstalker targets victims in a calm manner.  The cyberstalkers in this group harass victims to cause constant distress through a variety of threatening behaviors.  The intimate cyberstalker group pursues victims based on infatuation and obsession.  This group is the most diverse, because some of the offenders had a previous relationship with the victim.  Collective cyberstalkers consist of two or more individuals who pursue the same victim (McFarlane & Bocij, 2005).  The computer skills of this group were high when compared to the other three groups (McFarlane & Bocij, 2005; Pittaro, 2007).  

References

McFarlane, L., & Bocij, P. (2003). Cyber stalking: defining the invasion of cyberspace. Forensic Update, 1(72), 18-22.

Pittaro, M. (2007). Cyber stalking: an analysis of online harassment and intimidation. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 1(2), 180-197. 

Victims of Cyberstalking

There are several factors that can increase an individual’s chance of becoming a victim.  Goode (1995) claimed that up to 80% of offline stalking victims are from average socio-economic backgrounds.  Hitchcock (2000) stated that 90% of offline stalking victims were female.  Working to Halt Online Abuse (2000) reported that 87% of online harassment/cyberstalking victims were female.  The problem with these statistics is that females have also been shown to be more likely than males to report being a victim of online harassment/cyberstalking, which indicates that the studies may not represent true victims (Maxwell, 2001).  A University of Cincinnati study found that 25% of college women had been cyberstalked (Tjaden &Thoennes, 1997; Maxwell, 2001). 

                Studies have indicated that previous relationships increase the likelihood of being stalked offline.  Zona, et al. (1993) claimed that 65% of offline victims had a previous relationship with the stalker.  However, Working to Halt Online Abuse (2000) found that 53% of cyberstalking victims had no prior relationship with the offender.  The majority of cyberstalking victims are inexperienced internet users.  These victims allow information to be freely available to anyone without knowing the risk. 

                Bocij and McFarlane (2003) found that 67% of cyberstalking victims were Caucasian;  3.9% of cyberstalking victims were Asian; and 1.6% were African American.  Follow-up studies indicated that most victims were Caucasian women between the ages of 18 and 30 (McFarlane & Bocij, 2003; Pittaro, 2007). 

Click here to read one woman's story of how she was cyberstalked.

Below is another woman's story of being a victim of cyberstalking.

(This YouTube video was not created by me.  This video was created by another person.  Click here to watch the video on YouTube. Reference: ACPO Home Office. (2010). Tackling Stalking & Harassment in Homicide Prevention. Credit goes to survivingstalking for uploading this to YouTube.)

References

McFarlane, L., & Bocij, P. (2003). Cyber stalking: defining the invasion of cyberspace. Forensic Update, 1(72), 18-22.

Pittaro, M. (2007). Cyber stalking: an analysis of online harassment and intimidation. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 1(2), 180-197.


Working to Halt Online Abuse (WHO@). (2000). Online Harassment Statistics, Available at http://www.haltabuse.org/.

Tjaden, P. & Thoennes, N. (1997). Stalking in America: findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. National Institute of Justice and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Washington DC. Available at http://www.ncjrs.org.

Zona, M.A., Sharma, K.K. & Lone, J. (1993). A Comparative Study of Erotomanic and Obsessional Subjects in a Forensic Sample. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 38, 894-903.

Hitchcock, J.A. (2000). Cyberstalking. Link-Up, 17(4).

Goode, M. (1995). Stalking: Crime of the Nineties?. Criminal Law Journal, 19, 21-31.

Maxwell, A. (2001). Cyberstalking. Department of Psychology: Auckland University

Jayne A Hitchcock Talks About Internet Safety

I felt that this was an excellent presentation on how to be safe on the Internet.  Enjoy the video and make sure to be safe on the Internet.  People should not be afraid of the Internet because the Internet does have a lot to offer; however, people need to know how to avoid problems.  Just like the real world, the Internet is not perfect and there are problems.  Being educated about how to use the Internet safely is the best defense against cyber crime.

(This video was not created by me.  The video can be viewed on YouTube by clicking here. Video Professor featuring Jayne Hitchcock. Credit goes to shibahill for uploading this to YouTube.)

Coping and Longterm Effects

Working to Halt Online Abuse (2000) reported that most people coped from being cyberstalked by contacting their internet service provider.  They found that 49% of cyberstalking victims coped by contacting their internet service provider;  16% coped by contacting the police;  12% of cyberstalking victims coped by other means, which included ignoring messages, taking civil action, or not returning to the place the cyberstalking incident occured.

There have been studies that looked at the psychological impact on victims.  Westrup, et al (1999) studied the psychological effects of 232 female offline stalking victims and found that most victims had symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety.  Mullen and Pathe (1997) found that 20% of victims increased their alcohol consumption, and 74% of victims suffered from sleep disturbances. 

References

Mullen, P.E., Pathe, M., Purcell, R. & Stuart, G.W. (1999). Study of Stalkers. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 156(8), 1244-1249.

Westrup, D., Fremouw, W.J., Thompson, R.N. & Lewis, S.F. (1999). The Psychological Impact of Stalking in Female Undergraduates. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 44(3), 554-557.

Working to Halt Online Abuse (WHO@). (2000). Online Harassment Statistics

Catching Facebook Stalkers

(Click here to view article from Inquisitr)

                                       (Click here to view image source)

If someone makes the mistake of friending a cyberstalker on Facebook, there are ways to identify that person.  According to Chen (2011), by doing a few simple refreshes and a few clicks, people can easily see who has most recently been looking at their Facebook profile, as well as who their top stalkers are.  The first method Chen (2011) suggested is that Facebook users should refresh their profile page and see which friends constantly appear on their profile.  In most cases, the people that appear on users’ profile pages are the people that have looked at their profile the most over a short period of time.  The second method is to type in the first letter of each character of the alphabet on a search bar.  The first name that appears is either the person that the user browsed or the person that browsed the user (Chen, 2011).  Additionally, people can discover who has looked at their profiles on Facebook by merely looking at Facebook’s friend suggestions (Chen, 2011).  Chen (2011) stated that a person should be extremely cautious when finding someone who does not share mutual friends.  

(Cyberstalking on Facebook makes the news.  This video is a clip from CBS 12 News. I did not create this video.  Click here to view the video clip on YouTube. Credit goes to VoteTomWhatley for uploading this to YouTube.)

References

Chen, E. (2011). Who is stalking you on Facebook? Who is your biggest fan?

Support for Cyberstalking Victims

Victims of cyberstalking can purchase software to block or ignore unwanted electronic communication.    Complaint procedures are difficult to locate and are vague.  This results in an inadequate follow-up.  Victims of cyberstalking can consult many victim advocacy groups such as Working to Halt Online Abuse or CyberAngels, for assistance, support, and advice on what to do when cyberstalked (Petrocelli, 2005).  McFarlane and Bocij (2003) stated that CyberAngels is the best-known internet safety agency and one of the largest victim advocacy groups on the Internet (Pittaro, 2007). 

                Originally, Cyberangels primarily dealt with helping women who were being harassed on Internet Relay Chat (IRQ).  Currently, the focus of Cyberangels is on the Internet as a whole.  Cyberangels is focused on Internet issues such as pedophilia, child pornography, privacy and online crime.  They have international divisions and support multiple languages (Schimelpfening, 2008), and cooperate closely with both the FBI and Interpol.  Their mission is divided into three areas: to prevent through education, to assist victims by helping to trace and identify perpetrators of online crime, and to monitor legal issues on the Internet that affect the public.  Cyberangels has been featured in leading magazines, such as Reader’s Digest, TV Guide, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, The Sunday Times Magazine, Ladies Home Journal and Good Morning America (Schimelpfening, 2008).  Their website is located at cyberangels.org (Schimelpfening, 2008).  

                        (Picture taken from haltabuse.org/ homepage)

                      (Picture taken from cyberangels.org homepage)

References

McFarlane, L., & Bocij, P. (2003). Cyber stalking: defining the invasion of cyberspace. Forensic Update, 1(72), 18-22.

Petrocelli, J. (2005). Cyber stalking. Law & Order, 53(12), 56-58.

Pittaro, M. (2007). Cyber stalking: an analysis of online harassment and intimidation. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 1(2), 180-197. 

Schimelpfening, N. (2008). Who are the cyberangels? http://depression.about.com/cs/chat/a/cyberangels.htm

What Should I Do If I Am Cyberstalked?

Law enforcement officials suggest that victims save all unaltered and unedited communication from the perpetrator that could be used as evidence (Petrocelli, 2005).  Establishing a pattern is very important in the investigation and prosecution process.  People can do this by taking screen shots of communication that occurs on social networking sites.  This can be done by pushing the “PrtSc” button on the keyboard.  In order to paste the screen shot, people can open “paint” and select the “paste” button. 


The "PrtSc" button is very effective.  You try it now.  For this demonstration, we will take a screenshot of the google homepage.  


 1) Go to www.google.com


2) Hit the print screen button located on the row where the function keys are located.  The button should say "PrtSc." That is the print screen button.  Click it.  


3) Open paint.  


4) Select paste. 


5) When you are done, it should look like this: 

                                        (This is a screenshot of the google homepage)




You should save and archive any instance of cyberstalking communication that occurs so that there is evidence that the communication actually occurred.  I recommend that people save the communication with the date in which it occurred so law enforcement officials know when it occurred.


References


Petrocelli, J. (2005). Cyber stalking. Law & Order, 53(12), 56-58.

Legal Consequences of Cyberstalking

The first stalking law was enacted in 1990 when California passed a law making stalking a criminal offense (Reno, 1999).  Most traditional stalking laws require that the perpetrator make a direct threat to injure or harm the victim in some way.  There are some laws that will prosecute an offender if the behavior or conduct constitutes an implied threat (Reno, 1999).  Unfortunately, many perpetrators can avoid arrest and prosecution in the absence of a direct threat because most state laws require a direct threat or harm to the victim.  The harassment can continue as long as the stalker does not threaten the victim or the victim’s family with bodily injury. 

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have adopted criminal stalking statutes (Reno, 1999).  According to the National Conference of States Legislatures (2006), 44 states have enacted cyberstalking laws under stalking or harassment laws as of 2005.  Title 18 U.S.C 875(c) makes it a federal crime to transmit any interstate or foreign commerce containing a threat with the intention to injure another person.  The penalty for violating this law is a fine up to $250,000 (Reno, 1999; Pittaro, 2007).  Communication must include a direct threat rather than an implicit threat to harm another person.  Pittaro (2007) claimed that cyberstalking communication does not always include a message where the perpetrator threatens to harm the victim.

(Check out this video.  This video was not created by me. Click here to view this clip on YouTube. This clip was from CNN that I found on YouTube.)

References

National Conference of State Legislatures, (2006). State computer harassment or "cyber stalking" Laws. Retrieved March 6, 2006, from National Congress of State Legislatures Web site: http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=13495


Pittaro, M. (2007). Cyber stalking: an analysis of online harassment and intimidation. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 1(2), 180-197.

 Reno, J. (1999). 1999 report on cyber stalking: A new challenge for law enforcement and industry.

  

How Prevalent Is Cyberstalking?

                The prevalence of cyberstalking is uncertain.  Maxwell (2001) found that most of the stalking statistics come from the offline stalking population.  The National Violence Against Women Survey claimed that 8.2 million women in the US had been stalked offline.  It also revealed that out of 4,400 women students on a university campus, 13% were stalked in the last 7 months (Tjaden & Thoennes, 1997; Maxwell, 2001).  Only about 50% of all stalking cases are reported to the police, and reported statistics fail to represent the prevalence of stalking as a whole (Kamphuis & Emmelkamp, 2000; Maxwell, 2001). 

References

Maxwell, A. (2001). Cyberstalking. Department of Psychology: Auckland University

Kamphuis, J.H. & Emmelkamp, P.M.G. (2000). Stalking – a contemporary challenge for forensic and clinical psychiatry. British Journal of Psychiatry, 176, 206-209.

Tjaden, P. & Thoennes, N. (1997). Stalking in America: findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. National Institute of Justice and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Washington DC. Available at http://www.ncjrs.org.

What Is Cyberstalking?

Pittaro (2007) concluded that cyberstalking generally refers to the use of the Internet, email, or other electronic communication devices to create a criminal level of intimidation, harassment, and fear for victims (Petrocelli, 2005; Reno, 1999).  Cyberstalking is a form of stalking that relies on the Internet and other electronic communication devices to harass, threaten, and intimidate victims (Pittaro, 2007).

In the physical world, stalking behaviors are limited to the stalker approaching the victim in a public or private place, workplace, or residence.  However, the internet has caused a new form of stalking to emerge: cyberstalking.  With cyberstalking, people can stalk their victims via the Internet.  The Internet is not limited by geographic boundaries.  Anyone with access to the Internet has the ability to cyberstalk an individual (Maxwell, 2001). 

Ellison (1999) proposed that cyberstalking can be classified as a type of electronic communication that can either be direct or indirect.  The most common type of cyberstalking is direct cyberstalking, because it resembles offline stalking (Wallace, 2000).  It is also the most common way in which cyberstalking begins.  Direct cyberstalking includes the use of pagers, cell phones and email to send hateful messages, threats, or obscenities in order to intimidate the victim.  It may include the sending of unwanted e-mails, which are abusive, threatening, or obscene.  It can also involve sending the victim thousands of junk e-mail messages, commonly known as spamming, or sending viruses (Ellison & Akdeniz, 1998).   

Indirect cyberstalking includes the use of the internet to display hateful messages or threats. (Ellison & Akdeniz, 1998).  It can also involve the stalker impersonating the victim online by sending e-mails or spams in the victim’s name.  It can include posting false information about someone on a social networking site, message board, or chat room (Ellison & Akdeniz, 1998; Maxwell, 2001).

References

Ellison. L., & Akdeniz, Y., “Cyberstalking: the Regulation of Harassment on the Internet,” [1998]Criminal Law Review, December Special Edition: Crime, Criminal Justice and the Internet, Pp 29-48              

Ellison, L. (1999). Cyberspace 1999: Crime, Criminal Justice and the Internet. 14^th BILETA Conference. York. England.

Maxwell, A. (2001). Cyberstalking. Department of Psychology: Auckland University

Petrocelli, J. (2005). Cyber stalking. Law & Order, 53(12), 56-58.

Pittaro, M. (2007). Cyber stalking: an analysis of online harassment and intimidation. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 1(2), 180-197.

Reno, J. (1999). 1999 report on cyber stalking: A new challenge for law enforcement and industry.

Wallace, B. (2000). Stalkers Find a New Tool – the Internet. Email is increasingly used to threaten and harass, authorities say. SF Gate News.