Straight talk about Cyber stalking: What are the signs and how can you protect yourself from it?

Technology opens our lives up in ways that weren’t possible even less than a decade ago. Nowadays, children laugh themselves silly when they hear their parents waxing nostalgic about the days when they had to call someone on the phone for directions or go to the library to search for information. Today you can easily travel the whole world from home in the comfort of your couch, or you can chat with someone whether they’re in the next room or in another country with ease, via a variety of technologies. It’s all fast and awesome.

Straight talk about Cyber stalking: What are the signs and how can you protect yourself from it?

However, on the flip the side of that amazing fortune is that same technology has also provided so many ways for people to do bad things.

What is Cyber stalking?

So if you think the obsession with dolls, animals or other objects is enough to call someone a weirdo, wait until you come across a stalker who makes you rethink the entire definition of the word weird. A stalker is basically someone who follows you everywhere you go, lurks around your place day and night and always tries to monitor every activity you do or people you meet when you are outside your home.

However, once you add the word Cyber to stalking, things become even creepier. To put simply, cyber stalking is basically having a stalker in your home, who you cannot see but surely feel his presence 24/7. The internet made easy for stalkers to get inside our home, computers or smartphones and get the deepest insights into our intimate and private life.

So, what are the telltale signs of Cyber stalking?

One thing you need to keep in mind is that Cyber stalking, just like stalking, is not always done by someone you know; the person stalking you can be a complete stranger that has suddenly fixed on you for some reason. A cyber stalker can simply be someone who happened to come across your social profile, and from then on he started following you around, trying to learn more about you. However, whether it is someone you know or a complete stranger here are some signs that can help you detect the presence of a cyber-stalker in your life.

• A cyber-stalker may aggressively follow you on every social profile you have, from instagram, Facebook, twitter, Pinterestto even LinkedIn… You would find his comments on every post you write.
• A cyber stalker may also try continuously to get in touch with you by sending persistent emails or even text messages on your smartphone on a daily basis.
• You may find the stalker everywhere you go, mainly because he’s tracking your location from social media, geo-tagging, or through your phone’s GPS.
• Your personal information may get posted online without your consent: photos, phone number, email, or home address.
• You may start receiving unsolicited or inappropriate gifts.
• A stalker may also try to impersonate someone you know so he can get your personal information, and then use it for ulterior motives like blackmailing or online harassment.

To make things clear, signs of cyber stalking aren’t limited to social profiles alone. In fact, the stalker may already be following your family members, friends, and even relatives so he can collect as much information on you as possible.

What are the methods of cyber stalking?

There are countless ways cyber stalkers can access your personal information. Here are some of the most common ways:

• As mentioned in the signs of cyber stalking, one of the ways a stalker may follow you everywhere you go is through the GPS location feature on your smartphone.
• A cyber-stalker may simply hack your social media accounts with the aid of a hacker friend, so he doesn’t really have to be a hacker himself.
• A cyber-stalker may implant a malicious tool on your personal device to access and monitor your activities and personal data.
• If the stalker lives close by, he may also penetrate your home network to break into your smart devices.

Now that you know how Cyber-stalking can be, how can you prevent it?

Fortunately, you can fight off a cyber-stalker easily. All you need to do, is to follow some crucial tips on how to prevent cyber stalking:

• Always take preventive measures like changing your passwords of your social media, or your home network. Don’t forget that a strong password is always your first line of defense.
• Create secondary email addresses for social profiles, forums or communities.
• Avoid over-sharing of your information on social media, you never know who is monitoring you.
• Encrypt your home network, your laptop, and any other devices with a reliable VPN service such as VPN.Express, which provide you the best online privacy, most advanced encryption protocols, and protects all your personal data from all kinds of threats including cyber stalking. You can also use VPN.Express to encrypt your phone GPS location so that no cyber stalker can ever track your actual location. In addition, VPN.Express can easily protect you from any unwanted malware, virus or key loggers that cyber stalkers use to access your information.

Even if you are not cyber stalked by anyone, remember: it is always better to be safe than sorry!

Be Safe. Be Free.