Cyber Stalking

In Cyber Stalking, a cyber criminal uses the internet to consistently threaten somebody. This crime is often perpetrated through email, social media, and the other online medium. Cyber Stalking can even occur in conjunction with the additional ancient type of stalking, wherever the bad person harasses the victim offline. There’s no unified legal approach to cyber Stalking, however, several governments have moved toward creating these practices punishable by law. Social media, blogs, image sharing sites and lots of different ordinarily used online sharing activities offer cyber Stalkers with a wealth of data that helps them arrange their harassment. It includes actions like false accusations, fraud, information destruction, threats to life and manipulation through threats of exposure. It has stalkers take the assistance of e-mails and other forms of message applications, messages announce to an online website or a discussion cluster, typically even the social media to send unwanted messages, and harass a specific person with unwanted attention. Cyber Stalking is typically cited as internet stalking, e-stalking or online stalking. 

Types of Cyber Stalking:

• Webcam Hijacking: Internet stalkers would attempt to trick you into downloading and putting in a malware-infected file that may grant them access to your webcam. the method is therefore sneaky that it’s probably you wouldn’t suspect anything strange.
• Observing location check-ins on social media: In case you’re adding location check-ins to your Facebook posts, you’re making it overly simple for an internet stalker to follow you by just looking through your social media profiles.
• Catfishing: Catfishing happens via social media sites, for example, Facebook, when internet stalkers make counterfeit user-profiles and approach their victims as a companion of a companion.
• Visiting virtually via Google Maps Street View: If a stalker discovers the victim’s address, then it is not hard  to find the area, neighbourhood, and surroundings by using Street View. Tech-savvy stalkers don’t need that too. 
• Installing Stalkerware:One more method which is increasing its popularity is the use of Stalkerware. It is a kind of software or spyware which keeps track of the location, enable access to text and browsing history, make an audio recording, etc. And an important thing is that it runs in the background without any knowledge to the victim.
• Looking at geotags to track location:Mostly digital pictures contain geotags which is having information like the time and location of the picture when shot in the form of metadata. Geotags comes in the EXIF format embedded into an image and is readable with the help of special apps.  In this way, the stalker keeps an eye on the victim and gets the information about their whereabouts.

Protective Measures:

• Develop the habit of logging out of the PC when not in use.
• Remove any future events you’re close to attending from the social networks if they’re recorded on online approaching events and calendars.
• Set strong and distinctive passwords for your online accounts.
• Cyber Stalkers can exploit the low security of public Wi-Fi networks to snoop on your online activity. Therefore, avoid sending personal emails or sharing your sensitive info when connected to an unsecured public Wi-Fi.
• Make use of the privacy settings provided by the social networking sites and keep all info restricted to the nearest of friends.
• Do a daily search on the internet to search out what information is accessible regarding you for the public to check.