One of the benefits of virtual communities is that they allow people to create and explore new identities in a safe and anonymous environment. These ideals have been threatened by the increasing number of people being harassed online by cyber stalkers. Cyber stalking occurs when two users have a disagreement online and one of the participants bullies the other for an extended period of time. This can range from following the victim online and verbally harassing them, altering their user information and trying to attack the victim electronically with viruses to finding out where the person lives and becoming negatively involved in their life.
One case of this was a woman in Massachusetts, USA in 1999. After having a disagreement with another user about her chat room alias, every time she logged onto the website the other user was waiting. The harasser became more violent in his intimidation against her before threatening the woman’s father and suppling information about his address.
As cyber stalking was a relatively new phenomenon, the laws of online harassment were highly informal and when this woman went to the police they did not take her fears seriously. However after the death threats, the woman sought legal advice and she was able to prosecute her harasser in the civil court of America (Hitchcock, 2000:22).
The laws surrounding cyber stalking are improving with the legal system realising the serious implications to the victims’ health, with symptoms like extreme stress levels mirroring those of physical world stalking victims (Goodwin, 2003:2).
It is advised that is someone feels they are being harassed by another user, they should remedy the problem as soon as possible. Moderated online forums generally have a code of conduct and if one user is being harassed, sending the administrators documented evidence of the harassment can get them banned from the site. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) also have detailed code of conduct contracts and if the harasser still persists, especially if it is via the ISPs email system, the victim can send evidence to the network to get the harasser’s service disconnected. These are relatively simple methods of trying to stop aggression towards the user but online harassment should not be taken lightly. Should the user ever feel that their life is being threatened or adversely affected in any way they should seek legal advice. (Radcliff, 2000:56)
Goodwin, Shelly.L. 2003. Cyberstalking: A new criminal behaviour? Women Police, 37(1):2-3 (accessed 3 October 2005)
Hitchcock, J.A. 2000. Cyberstalking. Link-Up, 17(4):22-23 (accessed 3 October 2005)
Radcliff, Deborah. 2000. A case of cyberstalking. Network World, 17(22):56-57 (accessed 3 October 2005)
