Cyber-Stalking Threat to People or Bane to Technology

A day without the use of technology in our lives seems like an impossible mission. We have become entirely dependent on it in divergent ways. Technology has helped us in creating great ideas that we can communicate with people present anywhere on this earth. Apart from the fact that technology has made our lives easy, it also bought in a lot of difficulties. With the massive advancement of technology along with the evolution of time, the crime rate of cyber offences keeps increasing every day. One such cyber assault that requires immediate attention is cyber stalking. Cyber stalking involves continuous or persistent following of a person through electronic media with or without the person's consent. Cyber stalking, unlike the offline stalking, is severe as the identity of the perpetrator is unknown and geographical proximity is no barrier. The severity of cyber talking has increased in the recent times as the current generation is found all the time surfing on their phones or laptops and being busy with social networking media like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and many more. The reason why one may become a cyber-stalker can be because of revenge, obsession, sadism, denial, insult and many more. The post effects of cyber stalking to a victim can be psychologically overwhelming that there are cases where the victims have committed suicide being incapable of coping with the psychological and emotional stress. Cyber stalking can be used to blackmail victims as well. It can also include morphing of the victim's image with nude pictures and posting it on public and social websites thus destroying the reputation and dignity of the victim. One of the highly disadvantageous facts in cyber offences is that once such obscene picture of the victim is posted, the post gets shared to more and more people. Therefore even if the perpetrator is found and the origin where the obscene pictures were posted is deleted, it is difficult to find all places where the post has been shared. Thus it's high time that more emphasis is laid on introducing effective and efficient laws in field of newly formed cyber offences such as cyber stalking. H. M. Shambhavee "Cyber-Stalking: Threat to People or Bane to Technology" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-3 | Issue-2 , February 2019, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd21354.pdf