Doors Open Ever Wider to Cyberstalking - Scambusters

From control freaks who want to drive you nuts, through
weirdos obsessed with you, to thieves waiting to burglarize
your home, cyberstalking fiends surround us.

And their main allies? You.

Yes, that's right; the information you give away about
yourself and your location is exactly what they need to watch
you or for online harassment.

The Internet now teems with sites that will search the whole
web for information about you. With just one email address,
they can show who you are, where you live, your age, marital
status, your wealth, your hobbies, your job and which social
networking sites you belong to.

They can even turn up photos of you and any pictures you might
have posted online, or get to know about your individual likes
and dislikes.

For instance, we just keyed in an email address used by one of
the Scambusters team and discovered his favorite type of
music. The search site simply used that email address to check
music sites he'd visited.

Another Scambusters team member was shocked to see satellite
images of her home -- right down to her car in the driveway --
and in-depth information about it, including number of
bedrooms, square footage and approximate property value.
Invaluable information for a would-be burglar.

The worrying thing is that there's nothing illegal about this.
These sites simply search on an email address, name or
whatever information you give them, checking hundreds or
thousands of public records.

Often, they return just basic information but, for a fee -- as
little as $2.95 a month -- they'll spill the beans on
virtually everything there is to know about you.

Of course, you put a lot of this information online yourself,
for your friends or others who share your interests. Some of
it is also available from public records, like property
information.

Or you were just asked for an email address when you
registered at a particular site. And maybe you didn't realize
that dropping a nugget of information here and there would
lead to someone pulling it all together and building up a
complete picture of you.

As we often point out, this is the sort of information used
for identity theft. But it's also what nasty characters use
for Internet stalking.

According to the latest figures from the Department of Justice,
around 3.5 million people report being stalked in the US every
year, and at least one quarter of them are victims of
cyberstalking.

Goodness knows, additionally, how many people either don't
report it or don't even know they're being stalked. As the DOJ
says: "Technology has become a quick and easy way for stalkers
to monitor and harass their victims."

It can take many forms. For instance:

* Pestering an individual with unwanted personal messages by
email, in chat rooms or using instant messaging services.

* Tracking all your postings on social networks and photo
sites and adding comments, often insulting or over-familiar,
sometimes threatening.

* Building up a record of your activities and interests so
they can claim to know all about you, using it to befriend,
scam or spaham (misspelled intentionally) you.

* Blackmail and coercion.

* "Virtually" tracking you by following your postings on
so-called "geolocation" sites that you use to tell friends
where you are. Some cell phones can actually be set up to
transmit your location automatically.

Just this year, two stories we encountered illustrate the
scale of the problem.

In one instance, a friend began receiving lengthy comments on
every picture she posted on a well-known photo-sharing site.
Then the commenter began sending messages to her, sometimes as
many as 20 a day.

The more our friend asked this person to desist, the more
messages she received, and the more hostile and abusive they
became.

It seems likely that this cyberstalker just got a kick out of
harassing the victim. Psychologists cite this kind of online
harassment as a characteristic of "controlling" type
personalities.

On another occasion, on a massively different scale, a
researcher (fortunately a "good guy") downloaded details of
850,000 people who'd checked through San Francisco Airport by
simply raising a "who was here" query on a popular geolocation
site.

It's bad enough that this kind of information could be used
for online harassment, to burglarize homes when owners admit
they're away, or even to steal their identities.

But the real worry is when this information is used as an aid
to physically stalking someone, potentially putting their
personal safety at risk.

So, what can you do to minimize the risk of falling victim to
cyberstalking? Here are 15 tips:

1. Use email addresses that don't include your real name.

2. Use different email addresses for each social network you
belong to.

3. Use a nickname that your friends know on social networking
sites.

4. Use as little personal information as possible about
yourself online.

5. Use whatever privacy controls are available on sites you
visit to limit disclosure of information about you. Look for
the "privacy" link or other controls that restrict who can see
information about you.

6. Think very carefully about the value of letting friends
know where you are versus the value of that information
falling into the wrong hands.

7. If you know the name of sites that do the sort of "name
searches" we mentioned, check if they offer an option to
delist you, effectively excluding you from a search. 
We're
reluctant to name these sites as we're pretty darned sure
villains read Scambusters as well as honest folk.

You may also encounter services offering to get your name
removed from many of these lists. They charge a fee and we are
unable to recommend any of them.

8. Don't accept online "follow" or "friend" invitations unless
you know them or have checked them out. Chasing follower
numbers just for the sake of it is an ego thing and actually
does nothing for you.

9. Remember when you go into a chatroom, you don't know who
other visitors really are, and there will be "lurkers" you
never see, watching the conversations.

10. If you can, ignore non-threatening (emphasis on
"non-threatening") messages and comments. Don't reply to their
emails. You might have to do this for an extended time before
an online stalker gives up.

11. Consider blocking an individual from "following" you. Be
wary of this though. If they're control freaks they'll simply
come at you with a different user name.

12. Don't use threats or aggression in response. It doesn't
work and, again, it gives controlling types a sense of
victory.

13. Don't respond to suggestive comments, even if it seems
just a bit of fun.

14. Report any harassment to the operator of the site where it
happened.

15. Consider changing your screen name or, in extreme cases,
even closing your accounts and abandoning the troublesome
sites altogether.


Of course, if you are concerned in any way about your personal
safety, you should contact the police.

With the increasing accessibility of personal information on
the Internet, there is a simple golden rule you can use to
shield yourself from cyberstalking: Be as anonymous as
possible.

(Of course, also make sure your children know about this and
report any type of online harassment to you.)

That means, if possible, not posting any personal information
about yourself. There's a price to pay of course -- your
friends won't know as much about you as they might otherwise
do. But neither will the cyberstalking creeps.