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A couple of years ago, I was home alone with my son while my husband was in Southeast Asia. The phone rang at 3:00 a.m. and I immediately woke to answer it, thinking that with the 12-hour time change, it had to be him on the phone. It wasn't.
It was an obscene call. I slammed the phone receiver down. The phone rang again and this time I noticed an unfamiliar name and phone number on the caller ID. I dialed an operator, stammering, "Can you tell me where this area code is located." When I found out it was a mobile phone number, I immediately dialed 911 who alerted our local police department. All the while, the phone kept ringing and my heart pounding.
The police arrived within minutes. They explained that I needed to fill out a police report and that if the caller called again, to answer it and enter #52 into my keypad. This would officially log the call into a statewide telephone harassment databank and that after three calls and the police report, I could take swift legal action. They also reassured me that the call was from an amateur as a professional would have hidden their identity from caller ID like telemarketers do.
While we were talking, the phone rang again. The officer picked it up and announced that he was a local police officer and warned the caller if he called again, the police would arrest him. This sufficiently scared the caller who did not call again.
I was reminded of that frightful experience when I wrote about some nonprofit bloggers in Cambodia being stalked BlogHer (Check here for a more detailed account).
This made me curious? How many woman bloggers have been cyberstalked and what was their experience? And, more importantly, what steps can we take to protect ourselves and what should we do if we are being cyberstalked?
Stalking is harassing or threatening behavior that an individual repeatedly engages in, such as trailing a person, appearing at their front door or place of business, making obsence or distressing phone calls, leaving written messages or objects, or destroying a person's property.
Cyberstalking is using the Internet to do all of the above and more. For bloggers, it can be menacing emails or blog comments, plagiarizing the blogger’s blog, impersonating the blogger on another site, and in other ways.
According to a U.S. Department of Justice report estimates that there may be tens or even hundreds of thousands of cyberstalking victims in the United States. It isn’t just a problem in the US. According to Seoulcat, cyberstalking is rampant in Korea, with 1 out of 10 Koreans being the victim of some cyberstalking.
Given the enormous amount of personal information available through the Internet, a cyberstalker can easily locate private information about a potential victim. Notes one BlogHer contributing editor, “I was stalked in 2003. A reader of my blog found out where I worked and sent flowers. Anonymously. That's bound to freak you out.â€
As with offline stalking, studies suggests that the majority of cyberstalkers are men and the majority of their victims are women. Sixty-seven percent of cyberstalking cases are women, according to Jane Hitchcock, journalist and author, who provides a detailed demographic profile of victims of cyberstalkers at Working To Halt Abuse
There have been reported cases of same-sex cyberstalking, too, as this story from another BlogHer editor illustrates:
“I used to spend time in an online women’s community. One woman became a little too dependent and attached herself to me a little more than was comfortable. She read every message board post I made, not just on that particular site, but all over the web. She followed me to every chatroom. She posted non-stop on my old "guestbook". She called me at home all of the time. She sent emails by the dozen, daily. Sent ecards. Sent gifts, flowers, began to "threaten" to come and visit me - and I do mean threaten. Because by that point, I was trying to pull away. She was making me nervous.â€
The editor – who was only willing to share her story if I protected her identity – said the incidents got worse and escalated before her stalker backed off. “I was never afraid she would show up at my door (I lived on a military base when it was the worst and it would have been tough for her to get through the gate). Now, sometimes I do worry - I don't have that gate to protect
