Cyberstalking

We all use a variety of different technology such as mobile phones, e-mail, online shopping and social networks. However, using this technology can put stalking victims at risk. It is important that support professionals and victims understand how technology works, why it puts them at risk and what steps they can take to reduce those risks. These guidelines review the most commonly used technologies and their risks. There is a section on spoof text (SMS) and global positioning satellite (GPS) car tracking devices, but the key risks are set out below.

Web 2.0 has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and applications. These communities provide places for information sharing and collaboration. They also open the door for inappropriate online activities, such as harassment, in which some users post messages in a virtual community that are intentionally offensive to other members of the community. It is a new and challenging task to detect online harassment; currently few systems attempt to solve this problem. In this paper, we use a supervised learning approach for detecting harassment. Our technique employs content features, sentiment features, and contextual features of documents. The experimental results described herein show that our method achieves significant improvements over several baselines, including Term Frequency- Inverse Document Frequency (TFIDF) approaches. Identification of online harassment is feasible when TFIDF is supplemented with sentiment and contextual feature attributes.

With the emergence of new technologies and innovations the World is also facing alarming increase in the crimes and a cyber crime is one of the most vulnerable crimes emerging now a day. India too is no exception in the paradigm of cyber crime. Cyber crimes in India are gaining momentum from simple e-mail type of crime to serious crime like hacking, source code theft etc. Cyberstalking is on the rise and women, senior citizens and children are the most likely targets. This paper examines cyber stalking as an example of a crime that is simultaneously both amenable to, and resistant of, traditional forms of legislation, depending upon the way in which the possibilities of the Internet are exploited. The paper attempts to discuss the modes of cyber crimes, categories of cyber stalkers, psychology of cyber stalkers, motives of cyber stalkers and the nature victims. The paper also attempts to suggest measures to prevent the crime and deal cyber stalkers.

The purpose of this paper is to show how certain uses of search-engine technology raise concerns for personal privacy. In particular, we examine some privacy implications involving the use of search engines to acquire information about persons. We consider both a hypothetical scenario and an actual case in which one or more search engines are used to find information about an individual. In analyzing these two cases, we note that both illustrate an existing problem that has been exacerbated by the use of search engines and the Internet – viz., the problem of articulating key distinctions involving the public vs. private aspects of personal information. We then draw a distinction between “public personal information” (or PPI) and “nonpublic personal information” (or NPI) to see how this scheme can be applied to a problem of protecting some forms of personal information that are now easily manipulated by computers and search engines – a concern that, following Helen Nissenbaum (1998, 2004), we describe as the problem of privacy in public. In the final section of this paper, we examine a relatively recent privacy theory introduced by James Moor (2004) to see whether that theory can shed any light on privacy concerns surrounding the use of search engines to acquire personal information. Although no definitive solution to the problems examined in this paper are proposed, we conclude by suggesting that Moor’s privacy theory could help us to frame – via debate in an open and public forum – a coherent on-line privacy policy concerning whether, and which kinds of, personal information should be accessible to search engines.

The National Center for Victims of Crime has developed The Model Stalking Code Revisited: Responding to the New Realities of Stalking to assist states that are working to strengthen their stalking laws. This report examines and recommends updates to the 1993 Model Anti-Stalking Code for the States developed at the direction of Congress by the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice.

Stalking is a crime of terror. It is one part threat and one part waiting for the threat to be carried out. The victim of stalking has no way to resolve the threat and terror she feels. (Most revoked cases involve male stalkers and female victims.) Stalking is also far more common than most people believe, including criminal justice professionals. Together, these two points underscore the reality that stalking is an important policy issue for the criminal justice system, for agencies providing services to victims of crime, and for advocates concerned about violence against women.
 
Stalking has, of course, gathered considerable attention from the mass media. However, notwithstanding a sizable literature about stalking as a legal construct and as a medical issue, - - systematic information about this crime and what is being done about it is largely missing. Most significantly, policy analysis of what needs to be done to improve anti-stalking investigation, prosecution, and provision of services to stalking victims is totally absent.
 

• To fill those gaps in knowledge, this study of the status of stalking laws and their implementation in the United States was conducted.' The study:
• Analyzed stalking and related legislation in the 50 states,
• Reviewed leading court decisions interpreting those laws,
• Conducted a survey of police and prosecutor agencies across the country to determine how the laws are being implemented,
• Undertook field reviews in jurisdictions with innovative, special anti-stalking efforts, and
• Integrated study findings with the existing research literature on stalkers and their behavior.

 
The premise for the research was that stalking is a serious crime against persons2 and is widely prevalent.While there has been significant federal support for state and local agencies to adopt anti-stalking laws and implement anti-stalking initiatives: no comprehensive review of the status of such efforts had been done. Thus, there was no way of knowing what additional measures (such as federal assistance to state and local enforcement agencies, or new initiatives by state and local agencies themselves) might be needed to enhance local anti-stalking efforts.

Federal and state laws have always played a role in protecting minors from criminal victimization. For example, Congress has enacted laws dealing with child pornography, child luring, and child sexual exploitation. However, given its immediacy, anonymity, and accessibility, the Internet offers a forum, through social networking sites,1 for harassment and other social ills committed against minors. The Internet’s nuances present new challenges for federal and state legislators and law enforcement personnel responsible for defining and prosecuting criminal use. This is especially true with the relatively new crime of Internet “harassment.” The term Internet harassment usually encompasses “cyberstalking,” “cyberharassment,” and/or “cyberbullying.” These activities, when committed against minors, may cause emotional harm. Recent high-profile cases involving teen suicides demonstrate the potentially severe consequences of this emotional harm. As such, legislators are faced with determining how to handle the problem.
 
Various laws, not specific to minors, govern traditional crimes such as stalking and harassment, which generally include a threat of harm. These laws generally criminalize unlawful conduct that fails to rise to the level of assault or battery.2 Recognizing that the Internet can be used to stalk or harass individuals, Congress and some states have amended “traditional” stalking and harassment statutes to include Internet activity. However, these statutes are generally inapplicable in situations in which minors suffer emotional harm due to embarrassment or humiliation. When, if ever, should criminal sanctions be imposed for these incidents? Should legislators amend traditional stalking and harassment statutes to cover these situations? Or should legislators create new crimes covering such activity? Should such activity conducted by a neighbor, for example, be prosecuted on the federal level because the Internet was used? Or should prosecution of such activity remain at the state level? These are just some of the questions legislators may consider in addressing the problem of Internet harassment of children. While these policy considerations are noteworthy, this report focuses on the applicable constitutional constraints legislators may consider in drafting legislation in this area.

This paper aims to provide an introduction to a range of abusive behaviours that young people may encounter online, including cyber stalking, abusive cyber sex and online grooming. The principle author has spent over eight years researching various aspects of online activity, including both criminal behaviours.
 
A number of legal definitions of these particular deviant online behaviours have been developed, for example, UK’s Protection From Harassment Act 1997 and most recently within the UK, under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. However, there is a shortage of programmes of education designed to address these online behaviours. The aim of this paper is to propose a blueprint for the development of Internet safety programmes designed to educate young people about the nature of abusive online activities. Currently, there is a clear need for information that summarises abusive online activities in a way that is accessible both to young people and also to those who are responsible for children’s well being, including parents, carers and teachers. It is also vitally important that those in a position to mediate these activities, for example chat room moderators and also policy makers interested in addressing abusive online behaviours, have a clear insight into not only the nature of abusive online activities, but crucially possible proactive and reactive strategies.

This study examined the nature and lifetime prevalence of two types of victimization among Finnish university students: stalking and violence victimization (i.e. general violence). This study was a cross-sectional study using two different datasets of Finnish university students. The stalking data was collected via an electronic questionnaire and the violence victimization data was collected via a postal questionnaire. There were 615 participants in the stalking study (I-III) and 905 participants in the violence victimization study. The thesis consists of four studies.

The creation of Canada's anti-stalking statute, or criminal harassment law, slightly more than a decade ago marked the beginning of a new risk assessment imperative.  It provided Canadian law enforcement officials with new opportunities to manage stalking cases, but it also created new demands for violence risk assessments.  Unfortunately, the empirical research on stalking offers law enforcement personnel little guidance on how to approach these tasks.  Although research is starting to identify risk factors for stalking violence, most of this work has been carried out in relatively small, clinical-forensic samples an so the validity and practical utility of these risk factors in the law enforcement context remains unknown.  More importantly, there has been virtually no empirical research looking at the relations of different risk factors to specific case management practices.  To develop a better picture of the violence risk factors associated with stalking cases encountered by Canadian law enforcement personnel as well as examine the influence of these risk factors on their selection of case management strategies, this dissertation examined all documented investigations of criminal harassment carried out by the Vancouver Police Department during the 1997 calendar year (N=241).