Personal Security:
Cyber Stalking

Cyber-stalking is a similar situation to stalking in real life, where a person, usually a male, decides that he wishes to get intimate with another user, usually a female.

Sometimes that is all there is to it. In many well-documented cases, though, there is a deeper agenda, where the stalker wishes not only to engage in sexual activity with his victim, but also wishes to physically attack them, even to the point of murder and body mutilation.

• Contact your Service Provider with logs and other material so that they may help you if they are willing to. At least inform them it is going on. Unless the stalker is one of their customers, they have no obligation to help.

• Contact the Service Provider of the person who is stalking you. You can find out who it is by doing a /whois on them. ISPs are bound by agreements between service providers throughout the internet which includes taking action against "cyber abuse".

• If that ISP ignores you, refuses to communicate with you, or tries to pass the buck, find and speak with an IRCop - IRC operator on-line and seek their advice. All IRCops have access to information regarding who provides the "backbone" service to that particular ISP. Their upline provider will often bring pressure to bear. The command in IRC to locate an IRCop is
  /who 0 o

• Through trying to trace stalkers in the past, we have found that if an ISP does not have an email address such as abuse@.isp.com, they are likely to be of little help, because they do not treat the matter of abuse as being important.

If your ISP does not have one, we strongly recommend you to change immediately to another ISP just in case you need help at some time in the future. A very cheap ISP isn't much good to you if you are being stalked, is it? Far better to spend a little more for professional support that will be available if you need it.

• Speak with the Computer Crimes squad of your local and federal Law-enforcement Agency.

• Speak with a reporter from your TV station's news and current affairs department, to see if they have any contacts.

  Several of the links up there on the left came as a result of a TV current Affairs news crew's item on Australian Television.

• Try speaking with one of the Channel Operators on our channel #Christian who may be able to come up with more ideas, depending in which country you live. One of the senior Ops may be more help. Check out the Channel Management page on this website, which shows a "family tree" of who does what in the channel. Senior ops are in the teams at the top of the list.

  Finally, please realise that you are not on your own. You really do have friends - here and in other places - who will try to help in all sorts of ways.