by Coming to terms with the fact that you are being cyberstalked is scary and worrying at the same time. According to recent research done by the US Justice Department, one out of twelve women gets stalked, and about seventy-five percent of these women know their stalkers. A stalker is not necessarily someone you know. It could be a person who saw you at a party and immediately developed a crush on you, or at the market place or even at your office. It could also be someone who stumbled upon your profile on a social media platform and started following you around to get more information about you.
Unwanted and frequent contact
The most immediate sign of a cyberstalker is constant and unwanted contact via email and instant messaging on personal platforms a couple of times a day. If you start feeling overwhelmed by someone’s consistent messages, you should stop and pay close attention because you may be a victim of cyberstalking. If you can, request the person to stop messaging you, or you can as well ignore the messages.
A strange interest in you
While it’s normal to have interest in people you meet on chatrooms and other social platforms, it is not healthy for someone to kick in with personal questions about where you work, live, or even the forums you frequent. People who are so much into questions about your private life are trying to know the type of person you are as opposed to just your name and the content on your profile.
Giving you information about yourself that you had not disclosed to them
If a person hits you with information that you had not given them, that’s a sign that you are being cyberstalked. They must have googled your name online to try and get a glimpse of the kind of person you are or even emailed your friends to get this information. If for an instant, they describe a particular photo that you had taken with your friends in junior school, and you know that that information is on your Instagram account. You’ll know they have been digging up information about you on Instagram.
Other signs you may want to keep an eye out for are them knowing each time you’re online, spreading damaging information to your friends and family, sending you inappropriate messages, trying to handle your online fights or trolls, and being in similar places with them suspiciously (they may have tracked your online activity to know exactly where you are). If all these happen, you may have a reason to get concerned.
