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IF YOU ARE BEING STALKEDIf you have any reason to think that you may be in any physical danger, dial 911 immediately. Don't worry about looking foolish -- better to be embarrassed than dead. If you are instead unwanted online advances or messages that seem threatening or hateful, the best first line of defense is to ignore your stalker. Don't succumb to the desire to tell them off by return e-mail or instant message -- often that encourages escalation. If you are lucky, you have merely run into teenagers with a short attention span who think of this as a prank. (Which should serve as a reminder to us all make sure that our own youngsters do not see such behavior as a joke.) If the person is instead a real and persistent cyberstalker, they will not easily get bored and give up. So do not delete even that one upsetting message you receive -- it may be the first of a series of communications that you must document to prosecute your online attacker successfully. Keep in mind that many police agencies do not know how to deal with this new kind of crime. Cyberlawyer Mark D. Grossman says, "Remember, you're likely to be the first cyberstalking case that your particular police person has ever seen. You're likely to be greeted with skepticism and the same blank look that you might get reporting that ET is in your house. So at least come in with some printouts demonstrating the problem." There are also numerous online sources of support. One of the most complete and most useful is CyberAngels. Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, and Colin Gabriel Hatcher, an Internet expert from England who has moved to Los Angeles, launched this site as a place where victims of cyberstalking can find practical information, advice, and support. Other sites worth visiting include:
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last updated by David Clarke on 1 Mar 2001 |
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