WallflowerGirl83 said:
Does anyone else ever feel like they're being stalked online? Like people who have watched you online, harassed you and sent you creepy messages? Sometimes I can't seem to wrap my head around this but this has happened to me recently and I'm wondering what is their motive behind this? Why would they go through all the trouble of stalking me and trying to make me feel horrible about myself? If this has happened to you, what ended up happening in the long run? There's so much bullying online, it sometimes scares me enough to stay offline sometimes but I still continue to use the web but I'm now careful on who I talk too now.
Depends what level of stalking we're talking about. I got like, a couple of creepy emails from what appeared to be some sort of cult detailing some bizarre information, and stuff, which I can't reveal as I'm trying to keep parts here private, about how I was on the front of some sort of surveillance thing.
With those types, there's little you can do. Power and influence in various bodies and organisations can extend for miles. I like to kick them in the gonads by exposing corruption whenever I get the chance.
If you're talking joe public members who don't grasp social norms, then you basically need to close down your online footprint. I don't touch facebook with a barge pole because it's basically an
information gathering site, they
won't delete your app data even when you delete the app,
won't delete your photos even 3 years later, or
even data in general,
stores up to 800 pages of personal data per account, which becomes a sort of
searchable database.
Long story short, social networking sites, like facebook, linkedin, twitter etc etc ad naeseam leave a huge footprint that anyone can access (more so if you're an individual with contacts or works for the NSA/GCHQ etc) and if someone is stalking you, your first port of call would be close down any publicly broadcasting accounts or sites that give away any of your personal information.
Realistically, you want to take whatever information the stalkers have and try to figure out where it came from (you can usually trace information leaks by 'tainting' the statements you leave: for example, say one thing in one place, say another in another place - who says what will tell you where it came from). Once you know where the leak comes from, close it down.
Could be as simple as a forum post with your real name, date of birth and an associatable email account. Of course, once the information is out there in the wild, it may be already too late (as mentioned, facebook et alia keep the details), not to say the stalkers themselves don't keep records either. But you need to close up the gap to make it harder for others to do the same thing.
