Cyberstalking – I never thought it would happen to me (Part 2)
There was no way to determine whether this person who requested to be my friend on MySpace was really the person in the photo with the accompanying profile information. Not really thinking that there was any harm in accepting a friend’s request, I approved his request. He had a ton of photos posted on his profile, and it seemed like he was a decent person. Honestly though, you never know who it is that you are really communicating with because whoever that person is, is hiding behind a computer. In the millions of accounts online, how do you determine who is really your friend and who is out there to hurt you?
Some people think it’s fun to post photos and information and status updates on sites like Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. But just think about all the hundreds or thousands of people who see or could potentially see that information. Some may even become obssessed and ‘follow’ your every single move! Recently, a 25 Random Things about Me was widely distributed through Facebook. It is phenomenal how many people responded to that chain letter with the most intimate and personal things about them, at the same time, it is chilling to realize that the widely spread note ’25 Random Things’ “reiterates that users really, really like sharing and spreading information about themselves online, no matter how personal or vulgar or trite.” I hope that in bringing up topics like these, it will help you to determine how it may effect you if you become the victim of a cyber stalker and by thinking twice before you decide to post up personal information.
This entry is the second of several entries to come about becoming the victim of a cyber stalker, and how I was able to help myself and law enforcement, track down the stalker. Currently, the cyber stalker is being charged in a criminal case for his malicious actions, and so I cannot disclose certain information at this time.
If you would like to be posted on the next entry, please subscribe to this blog through rss. To learn more about how to prevent cyberstalking, please click here. If you are currently being cyberstalked and would like to seek more help, then please report the incident using this form and contact your local authority and their Internet Crime unit department for immediate assistance.
Category: Cyber Stalking | Tags: Cyber Crime, cyber stalking, facebook chain letter, following people online, harmful impact of social networks, stalking online 2 comments »
April 6th, 2010 at 10:50 am
I was using facebook with really caring friends on my page.
I picked up a group of cyberstakers by going out of my page to talk on the outlawing of bikies.
Then all of a sudden I was being followed and harmed by a gang of CS.s
They made up a page called Mikey Atko pretended to be Michael Atkinson using a picture of him on the page. They then used this identity to pretend to all my friends, they were a friend of mine. So many of them added him onto their friends list. Within the Mikey Atko page, was a photo of me and a page made up calling me Deb pine is a pain in the asse, with comments from the five cyberstalkers defaming my character and making it look like i was a really bad person.
They had made up a number of false pages as group pages as well and i didn’t realise they were in there to. One was a support Mike Rann page which is our premier. Once I was in there they all jumped on me. Then one lady gave me a page they were all on.
I gave the police a list of the pages these cyberstalkers were all on, linking them all together.
I also have a neighbour on Facebook. He often has booze parties and about six weeks ago went into a psychotic drug violent rage jumping on our roof and running across it, then went on to smash a neighbours car.
I went to stop someone from getting hurt, but hadn’t realised they had just smashed a car. It turned out that one of these cyberstalkers is the guy that was on our roof and was with these group of cyberstalkers set out to harm me.
So when i checked our neighbours facebook page I found the guy on our roof and then i found that he was linked up to these other cyberstalkers harming me.
I gave all this information to a police officer. He then went on to tell me off for giving him a list of pages. He accused me of being a cyberstalker.
November 29th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
My God! That’s terrifying. I feel for you.