Cyberstalking

I thought a blog on the subject of stalking would be a good definition of a 'bad behaviour', but then I discovered there's such a thing as 'cyberstalking' which is infinitely more interesting.

Cyberstalking is essentially the same as regular stalking, but using the internet obviously. A good definition of stalking is this one:

"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 he has no relationship (or no longer has), with motives that are directly or indirectly traceable to the affective sphere. Moreover, the separated acts that make up the intrusion cannot by themselves cause the mental abuse, but do taken together (cumulative effect)."

Cyberstalking goes a bit beyond just following people around though. Some examples of the type of stuff cyberstalkers get up to just go to show this. Here are a couple of the weirder ones:

• Attacks on data and equipment. They may try to damage the victim's computer by sending viruses.
• Ordering goods and services. They order items or subscribe to magazines in the victim's name. These often involve subscriptions to pornography or ordering sex toys then having them delivered to the victim's workplace.

There is also stuff like character assassination on forums/newsgroups, false accusations, and trying to meet up with people (particularly younger people, for sexual purposes - this is an online predator).

I've never come across this before. I once knew someone who used a mutual friend's email address to sign up for the 'I Love Cheese' newsletter, but that's neither here nor there. A rather great website I discovered on my travels around the web is this one, My Psycho Stalker, which documents the emails one person received from their very own cyberstalker.

I think this is really quite sinister. The only way to escape this would be to completely change all of your email addresses, and website accounts, or perhaps even to avoid certain websites. I know that it is possible to install programs on computers which log your activity, a method now quite frequently used when people think that their partner is cheating via emails and websites like match.com. Now Cyberstalking (in the UK, and some USA states) is considered an offense, however.