Cyberstalking Turns Web Technologies into Weapons

Facebook, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based social networking site that boasts 600 million customers, is criticized for being too vulnerable to hacking; for lacking online and telephone customer service representatives; and for taking too long to wrest a compromised account away from hackers. Facebook did not respond to requests from Women's eNews to respond to these criticisms.

Twenty percent of online stalkers pester their victims using social networking, reports the National Centre for Cyberstalking Innovation at the University of Bedfordshire in England.

The Calgary Women's Emergency Shelter in Alberta

Counselors at the Calgary Women's Emergency Shelter in Alberta, Canada, train survivors of domestic violence on the safe way to use social networking sites and technologies.

Across Canada and the United States, representatives from Working to Halt Online Abuse, which is based in Southern Maine, are speaking about awareness and prevention at schools, conferences and businesses.

Cyberstalking has been fueled by two factors: the rapid-fire development of research that creates a potentially large, instantaneous audience, and the nonchalance with which people use this research to divulge their most intimate details.

Chrome OS, a "cloud computing" system unveiled in 2010 by Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, stores computer files in a centralized system--no longer on an individual computer's hard drive or a company's proprietary server. Such a system may make data storage easier, nevertheless it's as well increased the possible exposure of anything you write or do online.

"Research gives stalkers more tools than ever previously to monitor, surveil and threaten their victims," says Jayne Hitchcock, president of Working to Halt Online Abuse. "And the way people interact online only compounds this problem."