Cyber Stalking
Cyber stalking is a form of online harassment in which the perpetrator uses electronic communications such as social media to stalk a victim.
Cyber stalking is a form of online harassment in which the perpetrator uses electronic communications such as social media to stalk a victim. Cyberstalking is considered more dangerous than other forms of cyberbullying because it generally involves a credible threat to the safety of the victim.
Examples of cyber stalking are:
- Sending manipulative, threatening, or harassing messages
- Hacking into a victim’s social media accounts (such as banking or email) and changing the victim’s settings and passwords
- Creating fake accounts on social networking and impersonating the victim or attempting to establish contact with the victim by using a false persona.
- Posting messages to discussion groups with the victim’s personal information, such as home address, phone number or other personal information.
I am a victim of cyberstalking – how do I stop it?
- Report the cyber stalking material to the social media service it happened on
- Collect evidence of the cyberbullying material such as messages, screen shots and print conversations
- Block the person
- Talk to someone you trust straight away – like a parent, sibling, uncle/aunt, teacher or friend
- Do not retaliate or respond as they might use it against you
How to prevent from being cyberstalked?
- Be careful what personal information you share online
- Create a different email account for registering in social networking sites and other online spaces.
- Do not feel obligated to fill out all fields when registering online or provide identifying information such as birthdates and place in required fields.
- In your online user profile, use a photo that does not identify you or your location
- Consider using a name that is not your real name or a nickname as your email name, screen name or user ID.
- Do not to use common dates such as your birthday as the digits in your email name or password.
- If you are breaking up with an intimate partner – especially if they are abusive, troubled, angry or difficult – reset every single password on all of your accounts
- Services such as Facebook change their privacy policy all the time, so it is a good idea to check your privacy settings to make sure you are sharing the information you want to share with people you trust and not the general internet public.