http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking

Cyberstalking

Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk or harass an individual, a group of individuals, or an organization. It may include false accusations, monitoring, making threats, identity theft, damage to data or equipment, the solicitation of minors for sex, or gathering information in order to harass. The definition of “harassment” must meet the criterion that a reasonable person, in possession of the same information, would regard it as sufficient to cause another reasonable person distress.^[1]

Contents [hide] 1 Definitions 2 History 3 Stakeholders 3.1 The stalker 3.2 Witnesses 4 Behaviors 4.1 Means used by the cyberstalker to obtain information 4.1.1 Getting information through the environment of the victim 4.2 Examples 4.2.1 Right to privacy violation 4.2.2 Defamation 4.2.3 Threats 4.2.4 Call bombing 4.2.5 Other 5 Cyberstalking legislation 5.1 United States 5.2 Australia 5.3 United Kingdom 5.4 Spain 6 See also 7 Notes 8 Further reading 9 External links

[edit] Definitions

Stalking is a continuous process, consisting of a series of actions, each of which may be entirely legal in itself. Lambèr Royakkers writes that:

“Stalking is a form of mental assault, in which the perpetrator repeatedly, unwantedly, and disruptively breaks into the life-world of the victim, with whom he has no relationship (or no longer has), with motives that are directly or indirectly traceable to the affective sphere. Moreover, the separated acts that make up the intrusion cannot by themselves cause the mental abuse, but do taken together (cumulative effect).”^[2]

CyberAngels has written about how to identify cyberstalking:

When identifying cyberstalking “in the field,” and particularly when considering whether to report it to any kind of legal authority, the following features or combination of features can be considered to characterize a true stalking situation: malice, premeditation, repetition, distress, obsession, vendetta, no legitimate purpose, personally directed, disregarded warnings to stop, harassment, and threats.^[3]

A number of key factors have been identified:

• False accusations. Many cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim and turn other people against them. They post false information about them on websites. They may set up their own websites, blogs or user pages for this purpose. They post allegations about the victim to newsgroups, chat rooms or other sites that allow public contributions, such as Wikipedia or Amazon.com.^[4]
• Attempts to gather information about the victim. Cyberstalkers may approach their victim’s friends, family and work colleagues to obtain personal information. They may advertise for information on the Internet, or hire a private detective. They often will monitor the victim’s online activities and attempt to trace their IP address in an effort to gather more information about their victims. ^[5]
• Encouraging others to harass the victim. Many cyberstalkers try to involve third parties in the harassment. They may claim the victim has harmed the stalker or his/her family in some way, or may post the victim’s name and telephone number in order to encourage others to join the pursuit.
• False victimization. The cyberstalker will claim that the victim is harassing him/her. Bocij writes that this phenomenon has been noted in a number of well-known cases.
• Attacks on data and equipment. They may try to damage the victim’s computer by sending viruses.
• Ordering goods and services. They order items or subscribe to magazines in the victim’s name. These often involve subscriptions to pornography or ordering sex toys then having them delivered to the victim’s workplace.
• Arranging to meet. Young people face a particularly high risk of having cyberstalkers try to set up meetings between them.^[6]

[edit] History

An early example of using the internet to gather personal info was in the popular 1993 movie Sleepless in Seattle, where Meg Ryan’s character uses her office computer to learn about Tom Hanks’ character. She then faxes that info to a private detective to gain yet more info.

[edit] Stakeholders

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There are three parts: the cyberstalker, the victim and witnesses.

[edit] The stalker

According to Antonio Chacón Medina, author of “A new face of Internet: the cyberstalking”^[7], the general profile of the harasser a person is cold, with little or no respect for others. A stalker is a predator that can wait patiently connected to the network, participate in chat or forums to make contact with someone that you appear susceptible to annoy, usually women or children, and enjoys chasing a particular person, and directly connected with it or be a complete unknown. The bully enjoys and shows its power to pursue and psychologically damaging to the person.

[edit] Witnesses

Recipients of the slander not realize they are suffering a manipulation and an invasion privacy. According the psychologist Iñaki Piñuel y Zabalaone of the reasons for adhering to bully some of the peers is because they wish to have no problems. They think the victim must have done something. In any case see the victim as someone who should not be. This situation leads them isolated to the idea that he has blame, because nobody speaks.

[edit] Behaviors

Cyberstalkers meet or target their victims by using search engines, online forums, bulletin and discussion boards, chat rooms, and more recently, through online communities such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Twitter, and Indymedia, a media outlet known for self-publishing. They may engage in live chat harassment or flaming or they may send electronic viruses and unsolicited e-mails. ^[8] Victims of cyberstalking may not even know that they are being stalked. Cyberstalkers may research individuals to feed their obsessions and curiosity. Conversely, the acts of cyberstalkers may become more intense, such as repeatedly instant messaging their targets. ^[9]

More commonly they will post defamatory or derogatory statements about their stalking target on web pages, message boards and in guest books designed to get a reaction or response from their victim, thereby initiating contact. ^[8] In some cases, they have been known to create fake blogs in the name of the victim containing defamatory or pornographic content.

When prosecuted, many stalkers have unsuccessfully attempted to justify their behavior based on their use of public forums, as opposed to direct contact. Once they get a reaction from the victim, they will typically attempt to track or follow the victim’s internet activity. Classic cyberstalking behavior includes the tracing of the victim’s IP address in an attempt to verify their home or place of employment. ^[8]

Some cyberstalking situations do evolve into physical stalking, and a victim may experience abusive and excessive phone calls, vandalism, threatening or obscene mail, trespassing, and physical assault.^[8] Moreover, many physical stalkers will use cyberstalking as another method of harassing their victims.^[10][11]

A 2007 study, led by Paige Padgett from the University of Texas Health Science Center, found that there was a false degree of safety assumed by women looking for love online.^[12][13]

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[edit] Means used by the cyberstalker to obtain information

Cyberstalkers find their victims by using search engines, forums, chats, and more recently, through social networks like MySpace, Facebook^[14], Tuenti, Flickr, Skype, Twitter, Sonic, Linkedin, Xing, etc..

The cyberstalker feels in a position of power from the anonymity that is perceived as being “online” for all that time is collecting all possible information about their victim, mainly those aspects that are part of their private life and their movements on the Web. The amount of information collected from the victim depend primarily on the innocence of the victim at the time to handle their data as the skill of the stalker and their obsession with the victim, because the more you are obsessed, the more interest will to look at hacker forums and learn computer skills needed for information of the victim. If the victim has internet search how to connect with it, either through social networks instant messaging clients, or by sending infected emails. Once you get access your mail, proceed to steal all your contacts and all your private information. Monitor your computer through the use of rootkits and keyloggers. If you know your location, will the IP tracking from which connects the victim to find its location.

[edit] Getting information through the environment of the victim

For more information, or if the cyberstalker can not contact the victim, they seek personal information about the victim using the same method but through its environment: friends, family, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, etc..

[edit] Examples

[edit] Right to privacy violation

• steal your email password, and changes so that the rightful owner does not

can check, read the messages that arrive in your mailbox will violate their privacy.

• Theft of photos, videos, audios, personal data, credit cards, passwords, files, contacts the environment

the victim and his family, etc. your computer.

[edit] Defamation

• Access illegally to the e-mail account, social networking, instant messaging network, supplanting

the identity of the victim and insulting to your contacts.

• Send E-mail so anonymously (easy with the e-mail free of charge, which can distort identity)

and manipulated to give the impression that he sent the same person harassed and put it well in a difficult situation that would compromise its credibility.

• Leaving offensive comments in forums or chats aggressively involved posing as the victim of

so that the reactions be then directed to those who have experienced the impersonation.

• The manipulation of photographs is harassed or otherwise harassed, the harasser can retouch and upload the

Network with the sole purpose of hurting and scaring her victim.

• Hang on a Web Network “dedicated” to the person harassed, personal content is offensive, pornographic ,…,

to scare the victim and get what you want.

• Hang a picture on the internet involved (real or made through photomontages) sensitive data, things

can harm or embarrass the victim and make it known in its relations environment. As these photos, videos, audio or previously stolen from your computer.

• Circulating rumors in which the victim was suppose conduct reprehensible, offensive or

unfair.

• Register with a photo included, the victim in a web where voting is the ugliest person, to the least

smart … and charge you “points” or “votes” to appear on the top.

• Create a fake profile or space on behalf of the victim, which is written confessions as a first

person certain personal events, explicit claims of sexual … Generally, most of the environment of the victim knows the website created and humiliate the victim, who is never at much of what is happening, despite being the protagonist.

[edit] Threats

• Sent messages threatening e-mail or SMS, chasing and stalking the victim of Internet sites in

relates on a regular basis causing a feeling of complete despondency.

[edit] Call bombing

• Using the mobile phone as an instrument of harassment: The extensive possibilities offered by current mobile

Mobile, have been known to be perversely used by cyber-stalkers. The most traditional is the so-called made anonymous inopportune times. Silent calls can range from serious threats, including insults, yelling or threatening messages.

[edit] Other

• Giving high e-mail address in some sites then become a victim of spam,

subscriptions, contact with strangers …

• Saturation of mail boxes using different techniques such as: the Mail Bombing consisting

in a mass mailing of a message identical to one direction, strain on your mailbox (mailbox) of recipient, or spam mail spamming thousands of users have these requested the message or no, or junk mail or junk mail, much like the previous one, is an indiscriminate and massive propaganda through mail.

[edit] Cyberstalking legislation

[edit] United States

The current US Federal Anti-Cyber-Stalking law is found at 47 USC sec. 223.^[15]

The first U.S. cyberstalking law went into effect in 1999 in California. Other states include prohibition against cyberstalking in their harassment or stalking legislation. In Florida, HB 479 was introduced in 2003 to ban cyberstalking. This was signed into law on October 2003. ^[16]

Some states in the U.S. have begun to address the issue of cyberstalking:

• Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire, and New York have included prohibitions against harassing electronic, computer or e-mail communications in their harassment legislation.
• Alaska, Florida, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and California, have incorporated electronically communicated statements as conduct constituting stalking in their anti-stalking laws.
• Texas enacted the Stalking by Electronic Communications Act, 2001.
• Missouri revised its state harassment statutes to include stalking and harassment by telephone and electronic communications (as well as cyber-bullying) after the Megan Meier suicide case of 2006.^[17]
• A few states have both stalking and harassment statutes that criminalize threatening and unwanted electronic communications.
• Other states have laws other than harassment or anti-stalking statutes that prohibit misuse of computer communications and e-mail, while others have passed laws containing broad language that can be interpreted to include cyberstalking behaviors

Cyberstalking has also been addressed in recent U.S. federal law. For example, the Violence Against Women Act, passed in 2000, made cyberstalking a part of the federal interstate stalking statute. Still, there remains a lack of legislation at the federal level to specifically address cyberstalking, leaving the majority of legislative prohibitions against cyberstalking at the state level.^[8]

Most stalking laws require that the perpetrator make a credible threat of violence against the victim; others include threats against the victim’s immediate family; and still others require the alleged stalker’s course of conduct constitute an implied threat. While some conduct involving annoying or menacing behavior might fall short of illegal stalking, such behavior may be a prelude to stalking and violence and should be treated seriously.^[18]

Online identity stealth blurs the line on infringement of the rights of would-be victims to identify their perpetrators. There is a debate on how internet use can be traced without infringing on protected civil liberties.

[edit] Australia

In Australia, the Stalking Amendment Act (1999) includes the use of any form of technology to harass a target as forms of “criminal stalking.”

[edit] United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the Malicious Communications Act (1998) classified cyberstalking as a criminal offense.^[19]

[edit] Spain

In Spain, it is possible to provide information about cyber-crime in an anonymous way to four safety bodies:

• Grupo de Delitos Telemáticos of the Civil Guard (Spain)
• Brigada de Investigación Tecnológica of the National Police Corps of Spain
• Mossos d’Esquadra in Catalonia
• Ertzaintza in Euskadi

It is also possible to provide information to an NGO.^[20][21]

[edit] See also

• Computer crime
• Cyberbullying
• Cyberspace
• Cyberterrorism
• Convention on cybercrime
• Harassment by computer
• Hate group
• Internet fraud
• Online dating
• Online predator
• Stalker (Stalking)
• ToS violation

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Bocij, Paul. Cyberstalking : Harassment in the Internet Age and How to Protect Your Family. Praeger Publishers, 2004. (ISBN 0-275-98118-5)
• Meloy, J. The Psychology of Stalking. Reid. Academic Press, 2000. (ISBN 0-12-490561-7)
• Mullen, Paul E.; Pathé, Michele; Purcell, Rosemary. Stalkers and Their Victims. Cambridge University Press, 2000. (ISBN 0-521-66950-2)
• Hitchcock, J.A., Net Crimes & Misdemeanors: Outmaneuvering the Spammers, Swindlers, and Stalkers Who Are Targeting You Online CyberAge Books, 2006. (ISBN 0-910-96572-2)
• PDF article on Cyberstalking in the United Kingdom
• Crime Library: Cyberstalking
• Cyberstalking – Is it Covered by Current Anti-Stalking Laws? by Craig Lee and Patrick Lynch

[edit] External links

• State Computer United States harassment or “Cyberstalking” Laws
• United States law and the Internet
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
• 1999 Report on Cyberstalking: A New Challenge for Law Enforcement and Industry
• The National Center for Victims of Crime
• Stalking Laws and Implementation Practices: A National Review for Policymakers and Practitioners (Full Report), Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse.
• “Cyberstalking: A New Challenge for Law Enforcement and Industry. A Report from the Attorney General to the Vice President”, United States Department of Justice, August 1999.
• Cybertelecom :: Cyberstalking Federal Internet Law & Regulation