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2005 CyberStalking Statistics
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-02-23
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The cybercrime watchdog group, Working to Halt Online Abuse (WHOA) released their 2005. They're finding out some of the major harassers are white-collar folks including teachers, lawyers and businesspeople. It could even be your neighbor.
"In addition to victim questionnaires, we work on cases directly with law enforcement, on high profiles cases we have been directly approached for, or with victim assistance organizations or lawyers," notes Jayne Hitchcock, WHOA's president. "On average, we can see up to 50 cases a week. We don't see cyberstalking going away. In fact, it is increasing every day, mainly due to the fact that more people go online for the first time every day. Currently there are over one billion people online worldwide - if only one percent become victims, that's ten million people!"
The trust WHOA receives from victims they have helped enables the group to develop reliable cyberstalking demographic numbers. However, as the statistics are generated from information supplied by the victims, verification is not always possible. In 2005, there were 443 completed questionnaires submitted as compared to 196 in 2004. Cumulatively, in six years, WHOA has processed 1,664 cases. In 2005, they found that:
· More men applied for help, an increase of 7% over 2004
· Male harassers decreased by almost 10% over 2004, most likely due to a new trend - cases involving multiple harassers, which accounted for 2.5% of cases in 2005
· The victim's age has changed, there was a 10% decrease in those 18-40 and a 7% increase in those over the age of 40
· More victims of different races are applying for help - there was a 5% decrease in Caucasians, while Hispanics almost doubled, from 3.5% in 2004, to 5.5% in 2005; African-Americans and Asian victims increased by 1% each, Native Americans more than doubled from 1% to 2.5%
· Although singles were the most common victims in past years, 2005 saw the gap decreasing between singles and married victims at 37.5% and 31.5% respectively
· There was an increase of victims who knew their harasser previously, up 4.5% from last year, although just over 50% stated their harassers were strangers
· For those who did have a previous relationship with their harasser, the harasser being an ex dropped significantly from 53.5% in 2004, to 33.5% in 2005; online acquaintances (meaning someone they knew from an online forum, IM, chat, etc, but were not romantically involved) increased from 20% to 26.5%, while online exes (virtual romance) was a new category WHOA added which accounted for 5.5% of cases. Another new category involved eBay auctions, which involved 4% of cases where either the seller or the bidder harassed the other.
· There was a big shakeup as to where the victims and harassers were located and only 30.75% of cases involved the victim and harasser in the same state or country.
· California topped the list for locations of both victims and harassers, but Canada moved up to second place for victims and Texas for harassers (New York was second for both in 2004).
· Third place for victims was Florida, then New York and Pennsylvania; harassers was New York, Georgia, then Florida.
· Although email dropped 6% as the primary way the harassment began (no matter where the victim encountered their harasser previously, if they did), it was still #1, followed by message boards (including news groups and Yahoo Groups), which increased 3% over 2004, then IM, which surprisingly dropped 1.5%, then chat, which increased by 3%. Harassment via web sites, eBay, blogs and dating web sites followed.
·
Online escalation of the harassment almost doubled from 40.5% in 2004, to 60% in 2005, but threats of offline harm actually decreased from 40.5% in 2004 to 22% in 2005.
"We've found that harassers tend to be white collar, don't have a criminal records, are not Internet experts or hackers, and are just like you and me," says Hitchcock. "They can be teachers, lawyers, businesspeople, students, doctors, the kid who bags your groceries - online harassers and stalkers are not who you may think they are."
This information says a lot about cybercrime and more specifically who's getting attacked and who's attacking. There is another question though and that's why do harassers do what they do?
"There is no one answer," Hitchcock says, "but for the cases where the victim knows their harasser, it's usually revenge. For the stranger-on-stranger cases it's most often what I call ‘Internet road rage.' What is it that causes a person to chase someone down a highway offline? The same goes for the superhighway - it could be something as simple as the harasser not liking the victim's username (one case I actually worked on) to a perceived injustice to not liking what someone posted online. It could be anything."
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About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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