CYBERSTALKING-A REAL LIFE PROBLEM

Cyberstalking part I

Cyberstalking part II

Cyberstalking part III

Online users are vulnerable to being targeted as cyberstalking victims in three areas.

1) Live Chat or IRC (Internet Relay Chat):
in which a user talks live with other users. This is the most common place for cyberstalking.

2) Message boards
and Newsgroups: a user interacts with others by posting messages, conversing back and forth.

3) Email box: a user has the ability to write anything and even attach files to the email.

Rule of thumb, as it may be referred to is: "NEVER GIVE ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION ACROSS THE INTERNET!"

CYBER STALKING Part III
A Real Life Problem

     Live Chat
     Cyber Street Smarts

Cyber Street Smarts (CSS) means two things:

1) knowing how to deal with online trouble, and,

2) knowing how to avoid that trouble in the first place.

CSS does not mean paranoia or panic. It just means keeping your wits about you and knowing how to respond coolly and calmly to any problem you might encounter. Cyber street smarts is knowing the score, keeping things in good perspective, and knowing your way around your area of the internet. Also how to enjoy yourself, secure in the fact, that if something goes wrong, then you know what to do and how to do it. This will give you confidence yourself, which help deterrent a stalker might be targeting you for his type of harassment.

Remember that people online may not be who they seem. Because you can't se or even hear the person, it is easy for someone to fool you. YOU might even have fooled someone else at one time, so you know this to be true. Right? Gender swapping is Very common online and especially in IRC. And age fraud is also a common item that is used. There are plenty of men impersonating women, girls, or younger boys online, as well as females impersonating men. NOTE the techniques in talking as a hint as to their real age, and gender.

Does it matter? That's up to you. Alot of the interaction in live chat areas is role playing games. You can be whomever you please. This presents a problem when chatting with someone who does not play these games, or is not aware of the games at all. NOTICE: if the conversation changes, and if it is heading the direction you desire. Most frequently, conversations will change toward a more personal note, or even straight to sex. Protect yourself in the beginning for such changes by not revealing too much personal information about yourself. Therefore preventing the individual, with whom you are chatting, to relocate you, if you decide to make a quick exit from that chat session. Watch for red flags or alarm bells when chatting. Some of these indications would be where you live, are you married, what school do you attend, what are you wearing right now, or what do you look like, and other such personal inquires. If the conversation turns and makes you feel uncomfortable, use precautions, protect yourself. TRUST YOU FEELINGS regarding how much information you choose to disclose. LET YOUR PARENTS KNOW IF SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO KEEP THEIR FRIENDSHIP "A SECRET" from your parents.

Beware of new acquaintances who want to talk privately to you and starts sending you private messages. Give any acquaintance online, time to develop the trust, and take the time for that trust to be shown before disclosing personal information. REMEMBER where the off button is on the IRC program, or on your machine.

Sometimes friends online discover they are both in the same city, or close by. HOLD ON! Before you arrange to meet someone face to face in personal you should first talk with them on a telephone, and talk to others that they chat with, making inquiries and stating the fact that the individual wants to meet you for real, and find out their opinions about the situation and the individual. If you so choose to speak on the telephone, remember to enable your Call Blocker, as the other party might have Caller ID. Or consider using a public phone. Remember to ensure your privacy, in the event that the situation turns out to be undesirable. If you so choose to actually meet the other person, use a very PUBLIC PLACE. Invite another person to accompany you, and always let someone else know where you are meeting the individual. there have been cases of kidnapping, rape and even murders resulting from meetings like this. BE CAREFUL!

NEVER DO ANYTHING ONLINE THAT YOU DON'T WANT TO DO, no one says you have to chat or be bothered. The PC belongs to you, for your enjoyment. Don't allow others to spoil it for you. Is this paranoid? Only if you spend the whole day worrying about it. Make it just a normal part of your daily routine. We all look both ways before crossing a street, but we don't spend the whole day worrying about being run over. Do we?

DEALING WITH
             A CYBERSTALKER

Stalking whether IRL or online, is a traumatic and distressing experience. Taking steps to protect yourself, and keeping your eyes open while online is much better than waiting to see what will happen next. Nevertheless, you may take all precautions but....you may still pick up a cyberstalker at some point online.

It is important to differentiate between inconvenient or mildly annoying conversations and cyberstalking. The main features of online stalking are systematic and malicious harassment, involving physical threats against you , and usually involving an attempt to locate your address and telephone number. Offensive cyberstalking will SCARE you, and understandably so. Cyber-stalking is an abuse of power. Your harasser is exerting "power" over you. Your task is to take back control of the situation. Below is a checklist of anti-stalking options you can choose, if experiencing online harassment of the malicious kind.

Ignoring and Avoidance

The FIRST and BEST response to online harassment is to IGNORE IT, and seeks ways to AVOID IT. If you rush, head first into a confrontation, you risk starting a "flame war", which can rapidly escalate into all types of harassment, such as hate mail. Consider the psyche of the person doing the stalking. Most want attention, and are craving responses like "drop dead" and "leave me alone". Furthermore, if you publicly humiliate the individual, then revenge on their part, they feel, would be the next step.
SO JUST IGNORE THEM, TOTALLY.

Here's some tips:

1) Take no notice of the person. Just ignore their comments. Silence can be your best weapon.

2) Use the IGNORE box or command, if available. If the program has an ignore box, put his isp number in it, therefore cutting all his remarks. OR you can use the ignore command which is done as follows: /ignore (username here), thus also removing his messages, both publicly and privately.

3) Use the Ignore 3 command. Type: /ignore (name here) 3 which that even if the individual changes his name, he will remain blocked until such time as he logs off. The "3" allows your client to "follow" name changes.

4) Ignore as the host level. Type: /whois(name) which will get you a reply, e.g. Name@stalker.net. This is called a "MASK" which is written with an exclamation mark between the name and actual username. Thus: Creep!Lowlife@stalker.net (creep represents the nickname and Lowlife represents the username @ hostname and host network. And there are often some numbers and letters before the hostname indicating the path your computer took to connect to the server. e.g. (200.00.000.0.stalker.net) This series of numbers and letters after the @ sign is referred to as the "PPP node", and each time you login in this number may change, depending on what route your connection takes. (which is called having a "dynamic IP address"). To ignore the individual at his host level, you are going to send an ignore command to ignore anyone else from the same host, regardless of their names. To do this, you use the mask format and a wildcard. Typed as follows: /ignore*!*@stalker.net The asterisks (*) are the wildcards, and this means "whatever the name is here". Notice that there are 3 wildcards used in the mask. (the nickname, the username, and the PPP node.) Don't forget to include the exclamation mark. In this way you will ignore the individual no matter how he logs on. This is ignoring at the HOST LEVEL. There is one drawback to ignoring at the host level, and that is that you will now be ignoring EVERYONE from that hostname.

5) Use the Silence command. The silence command is better, by stopping all communications from a designated address at the server level, so signals never even reach you and cannot flood you offline. Generally this is done: /quote silence+*!*username@hostname.net or com This technique varies from server to server, check with your server for the exact command sequence to be used.

6) Go invisible or change your nickname.
You can also avoid a harasser by going invisible and changing your nick name while you are invisible. To do this type: /mode (name) +i and then type: /nick (new name) Once you are invisible, the harasser cannot see your new nickname unless she or she is on the same channel as yourself. Now you can set up a new channel, make your channel secret, prevent messages from coming in from outside the channel, and make it invite only. You do this by issuing the /join3channelname command and then a /mode command for the channel combing three codes: +s +n +i thus your command line reads:

                             /join #mychannel
                             /mode #mychannel +sni

Now all you have to do is /msg your friends and invite them to your new secure channel (/invite nick) and you can continue without your harasser. This may seem a complex sequence but with practice this will be second nature. If you know how to run macros ("shortcuts" in ircle) you can have the two command sequences ready to send at the touch of a button.

There are also various options such as changing your newsgroups, deleting your postings from newsgroups, and removing www.guestbook options, etc, too numerous to list. I hope this helps you, and please, use common sense online, and in the chat areas.

Copyright © 1997 - GRAFX-SPECS DESIGN & HOSTING