Cyberstalking

Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk someone which may be a computer crime or harassment. This term is used interchangeably with online harassment and online abuse.

A cyberstalker does not present a direct physical threat to a victim, but follows the victim's online activity to gather information and make threats or other forms of verbal intimidation. The anonymity of online interaction reduces the chance of identification and makes cyberstalking more common than physical stalking. Although cyberstalking might seem relatively harmless, it can cause victims psychological and emotional harm, and occasionally leads to actual stalking.

Cyberstalking is becoming a common tactic in racism, and other expressions of bigotry and hate.

Cyberstalkers target and harass their victims via websites, chat rooms, discussion forums, open publishing websites (e.g. blogs and Indymedia) and email. The availability of free email and website space, as well as the anonymity provided by these chatrooms and forums, have contributed to the increase of cyberstalking as a form of harassment. Also contributing is that cyberstalking is as easy as doing a google search for someone's alias, real name, or email address.

The first U.S. cyberstalking law went into effect in 1999 in California. Other states include prohibition against cyberstalking in their harassment or stalking legislation. In Florida, HB 479 was introduced in 2003 to ban cyberstalking. This was signed into law on October 2003. The crime of cyberstalking is defined in Florida Statutes 784.048(1)(d) which is one of most strict of such laws in the United States. However, law enforcement has often not caught up with the times, and officials are in many cases simply telling the victims to avoid the websites where they are being harassed or having their privacy violated. Some assistance can be found by contacting the web host companies (if the material is on a website) or the ISP of the abuser. Many victims note that persistence is key. At times the seriousness of the impact of this type of violation is not comprehended and the third party facilitators of cyberstalkers tell the victim to work it out with their harasser.

The seriousness of the publishing of private persons participating in chatrooms on the Internet was brought to the forefront by the 2005 slaying of the entire family of Hossam Armanious of Jersey City, who was known for opposing certain Muslim beliefs with the suspicion that the murders were related to the publishing of private information about this family.

Gang Stalking, Privacy Laws, & Abuse of Web Resources

The designation gang stalking was officially recognzied by the Santa Barbara Independent Media Center to denote an emerging class of collective behavior (e.g. mobs, riots, crowds) in which corporate shills and industry stakeholders collaborate to harass or defame individuals whose unconventional wisdom or criticism ruffles pride or threatens material interests (see Eleanor White's gang stalking guide for frequently asked questions).

Since the enfranchisement of the term, gang stalking has been most frequently noted in reference to cooperative networking among anonymous and technically skilled individuals within unmoderated Usenet news groups.

The keyword "gang stalking" now draws over 50,000 results in a Google Web search.

Usenet as Stalking Environment

According to Google, Usenet network of news groups is the world's largest and most decentralized collection of forums. Nearly every Internet Service Provider links to Usenet (some under their own branding); consequently, a message in these news groups bearing your name will not only rank prominently in the results of a Google/Yahoo search of your name, but also rank more highly than authoritative Web sites containing references to your name.

For this reason, Usenet is an environment attractive to individuals who want to manage how an adversary is seen through the eyes of a search engine. The most notable case of search engine vandalism is the case of Brad Jesness. The Google Web Search on his name (click here) reveals 12,200 results, over 80 percent of which are anti-Jesness dossiers, messages, and even domains registered to bear his own name for optimal search engine placement.

Usenet also supports anonymity in ways other Web-based forums do not. Not only do more than 95 percent of contributors to Usenet use aliases, but 95 percent of contributors use tools (i.e. anonymous remailers and public posting services) that conceal data identifying the location of their personal computer. This fact alone means that contributors to Usenet are not only anonymous, but also untraceable.

Sci.Psychology.Psychotherapy News Group as Illustrative Case

The unmoderated Usenet news group Sci.Psychology.Psychotherapy had been chartered for use by mental health delivery professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage/family counselors, social workers, etc.) as well as students of therapy and therapy clientele for discussion of psychological disorders (e.g., depression, eating disorder), broad approaches to treatment (e.g., psychodynamic, Rogerian), and specific interventions recognized by the academic or professional community. It is discussed here as an illustrative case, but in no way is the phenomenon of cyberstalking, a pervasive and enduring trait of Usenet, confined to this one news group. An empirical survey of its contents revealed that over 90 percent of messages in this news group not only fail to address psychotherapy or science, but that no less than 90 percent of the messages submitted over any temporal unit of analysis (i.e. month, year, 8-year period) are flames designed to incite anger in another. It is discussed here as an illustrative case because while one would expect cyberstalking to originate in news groups created to serve as flame communities (e.g. alt.flame, alt.fucknozzle, and alt.brad.jesness.die.die.die), one would not expect that perhaps the single most remarkable hotbed of cyberstalking is a psychotherapy news group to which many psychology department web sites blindly link. One would also not expect academics and practitioners to participate in the cyberstalking.

Sci.psychology.psychotherapy quickly evolved into a living laboratory of social phenomenon ranging from witless zinging to libel to severe-to-profound cyberstalking.

The forum galvanized considerable interest in collective behavior, Internet crime, and propaganda with special attention paid to the magnitude and variety of mischievous acts that are achieved when a gang of anonymous digerati use Internet services to assume control of specific individuals, from what these individuals do on the Web to how they are perceived through the eyes of a search engine.

The stalking often off-roads into the material life of the targets, disrupting business affairs, soliciting aggression against targets at disseminated residential address, and dragging associates and family into the defamation as a means of intimidating the target and estranging him or her from sources of support.

Relationship to Gang Activity

While the concept of gangs traditionally refers to low socioeconomic and minority youth, the leadership of cyberstalking gangs in Usenet may include academics, practitioners, digerati (e.g. hackers, network administrators), and corporate shills, who facilitate and inform the labor of non-degree holding supplicants and belligerents with criminal and/or psychiatric histories. For example, gang members in sci.psychology.psychotherapy include a doctoral candidate in cognitive psychology, a 61-year-old forensic psychologist who once served a term of office on his state's board of psychology examiners, an academic who resigned his position, the author of a chapter for a bestselling book about Google hacking, the director of a mental health day treatment center, and the owner of a now defunct spam blocking company.

Like traditional gangs, Usenet-based gangs are engaged in wars for the purpose of controlling turf, with "turf" in this context denoting the public reputation of a community / organization. Since Usenet is the ultimate environment for free speech (i.e. public and unmoderated with no ownership or oversight), the gang serves as a mechanism of mob rule, harassing and defaming what it cannot control through conventional moderation and censorship.

The gang in sci.psychology.psychotherapy (SPP) assumed control of SPP and often demands certain people cease contributing to the news group. The targets are usually individuals who express either (a) unconventional wisdom, (b) criticism of an institution or community in which the gangmembers claim membership (e.g. Psychology), or (c) views based on original research or single-source reflection and presented with a passionate or idiosyncratic style that appears to put the messenger at the center. Therefore, most attacks cite as justification for stalking campaigns the messenger's individuality, arrogance, or narcissism.

The gangs coordinate their abuse of search engines, domain registrars, and other organized bodies of knowledge (e.g. Amazon.com customer book review / Wikipedia) to assume control of the way the target is viewed on the Internet. Gang members divide labor to satisfy a full range of objectives, with some members portraying a victim in a comically false and unflattering light. The mythology of frivolous failure is invoked, with references to a victim ranging from friend-less hamburger flippers to unemployed pedophiles. By contrast, other gang members (or the same gang member on another day) portray the same victim in a controversial light, as a material threat or risk to the public interest (for the purpose of mobilizing stakeholders and service providers to harass and sanction the victim).

The image the gang in sci.psychology.psychotherapy manages for its victims and for the Usenet populace is in part reflected by the menacing nature of their aliases: Kali (Indian Death Goddess), Reaper, Just Taylor (AKA Taylor Jimenez), Hooded Man, ThePsyko, Iceman (AKA Profiler, Body Snatcher), Ghoul, Necco, Basic Fyre, Fyre & Sulphur, and Satan.

Many of these aliases were adopted by mental health practitioners or academics who had been accustomed at one time to posting under their given names, some of whom have been omitted from the list above for transient activity, including a consultant to California school districts (who abandoned the gang 7 years ago), a British psychologist, and a therapist convicted for unlawful sexual contact with his patient's 9-year-old son.

A competency model for cyberstalkers as well as a character analysis of individual stalkers and a discussion of strategic partnerships and divisions of labor are presented in reports titled Inside the Stalking Gang and Look Who's Stalking Now.

Gang Stalking Tools & Tactics

Data Democratization and the Personal Information Search Engines

Companies referring to themselves as personal information search engines began making your personal information available over the Internet near the turn of the millenium. They are empowered by federal law and accorded the status of an industry. Senator Warner (R-VA) disclosed that the U.S. government allows the industry to "regulate itself" (personal communication, 2002), prompting arguments by privacy rights advocates that cyberstalking must also be considered an industry. And now with a few clicks of the button, you can dredge anyone's current address, address history, criminal background, magazine subscriptions, and the identities of anyone with whom they ever shared a domicile (e.g. family).

All at a click of a button. All in the name of data democratization. The growth of this industry resulted in greater awareness, accessibility, and affordability of these cyberdredging tools, as these businesses promote themselves in ads and lower prices to compete for your profits.

The price tag is further mollified when distributed among gang members. A very abridged list of companies representing this industry includes US SEARCH.com Inc., Intelius, Zaba Search, Maverick Internet Ventures, Inc., and Confi-chek, Inc.

No Simple Way to Restore Privacy

Having your telephone number unlisted does not mean your telephone number is not available to the public. This is the single biggest misconception people have about having an unlisted number. Un-listing your telephone number simply keeps it out of directory assistance and white pages.

Many personal information search engines contain useful information on their Web sites, but faxing or mailing the proof of identity required to opt of out of all these services is like trying to use ten fingers to plug fifty holes (and counting) in a dam. The search engine staffers caution that the only effective means to keep yourself out of these databases is to submit a change of address form at your local post office to forward all personal correspondence and bills to a post office box.

A survey of personal information search engines revealed that only 70 percent provided, without significant arm twisting, information to people requesting procedures for opting out of the database.

A Treasure Trove of Personal Data

Moreover, information considered public (and therefore fair game for personal information search engines) includes telephone numbers, household demographics, street addresses, church and school alumni directory information, birth notices, death notices, marriage notices, social security numbers, and maiden name of maternal parent. Only medical records, employment records, tax returns, and personal financial records are protected by law.

Google, Yahoo, and The Search Engines

Privacy rights advocate Tim Johnsey recently posed an interesting question: "Have we lost our right to fuss about wiretapping and the Patriot Act if we support search engines like Google that represent a more proven and pervasive threat to the privacy of our citizenry?" Search engines like Google offer average citizens a way of spying on their neighbors by allowing not only a search of a person's name, but more importantly, of a person's e-mail addresses and computer source address (i.e. IP address).

The most effective demonstration of the damage that can be inflicted on a victim through Googling is presented in this report by a social psychologist.

And the most damaging aspect of these search engines could not have been more effectively summarized than by a cyberstalker in the unmoderated Usenet news group sci.psychology.psychotherapy: "He who controls Google, controls the world." Cyberstalkers seek to control how their targets are viewed by the world through the eyes of a search engine. A few simple procedures ensures a complete monopoly over the image of an enemy ...

Register a Domain Bearing Name of Victim

Members of the cyberstalking gangs are fond of registering domains in the name of victims. If the victim's name is Joe Farrell, they may register joefarrell.com. This web site is guaranteed to rank highly in a Google or Yahoo search of the name "Joe Farrell."

Use the Double Level Protection of Go Daddy

Privacy advocates and stalking researchers are noticing an alarming spike in the number of abusive domains registered through domain registrar Go Daddy Software Inc. and protected through the privacy services of Go Daddy subsidiary Domains by Proxy. Domains by Proxy subsititutes its own corporate name, contact, and address information for the name, contact, and address information of the domain's true owner. Certified mail to the General Manager's Office of Domains by Proxy will trigger an arbitration, and Domains by Proxy will rescind its privacy services if the owner of the abusive domain does not comply with instructions to contact the complainant by a deadline. However, the rescinding of the proxy data will almost always reveal fraudulent data underneath.

Extensive research revealed that Go Daddy Software Inc, which remains the registrar of the domain and curator of the fraudulent domain data, does not reply to complaints delievered through abuse@godaddy.com. Go Daddy customer service representatives verified that there are no telephone menu items for abuse or general correspondence (only for new sales and existing customers), and abuse@godaddy.com remains the only company-recognized mechanism for addressing issues of abuse.

Extensive research by private contractors revealed that the name of the individual listed as the owner of the domains is an alias and that, shortly after a complaint, the address listed in the domain data changed from a post office box in Tampa Florida to a post office box in Grover Beach, California.

Privacy advocates admonish against phoning the number in the abusive domain data to verify accuracy. The defamed complainant in this case did just that. The cyberstalker's caller ID captured the source of the incoming call, and reality was turned on its head when the cyberstalker passed off evidence of the phone call as "cyberstalking" in messages spamming multiple news groups.

Researchers also characterized ICANN as a straw authority, reporting statements from representatives of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) that ICANN has no power to enforce accurate domain data despite advertising a form through which complainants can report fraudulent domain data.

Register & Cross-Link Multiple Domains

If you are stalking someone named Joe Farrell and wish to follow procedures popularized by stalking Usenetters, you may want to add joefarrell.net, joefarrell.info, and other Joe Farrell extensions to your list of purchases. These domains can act as clones of the original .COM web site, and through hyperlinking can further ensure control of the first page of results of a Google search on "Joe Farrell." In addition, you would be depriving Joe Farrell of a means by which to compete for space on Google's "Joe Farrell billboard."

Disseminate Links to Domains in Messages to Usenet

Since the Usenet news groups are available through most ISPs, Usenet messages rank highly in a Google search of any keyword found in the message's subject field. In addition, hundreds of news readers (Web sites designed to provide access to Usenet) each assign unique URLs to any given message in a Usenet news group, resulting in a multiplicative redundancy of any single message in a search engine database. A single defamatory message in a Usenet news group may appear 3, 5, or even 15 times in the results of a Google search on your name.

Search Engines

The search engines would be a single point of contact for redressing problematic messages, but search engines lack the customer service staff necessary to manage the size of their product. So they also cite federal commuications law that effectively treats them as conduits (i.e. public utilities) rather than commercial businesses, and responsibility is deflected on the authors of the messages (who remain untraceably anonymous in Usenet) and the owners of the news readers (who are often anonymized through Go Daddy and Domains by Proxy).

The following report on search engine Google provides a graphic illustration of how search engines can be used to monitor targets and manage their public image.

Division of Labor

While the principal active agent in cyberstalking is technological anonymity, gang members can improve on this catalyst with a social form of anonymity similar to division of labor. When each member of the gang assumes responsibility for a different tool or phase in a criminal act or defamation campaign, this division of labor complicates efforts by law enforcement to isolate / parse the individual source of an adverse event. The workload involved in bringing misdemeanor harassment charges against gang members can prove daunting and prohibitive, prompting law enforcement to adopt a policy in which it advises victims to hire attorneys and private investigators and settle disputes in civil court.

This division of labor is mirrored at the institutional level, with labor "divided", so to speak, among the various services offering tools abused by cyberstalkers. Google, Go Daddy, a news reader administrator, and an open source (e.g. Amazon.com) may all, for example, factor into and facilitate cyberstalkers. Moreover, some domain registrars owe their profitability to a policy and reputation of protecting abusive domains from complaints / information requests. Thus any investigation into an adverse event may require a flood of warrants, subpoenas, and certified letters.

Off-Roading

The stalking frequently encroaches into the material life of the target, as revealed through the following tactics.

Hacking

A cyberstalking gang would not be complete without at least one member with the skills to hack into your e-mail account and other databases for the purposes of procuring that non-public information discussed in the previous section pertaining to Personal Information Search Engines. One Report follows a case in which a target's credit card number was illicitly procured for the purposes of "authenticating" a spurious negative review of another target's book in the customer review section of Amazon.com. The incident reminded me of a demonstration a high school peer put on for a few of his friends in which he hacked into the credit bureau database to collect information about our principal. It did not pose much of a challenge for this 17-year-old.

All it takes is one demonstration of access to your e-mail account (e.g. by dropping a message in your Yahoo contacts list and rigging the functionality so the Contacts List opens upon login) to make all future declarations like "we're monitoring your backchannel communications" that much more credible and menacing.

Open Source Databases

Even Wikipedia has been abused for purposes of defamation, as famously illustrated by the implication of a prominent journalist in the Kennedy assassinations. Despite the journalist's best efforts, the article remained public for 132 days. Similarly, a number of individuals have voiced displeasure over having been identified as kooks in an article about an intolerance-preaching hate group Alt.usenet.kooks.

False Reports of Abuse

Gang members like to leverage their numbers and their credentials to appeal to providers of Internet access and news group posting to sanction the target. In many cases, a service staffer will rescind services to a target without an investigation just to get some peace and because the staffer assumes that the reports of abuse are (a) factual and (b) independent. In actuality, the reports of abuse represent propaganda and astroturfing among strategic partners, stakeholders, and sources of pathological sensitivity.

Threats

Many targets of Usenet stalking report receiving phone calls at home, and report dismay over how a stalker could have obtained a number that is both unpublished and excluded from personal information search engines (e.g. Zabasearch.com). Family members have also been dragged into the fray, as evidenced in the case of Brad Jesness, whose wife became the subject of the stalkers' investigation and the subject over 600 vulgar and libelous messages in Usenet (all of which become available to Google searches).

Historical Influence of Alt.Usenet.Kooks

Since its inception in 1993, members of the news group alt.usenet.kooks have under the monikers "net kops", "kook hunters," and "kook-ologists" trolled Usenet recruiting Usenetters willing to serve as a news group's local liaison to alt.usenet.kooks. Such liasions deliver kook-related news to and from alt.usenet.kooks, delivering calls for nominations, voting forms, election results, and anti-kook dossiers to their own news group while referring the names of individuals as potential kooks to alt.usenet.kooks for further study and possible harassment. The effect of alt.usenet.kooks on the quality and relevance of most news groups can be devestating, with the center of dialogical gravity in sci.psychology.psychotherapy shifting irreversibly from science and/or psychotherapy to recreational zinging, character assassination, and menacing cybersleuthing. The alleged kook is then subject to a lot of unwanted attention from strangers in alt.usenet.kooks, and alliances are formed both within sci.psychology.psychotherapy (local group) and with members of alt.usenet.kooks and kookhunters from other news groups for the purpose of collaborating on the design, search optimization, and dissemination of anti-kook messages, dossiers, and even Web domains. A historical study of sci.psychology.psychotherapy reveals that some targets have been attacked for 7 years while attacks on other targets persisted for as long as 2 years in the absence of contributions from the target.

Maintaining Factors in Gang Stalking

History is replete with precedents to collective behavior like the kind observed in sci.psychology.psychotherapy (e.g. Salem Witch Trials, McCarthy Hearings, Inquisition, Abu Ghraib, Auchwitz). These groups require the deindividuation of individual gang members, and the dehumanization of the individuals who will be targeted for adverse effects. The group collaborates to manage a faceless image of the victims until their lives or livelihoods are cheapened in a way. The gang's polarization of participants into kooks and kook hunters is reminiscent of the purely nominal designation of guards and prisoners in an experiment by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo (i.e. the guards and prisoners lost themselves in the role and the guards mistreated the prisoners to an extent compelling a premature termination of the research).

The gang members in sci.psychology.psychotherapy avoid discussion of any one kook's point of views. When a third party requests an explanation for the opposition to a particular kook, the SPP gang member, who in some cases lacks the interest and / or education to evaluate the ideas, simply responds with the blanket assertion that the individual is a "kook." To manage a large number of kooks, the SPP gang members attempt to portray the ideas of the different kooks as non-independent, meaning that the SPP gang members depict the kooks as perverted friends or collaborators (i.e. similar to State propaganda of subversive collaboration among persons of the Jewish faith).

The deindividuation of the individual kook hunter is accomplished both technologically through anonymity and interpersonally through social facilitation. Once the individual's identity and morality is dissolved in the cult consciousness, he or she is susceptible to manipulation and begins to exhibit a level of ideology, meddling officiousness, and irrationality paradoxically attributed to kooks. The kook hunter is now ready to be recruited by other kook hunters with whom he or she has no prior acquaintance for the purpose of harassing and defaming a kook whose ideas are unknown and of no interest to him or her. The kook hunter trades lists of kooks with other kook hunters and will even attack the families of the kook. The spam advertising of dossiers and the practice of tracking kooks across news groups and on the Web is more meddlesome than any cross-posting the alleged kooks engage in, all in the name of an ideology (i.e. kookology) that is just as karaoke, if not as kooky, as their adopted enemies.

At the end of the day, the kook hunter feels he or she has provided a public service by discouraging others from promoting points of view they believe to be arrogant or irrational. Strangely enough, seldom do the kook hunters express a point of view of their own, and yet, even more strangely, their abuse of the news groups as measured by sheer number of posts (summed across aliases) significantly outweighs the number of messages posted by the allegedly "abusive" kooks.

See also

• Cyberspace
• Cyberbullying
• Cyberterrorism
• Harassment by computer
• Hate group

External links

• www.cyberbullying.us
• The National Center for Victims of Crime US based
• CyberAngels
• State Computer Harassment or "Cyberstalking" Laws, National Conference of State Legislatures.
• Sci.psychology.psychotherapy news group
• Alt.usenet.kooks news group