Cyber Stalking - Research Paper Example

The trends in cyber-stalking based on 2008 figures also indicate that most of the cases have been carried out in Social Networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and also in Craigslist (Hitchcock, 2009). The trends also indicate an increase in victims aged 18 to 30 and those who are 41 years old and above with most victims being Caucasian, and the rest being Hispanic, Afro-American, Asian, and Native Americans (Hitchcock, 2009). There was also an increase detected in the cases where victims knew their harassers, and this mostly involved ex-spouses or ex-girl/boyfriends (Hitchcock, 2009).

Most of the states which registered with the most incidents of cyber-stalking include California and New York with harassers mostly using emails, message boards, instant messaging, phones, texting, blogs, LiveJournal, Friendster, online games, and YouTube as media in harassing their victims (Hitchcock, 2009). With the difficulty of apprehending these criminals, many of these victims are often killed and are physically and psychologically intimidated by their harassers. Based on the above scenario, this paper shall now present the current literature on cyber-stalking.

It shall focus on the manner of perpetuation, the difficulties encountered in managing this crime, and the remedies which have been implemented in order to apprehend harassers. A paper by Ogilvie (2001) discusses that cyberstalking is a crime which is similar to the usual forms of stalking in the sense that it uses behavior which causes fear and apprehension on a victim. However, because of new electronic technologies, the traditional methods of stalking have been transformed through the application of other mediums such as emails and the Internet (Ogilvie, 2001).

Even without empirical research assessing the incidence and prevalence of cyberstalking, many experts and analysts believe that cyberstalking is actually more common than the traditional form of