Cyberstalking

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Cyberstalking is use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk someone. Stalking generally involves harassing or threatening behavior that an individual engages in repeatedly, such as following a person, appearing at a person's home or place of business, making harassing phone calls, leaving written messages or objects, reading threads on message boards that the victim uses to trace their whereabouts, or vandalizing a person's property. 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 only that the alleged stalker's course of conduct constitute an implied threat.

Behaviors

Cyberstalkers target victims using search engines, online forums, bulletin and discussion boards, chat rooms, and more recently, through online communities such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster 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. Victims of cyberstalkers may not even know that they are being stalked. Cyberstalkers may research individuals to feed obsessions and curiosities that they possess. Conversely, the acts of cyberstalkers may become more intense, such as repeatedly instant messaging their targets. 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. 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.

Stalking does not consist of single incidents, but is a continuous process. Similar to stalking off-line (physical stalking), cyberstalking can be a terrifying experience for victims, placing them at risk of psychological trauma, and possible physical harm. As Rokkers writes, "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 they have no relationship (or no longer have)....Moreover, the separated acts that make up the intrusion cannot by themselves cause the mental abuse, but do taken together (cumulative effect)." (For a list of effects, see Stalking)

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. Moreover, many physical stalkers will use cyberstalking as another method of harassing their victims.

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.

Cyberstalking legislation

In the United States

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.

States in the U.S. that have begun to address the use of computer equipment for stalking purposes, include:

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. Though in the recent two years there has been updates to the laws created. Some case laws were found to be unconstitutional.
Alaska, Florida, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and California, have incorporated electronically communicated statements as conduct constituting stalking in their anti-stalking laws.
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.

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.(1) 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.

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

In other countries

Other countries have begun to include online abuse in their anti-stalking legislation. In Australia, the Stalking Amendment Act (1999) includes the use of any form of technology to harass a target as forms of "criminal stalking." In the United Kingdom, the Malicious EDGAR HAS A GIGANTIC PIPE Communications Act (1998) classified cyberstalking as a criminal offense.

Cyberstalking law enforcement

Law enforcement has often not caught up with the times, and officials are in many cases simply telling the victims to avoid the websites where they are being harassed or having their privacy violated. Some assistance can be found by contacting the web host companies (if the material is on a website) or the ISP of the abuser. Many victims note that persistence is a key. At times the seriousness of the impact of this type of violation is not comprehended and the third party facilitators of cyberstalkers tell the victim to work it out with their harasser.

Current US Anti-Cyber-Stalking law is found at 47 USC sec. 223.

Notes

^ Cyberstalking
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/9/1642
CyberStalking: menaced on the internet
Types of Stalkers and Stalking Patterns
Cyber-Stalking: Obsessional Pursuit and the Digital Criminal
[http://nsrc.sfsu.edu/MagArticle.cfm?Article=748 Look Who’s Googling: New acquaintances and secret admirers may already know all about you
"Personal Safety and Sexual Safety for Women Using Online Personal Ads", Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of NSRC, June 2007, Vol. 4, No. 2, Pages 27-37
"Florida Statute 784.048". Florida Computer Crime Center.
Cyberstalking: A New Challenge for Law Enforcement and Industry
Stalking/UK

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