Cyberstalking, or online stalking, is the act of persistently pursuing a person online, trying to coerce them and their peers into giving up sensitive information, following their digital footprint, and breaching personal boundaries and privacy. It’s a digital problem that carries serious consequences in the real world. Victims of cyberstalking can feel like their security is compromised and experience mental distress and fear for their safety from the persistent harassment. Learn what counts as cyberstalking and what you can do to protect yourself if you become a stalker’s target.
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Key takeaways
Cyberstalking is a serious digital crime that causes real-world harm, including privacy violations, mental distress, and in some cases physical danger.
Cyberstalkers use a wide range of tactics, including social media monitoring, persistent messaging, AI-generated deepfakes, doxing, hacking, and spyware.
Cyberstalking differs from physical stalking mainly in reach and anonymity. Cyberstalkers don’t have to be within proximity of their victim to stalk them. They can operate from anywhere in the world and hide their identity far more easily than physical stalkers.
Cyberstalking is illegal in many countries, including the US, where it is prosecuted as a federal crime with penalties of up to five years in prison.
As a victim of cyberstalking, you can protect yourself by locking down your social media accounts, blocking unfamiliar users, auditing your digital footprint, and using an email mask as well as documenting and reporting harassment.
Examples of cyberstalking
Cyberstalkers are often driven by their desire to have control over their target. They want to be in control of the target’s safety, have complete access to their private information, and hold influence over how much time they’re forced to spend with the stalker. Retaliation, jealousy, and anger can also drive stalkers to harass and abuse their victims.
Cyberstalking typically takes place on various social media platforms because they offer easily accessible messaging features. Stalkers are known to use multiple alternative accounts and might even create bots to persistently spam their victim with notifications and messages. More malicious actors might turn to malware and espionage tools to track their target’s behavior and location.
Generative AI developments have also aided cyberstalkers who might use these tools. They can generate images featuring them and their victim to convince people they’re friends. Generated content can also be used in fake accounts to catfish the target and convince them they’re not talking to a stalker, but to an unrelated person.
Cyberstalking examples include:
Social media monitoring. Stalkers keep track of your online accounts and continuously check for updates. Using your social media information like accounts you follow, tags, timestamps, and geotags, they can learn about your whereabouts and behaviors.
Persistent messages and emails. Cyberstalkers pester you by continuously sending message requests and emails. They aim to harass you or demand you share specific information. In some cases, they might also sign up your email address to various newsletters which spam your inbox. This is a way to force you to contact them.
Attempts to hack personal accounts. Sometimes stalkers escalate to hacking attempts. They can try to log in to your personal accounts and gain access to more sensitive information, like your phone number, credit card details, or home address.
Impersonation. If cyberstalkers gain access to your accounts, they can start creating posts impersonating you. After logging in to your social media accounts, they can funnel your personal messages to a generative AI tool and use it to create text that imitates your speech and language patterns.
Contacting the target’s personal circle. Cyberstalkers can go after people close to you, like your friends, family, or coworkers. They can contact them and lie about your relationship to the stalker in an attempt to gain more information about you.
Location tracking. Physical stalking isn’t the only way to track where you are. Bad actors can install a type of malware known as stalkerware on your device and get live updates on its location data.
Surveillance via IoT devices. Stalkers can try to breach your IoT devices — especially those containing cameras or microphones — to listen in on you inside your home.
Spyware, keylogging, and touchlogging. Hackers stalking you can use vulnerabilities of messaging apps to sneak spyware onto your phone. Once set up, it can track your keyboard and screen input.
Doxing. As retaliation for you refusing to talk to them, cyberstalkers can publish sensitive information about you online, like your full name and home address. Doxing can be dangerous and lead to physical harassment and stalking.
Extortion and threats. Stalkers can threaten to reveal sensitive information about you — for instance, private images or direct conversations. In some cases, they don’t actually have any compromising information but try to put you under psychological pressure to force you to follow their demands.
Catfishing. If you have blocked the cyberstalker’s real accounts, they can set up fake accounts pretending to be other people to get close to you. This way, they try to build false trust and get you to answer questions and reveal information that they want to gain.
AI-generated deepfakes. Stalkers have a few ways to use AI-generated content. They might use it for catfishing, or they might generate content that imitates you to create false photos and screenshots for extortion.
Cyberstalking vs. physical stalking: What’s the difference?
Cyberstalking has evolved from physical stalking — persistently following and harassing a person in attempts to get their attention or intimidate them. Stalkers usually have an ulterior motive and pick a specific target. They might have personal grievances with their target or believe that person has valuable data they could extort.
Physical stalking requires face-to-face contact between the stalker and the target. The stalker is usually within the same area as their victim, can follow them to their workplace or home, and can learn about their routine just by observing them. It can quickly escalate to physical assault, especially if the victim has close physical contact with the stalker. However, with physical stalking, it can be easier to get law enforcement involved because the stalked person can show tangible proof they’re being followed.
Cyberstalking doesn’t always require the stalker to know their target in person. In fact, they might not live in the same country, and the harassment takes place primarily online. Cyberstalkers can use data stemming from their target’s digital footprint, tracking their various accounts, comments, and any crumbs of information they can find.
| Physical stalking | Cyberstalking |
|---|---|
| Persistent following and watching of a person in a physical location | Persistent following of a person’s social media accounts, internet presence, geotags, and other digital information |
| Stalkers track the victim in their area, follow them to their workplace, school, or home, send physical letters and gifts to intimidate them, and keep track of their routine | Stalkers send threatening messages and emails, create false accounts pretending to be other people, share AI-generated images that put their victim in a bad light, and use malware to compromise their devices |
| Stalkers use cars, binoculars, and GPS tags and sometimes hire third parties to follow their target | Stalkers use computers, smartphones, spyware, fake accounts, location-sharing apps, and hacking tools to follow their target |
| Limited to physically accessible location | Can be done anywhere in the world, regardless of the stalker’s and victim’s locations |
| Stalkers can be seen and identified by the target or bystanders | Stalkers can remain fully anonymous and are harder to trace |
| Evidence relies on eyewitness accounts, physical items left behind by the stalker, police reports, and security camera footage | Evidence relies on digital footprint, message logs, metadata, and IP addresses |
| Can escalate to direct physical confrontation between the stalker and the victim | Usually remains online but can escalate to offline stalking if the stalker doxxes their victim |
| Victim needs to change their routines or relocate completely to avoid the stalker | Victim can struggle to protect all their online presence from the stalker and may not be able to set all accounts to private |
| Stalkers can get in direct physical contact with the victim’s family, friends, and colleagues | Stalkers can create catfishing accounts to get in touch with the victims’ friends and family |
In many cases, cyberstalking and physical stalking overlap, especially in terms of location tracking. Stalkers use social media to gather information about their target and harass them via messaging apps while also following them physically. They can use metadata from public images or tags on posts or special GPS trackers to figure out where the target is.
Cyberstalking can turn into cyberbullying and extortion. Stalkers can demean and verbally abuse their victims to force them to communicate. This can lead to doxing — the act of publicly revealing private physical information about a person online without their consent. Due to the constant psychological pressure, victims often experience severe mental distress and can have long-lasting anxiety and fear of having their privacy breached in the future.
Is cyberstalking illegal?
Cyberstalking is illegal in several countries, including the US, Poland, and Australia. In some cases, cyberstalking is included in cyberbullying legislations, and the same criteria for online harassment apply. It’s rare for cyberstalking laws to be detached from physical stalking, harassment, and abuse legislation.
In the US, cyberstalking is prosecuted as a federal crime under 18 US Code § 2261A, which covers stalking. According to this section, stalking and cyberstalking behavior includes:
Travelling within the US with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person.
Causing or attempting to cause substantial emotional distress.
Using mail, interactive computer services, or electronic communication services and systems to harass another person.
Causing a person to develop reasonable fear of death or injury to them or their pets.
Punishment for stalking and cyberstalking can call for restraining orders, financial fines, and up to five years in federal prison. More severe cases of stalking that lead to the victim’s death carry harsher sentences.
Although cyberstalking is deemed criminal in multiple countries, prosecution can be complicated. Stalkers often use anonymous accounts and obscure their real identities. They can use virtual private networks (VPNs) to obfuscate their location. It’s possible for the victim to not know their cyberstalker in person at all, and international institutions might need to be involved to catch them and resolve the case.
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How to prevent cyberstalking
Cyberstalking is a complex criminal act. You might sometimes spend weeks not knowing you’re being cyberstalked before it escalates into persistent pressure and online abuse. If you suspect a cyberstalker is targeting you, you can take immediate steps to protect your data from being accessed and used maliciously.
Adjust your social media settings
Social media platforms can reveal a lot of valuable personal information about you, making them the starting point for many cyberstalkers to gather data. To prevent unwanted users from seeing personal details of your life, go over the privacy settings of your accounts.
Limit who can follow and send images to you, review your social media profiles, and delete or hide any details you don’t want strangers to see. If you have any dormant social media accounts, review them too just in case and consider deactivating them if you don’t plan to use them anymore.
Prevent users from tagging you in their posts. You can also ask your close friends and family to set their own profiles to private to help prevent information from slipping through the cracks. Warn them that they might start receiving an unusual nuber of friend requests — the stalker might try to reach you through them.
Block and restrict unfamiliar or compromised accounts
Cyberstalkers can create multiple alternative accounts to harass you even after you’ve blocked them. To prevent them from contacting you, adjust your direct messaging settings so that accounts you don’t know can’t message you.
If you receive emails from them, you can block the sender and mark the messages as spam. Many social media platforms now have the option to block the original account and all other accounts associated with the same user, which lets you avoid the backup accounts more easily.
Be mindful of compromised accounts — malicious stalkers might try to breach the accounts they see in your friends’ list. If a friend or a family member has started sending you unusual messages asking for very personal details about your life or urging you to meet up, contact them on a different platform to check if their account has been hacked.
Audit your digital footprint
Your digital footprint — the comments and reviews you write, the posts you share, and the websites you use — can give stalkers crumbs of information even if you’ve set the profiles to private. Review what you post in public.
Avoid writing comments or reviews that give hints about your location. Turn off the ability for other accounts to tag you in photos — more persistent cyberstalkers can try snooping on your friends’ profiles to learn about you.
Use an email mask
Your email address can become a target for the stalker’s obsession — they can look it up on data-broker sites, social media platforms, or breach databases to find out what other accounts you have and where they could dig up more information about you, like your home address and phone number. By setting up an email mask, you cut off the source of information.
An email mask is a decoy email address that can be synchronized with your actual inbox. It’s automatically generated and uses random information for the username, ensuring it can’t be traced to you.
You can use the masked email address to sign up for new services while dealing with a stalker. Even if the mask ends up compromised, the cyberstalker has no way of knowing that particular email address belongs to you.
Document the stalking incidents
If you’re a victim of cyberstalking, make sure you document all instances of harassment thoroughly. Keep all emails, messages, and screenshots intact so you can use them to file a report.
Sometimes cyberstalking can be an international matter, and you might not live in the same country as the perpetrator — you might not have even met them in person. In these cases, file a report with your local legal authorities first, and they should escalate the case accordingly.
Make sure you also report abusive behavior to the platforms where you’re being harassed. You might not be the cyberstalker’s only target, and having multiple reports from different users can help get them permanently banned from the platforms more easily.
How can NordPass help you stay safe against cyberstalking?
Experiencing cyberstalking can be distressing and frightening. Cyberstalkers are persistent, and the harassment can last weeks or even months before it ceases. To help you feel safer online, you can use tools that help you protect your identity and prevent data from unnecessarily getting outside your reach.
Tools like VPNs, encrypted cloud data storage providers, and data broker removal services can all help you stay safer as you browse and prevent third parties from accessing sensitive information.
NordPass offers features that can help protect your data from unauthorized access and reduce your digital footprint. Although it’s a password manager at first, it can also help you secure your identity if cyberstalkers escalate to hacking attempts.
Password Generator lets you generate strong and unique passwords and instantly store them in your vault. You can adjust the password’s length and character use to include uppercase letters, numbers, and special symbols. You can also use Password Generator to create reliable passphrases.
Data Breach Scanner checks the dark web for your data and alerts you if your credentials or credit card details appear in a breach. It lets you act quickly and update your login details before bad actors can try to overtake your accounts.
Password Health reveals which passwords in your vault are weak, reused, or exposed, letting you easily update them to more reliable credentials.
Biometric authentication secures your access to the NordPass app itself. You can replace your Master Password with your fingerprint as a safer way to unlock your password vault.
The built-in Authenticator lets you generate two-factor authentication (2FA) codes for your accounts and store them alongside your passwords. It needs your biometrics to access the codes, preventing bad actors from logging into your accounts without your direct input.
Email Masking lets you create a fake email address to use for your accounts, newsletters, and online shops. You can create multiple email masks at once, lowering the chances of cyberstalkers catching on and spamming your actual inbox.
Document storage lets you keep your most valuable files in a XChaCha20-encrypted vault, meaning you don’t need to rely on insecure services that store files in plaintext.
Emergency Access lets you grant a trusted person access to your vault in case something happens to you.
Maintaining your mental wellbeing while being pursued by a cyberstalker is the most important thing. Having efficient privacy tools at hand can help you stay calmer and trust that your information is protected.