The Good Samaritans

[VeronicaFox]

Crimes Against Women

Question: What is cyberstalking?
Answer: Cyberstalking is a technologically-based and very serious form of online harassment much like cyberbullying as it involves the sending of annoying and unwelcomed messages. But cyberstalking goes far beyond cyberbullying in terms of motivations and tactics. Cyberstalking involves a disturbed obsession and a perverse desire to control the target in some way, even by cyber-attacking the target's friends and family. Cyberstalkers do not wish to just torment someone for an adolescent power rush - stalkers want to force the target into some kind of submission and are willing to involve other targets to achieve that disturbed result.

The actions of a cyberstalker are deliberate, they like to use Message Boards, Facebook, Twitter, Discussion Forums, and Cell Phones to stalk their prey.

Cyberstalking can take many forms, including:

1. blindsiding scare tactics to instill shock, puzzlement, concern, and more
2. ridicule, harassment, embarrassment and humiliation of the victim
3. harassing family and friends of the victim

Cyberstalkers commonly have four objectives:

1. locate,
2. surveil,
3. harass,
4. manipulate their prey

A true cyberstalker’s intent is to harm their intended victim using the anonymity and untraceable distance of technology. In many situations, the victims never discover the identity of the cyberstalkers who hurt them, despite their lives being embarrassed and/or completely upended by the perpetrator.

Cyberstalkers are often driven by disturbed emotions of inadequacy. They are people with very irregular psychological problems. The truly frightening part is that cyberstalkers can be random: you do not need to know the person to become their target. Some cyberstalkers will just choose random targets online.

Bedford University identified that many cyberstalking victims in their research were actually stalked by complete strangers. This means: cyberstalking can be random. Cyberstalking is now a small risk that every online user takes just by participating on the internet. While the great majority of you reading this article will never have a cyberstalker, one or two of you might have some random disturbed individual who discovers you online and decides to harass you and/or even obsess over you.