Cyberbullying among adolescents and teens has grabbed headlines lately, but using technology to harass or stalk someone is a problem in the adult world as well.
Cyberharassment or cyberstalking can take many forms. A disgruntled employee could write a negative, and possibly untrue, blog post about you, a jilted ex-lover could bombard you with threatening e-mails, or someone you barely know could use the web to discover personal information about you.
Rebecca Dreke, a senior program associate at the Stalking Resource Center in Washington DC, said that as social networking sites become increasingly ubiquitous is our daily lives, the creation of fake MySpace or Facebook profiles with the intent to harm someone's reputation is fast becoming one of the most common methods of cyberstalkers.
Just like in-person or phone harassment, Dreke said cyberstalking victims can suffer real psychological stress and fears about personal safety.
"It can be so damaging to people's reputations, and to have someone targeting you can be really hurtful and frightening," she said. "Unfortunately, with the use of technology to stalk, laws sometimes aren't keeping up with ways stalkers are doing these things."
Illinois' stalking law was amended last year to include cyberstalking. The statute defines cyberstalking as "knowingly and without lawful justification, on at least two separate occasions, harassing another person through the use of electronic communication." It also covers cases in which someone creates or maintains a Web page that "contains statements harassing another person."
However, as with traditional stalking laws, the cyberstalking law stipulates that the communication must include an actual threat.
"If a person experiences some postings about them on MySpace or Facebook, they often don't have a lot of resources," Dreke explained. "Law enforcement will say, 'Was there a threat, and was there a previous relationship?'"
Blogs present a legal challenge as well, Dreke said. If a blogger uses his or her blog to disclose someone else's personal information or writes things intended to damage that person's reputation, the case may be difficult to prosecute.
"That is one of the biggest questions, where a lot of privacy issues butt up against civil rights and freedom of speech," Dreke said. "What a lot of places have said is if there's not a direct threat, anybody can say whatever they want."
Nevertheless, Dreke encourages people to contact law enforcement if they believe they are being harassed or stalked online. Most importantly, she cautions people to "document, document, document." Print out e-mails, save screen shots of harassing web pages, take pictures of text messages, and compile any other evidence that "establishes a pattern of behavior."
Dreke said an additional obstacle for LGBT people who are being stalked by a former romantic interest is the fear that law enforcement may not be receptive. If that is the case, Dreke suggested first contacting a local women's center or gay and lesbian advocacy group.
Leslie Landis, a spokeswoman for the City of Chicago Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence, has seen an increase in the Internet and social networking sites being used to harass in domestic violence cases.
While the available legal remedies vary by case, Landis said people should still involve local law enforcement if they feel unsafe.
"If you can show it's a pattern of harassment, intended to cause emotional stress, I wouldn't dissuade people form trying to make contact with the police, because if things escalate, you have that record," Landis said. "People shouldn't have to be sure that what they are experience is stalking."
One area in which a victim of cyber harassment may have some legal recourse is if a harasser reveals another person's HIV status, online or otherwise. Ann Fisher, executive director of AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, said disclosure of another person's HIV status is prohibited by Illinois' AIDS Confidentiality Act. Fisher said her organization has been contacted by people who have been harassed by someone else revealing their HIV status online.
"We have been successful in some cases, and our normal strategy is to have people contact the Internet service provider," she said.
In one successful case, AIDS Legal Council helped two refugees from Africa who had visited a self-identified faith healer, who later posted the men's pictures on his business web site and claimed he had cured them of AIDS.
In that instance, Fisher said AIDS Legal Council contacted the Internet service provider and were able to legally prohibit the faith healer from continuing to maintain his business web site.
People who disclose another person's HIV status can be fined up to $10,000, according to Johnathan Briggs, spokesman for AIDS Foundation of Chicago.
"As social media allows people to become content producers, everybody is their own little publishing house and not everyone is trained on how to avoided libel and defamation," he said. "People are basically creating problems for themselves."
