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Former TV presenter Alexis Bowater: "I was cyberstalked during my pregnancy"
<!-- END - caption -->A new survey has been launched in an effort to find out the true level of cyberstalking in the UK.
It comes a day after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) unveiled new guidance to prosecutors and promised to get tough on cyberstalkers.
More than one million women and 900,000 men are stalked in the UK every year, according to the British Crime Survey.
But until now no research has been done to find out how many people are stalked or harassed online.
On Friday the Electronic Communication Harassment Observation (Echo) survey, commissioned by the charity Network for Surviving Stalking, was launched by researchers at the University of Bedfordshire.
They are hoping to find people who have been stalked, harassed or threatened through e-mail, on internet chatrooms or on social networking sites like Facebook.
Project leader Dr Emma Short said: "There are stalkers for whom the internet and mobile phones are just convenient 'tools of their trade'.
"But we think there are also vast numbers of internet users who are engaged in harassing behaviours simply because they don't know the rules of appropriate online communication.
"At the moment there are very few widely agreed guidelines or rules about how to behave online - we hope Echo will define behaviours that are generally experienced as anti-social or likely to cause distress in online communication."
On Thursday the CPS's community liaison director, Nazir Afzal, said the new guidance to prosecutors was the first time stalking - and cyberstalking in particular - had been officially recognised.
'Fear and trepidation'Mr Afzal said: "Stalkers steal lives, that was the message I picked up from speaking to victims. Victims stop trusting those they know and every stranger is seen as a threat.
"People often can't answer the phone, receive texts or go to a familiar place without fear and trepidation. We want to give people their lives back."
Alexis Bowater, chief executive for the Network for Surviving Stalking, welcomed the new CPS guidelines.
She said: "This will go a long way to improving the lives of victims and to making sure that perpetrators are treated appropriately by the courts. Recognising, in particular, new forms of stalking such as cyberstalking is groundbreaking."
Liz Lynne, Lib Dem MEP for the West Midlands, said: "The crime of cyberstalking has exploded across Europe with the growth of the internet and social networking sites.
"It is not just celebrities who attract stalkers, nor is it just something that affects teenagers."
I have just had to leave Twitter due to an exceptional amount of harassment from somebody on there, who was warned by the police not to contact me or any third party about me. He contacted most men I spoke to on Twitter even via their blogs and gave a very inaccurate portrayal of what I am like in real life. He has given me three years of hell where I am now at a point where I find it difficult to go out and socialise because I'm scared what he will do next.
I am still being stalked and widely bullied across a number of websites. Unfortunately my opponents are laughing - I sued them in a libel suit and they won the cases. Yet their lawyers seek to get me declared as a vexatious litigant, barring me from taking any legal action against them. So much for getting protection online. Maybe I should report them for stalking instead.
I was stalked by an ex-girlfriend. The stalking consisted of endless abusive texts and e-mails. When I eventually managed to block her she then turned her attention to my ex-wife, girlfriend, ex-girlfriends. Usually she'd contact them by text telling them to keep away from me. Then she'd create false profiles on Facebook to contact friends, or she'd create Hotmail accounts using names of people I knew to contact me, with the usual tirade of abuse in the e-mail. I reported her to the police on three occasions but she was let off with a warning. The woman turned out to be bi-polar and had a history of this behaviour.
I have been cyberstalked - I had my photos taken from my profile and used to make up fake profile. I've been called everything under the sun on the profile I have on a social networking site; my e-mail address posted on a site offering cam sex; my mobile phone number posted; and not only on the one social networking site - they followed me to another site and made up fake profiles to try to speak to me. It's not nice for the victim, especially as I am agoraphobic and use networking sites as a link to the outside world.
People who have been or are being harassed online should be helped, but not by a criminal investigation towards the harassers. These people need to learn the consequences of posting personal information on the internet. You should even be wary of giving out your e-mail address. Nowadays many people will just give it out. Most of this information gathering is for corporate purposes, but any lunatic can make use of this free info as well. A hacker has a better chance than someone who isn't, but they can get pretty far too.
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