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- Persecution over the Internet can be
terrifying
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- Angela Westwater was stalked by a man
who lived 5,000 miles away on another continent.
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- The married mother-of-two was horrified
to find that her name and personal details had been posted onto a graphically
sexual dating site - and that a distant relative living in Florida was
responsible.
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- She told BBC News Online: "He had
superimposed my head onto pictures of naked porn stars, and he had provided
a lot of information about me, like my address and telephone number.
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- "He also posted a message somewhere
else saying that I was his long lost love and that he was desperate for
information about my whereabouts.
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- Escalation in UK expected
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- "He actually knew enough about me
to put up pages saying things like I walked to work. It was quite frightening.
I needed my husband to drive me to work for months because I didn't know
who might have read his advert and be watching me."
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- That was back in 1996 - but the National
Criminal Intelligence Service is warning that cyberstalking - harassment
on the Internet - is set to escalate in the UK.
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- As more and more people become Internet
users, the opportunities for abuse increase.
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- Ironically, Mrs Westwater was not even
on the Internet when the campaign of abuse was waged against her. She was
told by a newspaper reporter who lived in the same area, and who had become
intrigued by the frequency with which her address appeared on the Net.
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- New York-based cyber lawyer Parry Aftab
says that targeting an individual on the Internet - by sending nasty E-mail,
leaving offensive messages in guestbooks or posting misinformation about
them - constitutes harassment and stalking.
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- She told BBC News Online: "It's
become a very big problem in the United States, and is an increasing problem
in the UK. Almost all victims are women."
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- Ms Aftab, who specialises in law issues
presented by the Internet, also runs Cyber Angels - a site designed to
help victims of cyber persecution, as well giving advice on Net safety.
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- "We are getting a number of inquiries
from the UK now," she said. "Like the USA, these tend to fall
into three camps.
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- "The first is typically the result
of a failed relationship, where an ex-husband or an ex-boyfriend pursues
the victim via email, and sends offensive material to her friends and employers.
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- "The second is where a relationship
that has formed on the Internet has soured. Two people have met one another
in a chat room, liked one another, have shared personal information perhaps,
and then that information is used against them.
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- "Pictures can be morphed onto pornographic
pictures and emailed to employers, postings can be made which make the
victim look like she is offering sexual services, giving her telephone
number.
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- "The third tends to be people who
target just anyone - they just want the thrill of scaring people online.
These often turn out to be children."
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- Internet providers take the issue very
seriously, and say they work closely with the police to investigate any
form of cyber crime.
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- Chairman of the Internet Service Providers
Association, Tim Pearson, said that anyone who experienced harassment on
the Internet should in the first instance contact the police, then send
forward copies of abusive material to their ISP.
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- "But it can be very difficult to
trace the sender, especially if they are using a different ISP," he
said.
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- "However, any suspected criminal
activity should be reported to the police, and they are able to issue warrants
which allow the release of information from other ISPs under the Data Protection
Act."
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- In essence, threatening and abusive messages,
postings and email were to be regarded in exactly the same way as nuisance
telephone calls, and reported to the police.
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- He said something a lot of Internet users
did not realise was the sheer amount of personal information that can be
traced from an E-mail address.
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- E-mail can reveal personal details
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- Victims can be led to believe that their
stalker has been physically watching them, due to the sheer weight of personal
details he is able to provide.
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- But in a lot of cases, their stalker
has just hacked into the details they have given to service providers and
other online services, and may live thousands of miles away.
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- Hackers have also been known to access
email accounts and "forge" mail and postings, purporting to be
from the victim.
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- Ms Aftab says there are a number of measures
users can take to help prevent them becoming victims.
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- They may opt to subscribe to an "anonymizing"
service which leaves no trail of information through cyber space.
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- "Sexually over screen names should
be avoided, for example," said Ms Aftab, "And choosing a genderless
name is a good idea."
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- Paedophiles "seek out" children
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- Another distressing aspect of cyberstalking
is that of paedophiles using chat rooms in an attempt to make contact with
children.
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- Ms Aftab said: "Cyberstalking is
not dangerous until the person tries to make contact offline - or someone
who has read the information tries to make contact offline. But it is annoying
and can be frightening.
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- "Paedophiles, however, are seeking
out children they want to make physical contact with. The UK does not have
a huge problem with this at the moment, because it does not have as many
children online as the USA.
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- "But these are all issues that the
UK is going to have to learn to deal with very quickly."
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