47° and Sunny
Cyberstalking Is a Crime! Protect your online Reputation.
Cyberstalking is a type of crime that involves the use of technology to harass or stalk someone. Most cyberstalkers want to make their victim feel embarrassed, annoyed or threatened. Typical forms of cyberstalking include accusations, exposing someones private details, threaten to expose one’s past mistakes, inferring to someones past crime, divorce or work history, subjecting one to constant jabs and attacks, data manipulation, blackmail, threats, and monitoring someone’s online and offline activities. A sure sign of cyber stalking is when the stalker crosses multiple social media platforms and follows or stalks their prey.
Often, the victim has no way of knowing whether the cyberstalker is a stranger or someone they know in real life. Most times however the cyber stalker gets cocky and wants the victim to know who they are and believe that gives them even greater power and control.
A cyber stalker will track their pray and comment across multiple Facebook pages, especially those public pages where they cannot be blocked, and across multiple platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Truth, Nextdoor etc.
The effects of stalking upon its victims have been well documented. Months of continuous exposure to unwanted attention, innuendoes, taunts and/or threats real or perceived often lead victims to change their daily habits, and even cause psychological trauma. In a study of 600 psychology undergraduates, found that some of the victims were willing to disrupt their normal routines in order to avoid their stalker both online and in the physical world. Some were even willing to carry pepper spray, a knife, or even a gun. Pathé and Mullen found in their investigation that over 75 percent of the victims reported feelings of powerlessness and a quarter of their respondents admitted that they had seriously considered or actually attempted suicide.
A study by Sheridan et al., which involved a survey of 95 stalking victims in the U.K. found that 59 percent of respondents reported feeling frightened, and 44 percent altered their behaviors as a result of being stalked.
About 41% of Americans are exposed to harassing behavior online at one point or another in their lives. Although most of them are subject to milder forms of abuse, like name-calling and purposeful embarrassment, at least 7% experience cyberstalking.
A serious crime, cyberstalking is methodical, purposeful, and obsessive.
Be ware of “Composed Cyberstalkers” The main goal of this cyberstalker is to cause irritation and annoyance to their victims. Cyberstalkers that fall within this group usually issue threats of exposure of one’s past and continuously attempt to attack the character of their pray.
Collective Cyberstalkers are another category where groups pile onto their victim. These cyberstalkers operate in groups of at least two people. They usually have a motive for harassing their target many times acting as if they are coming to the defense of some one or an issue that the victim wronged. For example, they may feel like their victim wronged their acquaintance in some way. Collective Cyberstalkers are very prevalent when political dialog is a part of the conversation and many times is the motive.
Stalking and harassment are a criminal offense in all 50 states in the U.S. Many states include electronic means of communication within their stalking and harassment laws.
In New Mexico Cyberstalkers May be convicted if there is a z”pattern of conduct" meaning two or more acts, on more than one occasion, in which the alleged stalker by any action, method, device or means, directly, indirectly or through third parties, follows, monitors, surveils, threatens to expose or intimidate or communicates to or about a person to include via the use of social media platforms.
Whoever commits stalking is guilty of a misdemeanor. Upon a second or subsequent conviction, the offender is guilty of a fourth degree felony.
Cyberstalkers are cowards that use social media as a weapon of intimidation. The more the intimate details they attempt to spread rather true or false it’s a convict-able form of intimidation. Typically the Cyberstalkers are cowards, without a purpose and attempt to build themselves up by tearing down their victim. Pity the cyber stalker they are of weak mind and callous heart. Pity but protect yourself;
Block when possible, prosecutors note that a Cyberstalker that stalks one person typically have a pattern and won’t stop at just one victim as they crave attention to themselves and are weak.
Don’t allow the cyber stalker to change your way of expressing yourself, the laws are catching up to the technology. With repeated offenses prosecute.
