Imagine retrieving your e-mail one-day and finding a hundred anonymous e-mails threatening to kill you. It's a scary thought. It's called "cyberstalking."
Cyberstalking is a new, high-tech version of an old terror, "stalking." It can take many forms including threatening, obscene or hateful e-mail, spreading vicious rumors about you online, and electronic sabotage like e-mail bombs (overwhelming your system with possibly thousands of e-mails).
Protecting yourself against it is difficult since the behavior is often not clearly illegal and the police often don't take the problem seriously. As a practical matter, you might have better luck with the police if you reported aliens landing in your backyard.
Defining the Problem
Although there's no universally accepted definition of "cyberstalking," it's generally used to refer to the use of the Internet, e-mail, or other means of electronic communications to stalk another person. It's an electronic version of "stalking." It involves the unwanted and obsessive pursuit of another person. At its worst, cyberstalking becomes real world stalking and can have deadly consequences.
"Stalking" generally involves harassing or threatening behavior that a person does repeatedly, such as following a person, appearing at a person's home or office, making harassing phone calls, leaving notes, or vandalizing a person's property. Most stalking laws require that the stalker make a credible threat of violence against the victim. Some stalking laws include threats against the victim's immediate family; and still others require only that what the stalker does constitute an implied threat.
Sometimes the things that cyberstalkers do may violate traditional stalking laws that states developed before people considered the cyberstalking problem. It depends on the exact wording of your state's statute.
Unfortunately, less than one-third of the states have laws that are specifically designed to deal with cyberstalking. Yet, the Los Angeles District Attorney reported that last year about 20% of the 600 stalking cases they handled included stalking using e-mail or other electronic means.
According to a report by the United States Department of Justice, one out of every 12 women and one out of every 45 men in the United States have been stalked at least once in their lifetime. Over one million women and 375,000 men are stalked each year.
Experts estimate that the number of recent victims of cyberstalkers total about 100,000. Many believe that this number greatly underestimates what may be an underreported problem. In New Jersey, for example, cyberstalking reports have increased 400% over the last three years.
Offline stalking and cyberstalking have many similarities. They both generally involve people well known to the victims. Experts estimate that 60% of all stalkers are "former intimates" including former spouses, live-in partners and dates.
With both types of stalking, most victims are women and most stalkers are men. All stalkers are generally motivated by the desire to control their victim.
There are also some important differences between real world stalking and its cyber equivalent. Offline stalking usually requires that the stalker and the victim be located in the same geographic area. There's no such limitation on cyberstalking. Across the street or across the world, it doesn't really matter. It's just as easy to cyberstalk from China as the other side of town.
Another difference is that with cyberstalking, electronic communications technology makes it much easier for a cyberstalker to encourage unknown third parties to get in on the "fun." Cyberstalkers have been known to encourage others to harass and threaten the victim.
There have been cases where many have been involved in impersonating the victim. They've posted inflammatory messages in newsgroups and in chat rooms in the victim's name. The results have been threatening messages back to the victim "author."
Probably the most important difference between cyberstalking and real world stalking is that electronic harassment may be easier for the deranged mind. The barrier is lower in the sense in that the cyberstalker doesn't need to ever physically confront the victim.
It's too easy for a cyberstalker who may send repeated, threatening or harassing messages with the simple push of a button. More sophisticated weirdos can use programs to send messages at regular intervals without them even needing to be at the computer terminals. It's like remote control warfare.
Some Horror Stories
One of the worst reported cases of cyberstalking involved Jane Hitchcock. For her, it went on for three years. It all started when she exposed a literary agency as a scam. She found that her stalker had posted her telephone number and address on the Internet with an invitation for strangers to call her to share their sexual fantasies with her.
One New Jersey woman inadvertently downloaded a program called "BackOrifice," which created a "back door" to her computer. Using this back door, her stalker was able to access and monitor her computer, run programs, read her files, and make weird messages pop up on her screen.
Federal Law
Like the Internet generally, cyberstalking doesn't respect man-made political boundaries. The ease with which cyberstalking can cross state lines and great distances make it a crime in need of good Federal laws.
Current Federal stalking laws provide that a stalker can get up to five years in jail and up to a $250,000 fine if they transmit any communication in interstate or foreign commerce containing a threat to injure another person. Since it includes "any communication," it does take into account the Internet and e-mail.
Although the current Federal law is a good law enforcement tool, it's not an all-purpose cyberstalking statute. The biggest problem is that it applies only to actual threats, not a pattern of harassment that implies a threat. In addition, it doesn't clearly apply to a situation where a person encourages others to harass the victim.
Another problem with the current Federal law is that it requires the stalker to travel across state lines with the intent to injure or harass another person. This definition doesn't quite fit cyberstalking where the stalked doesn't have to even leave their house to commit the crime.
Preventing the Problem
You can and should take several steps to prevent yourself from becoming the victim of a cyberstalker.E-mail address. Start by creating a gender-neutral e-mail address for yourself. Jdoe@aol.com is a less likely victim than JaneDoe@aol.com. SexyGal@prodigy.com is also an example of an e-mail address that's best avoided. The simple reality is that females are the usual targets of both stalkers and cyberstalkers.
Online profile. Edit your online profile to remove all personal and gender identifying information. (An online profile is information provided by you that others can access from an online directory.) Personal information simply doesn't belong in a directory that nuts can access. That's not the type of attention you need. (Parents should check their children's AOL profiles.
Signature. You should review your e-mail signature. Your e-mail signature is something that you set up in your e-mail software, which contains information about you. It's added to every e-mail that you send. You may have long since forgotten about it since it's not routinely displayed to you, the sender. If you're not sure what your e-mail signature says, then send yourself an e-mail. There you can see what others see about you. You should keep your e-mail signature bland, businesslike and gender neutral.
Headers. While you're looking at that e-mail that you sent yourself, look at all the headers. Headers are the often meaningless junk at the top or bottom of the e-mails that you receive. Some software hides some or all of the headers and you'll have to find the command to display all headers. For example, in Eudora Pro, one of the more popular e-mail packages around, you press the "blah blah" button to see all of the headers. (Really, that's the name of the button.)
Your headers may contain information that you don't realize that you are sending with your e-mails. For example, some software will send a line called "x-header" which reveals your account name with your Internet Service Provider (the company that gives you Internet access) even if you have set up some other name for e-mail purposes. If your account name is inappropriate, you might want to change it.
Preventing cyberstalking may just be easier than dealing with it once it starts. So, do practice these safe-computing ideas and be aware of what your kids do online to prevent problems for them.