Deborah has been stalked in a chat room for over six months, during which time detailed personal information and a doctored pornographic photograph with her likeness has been posted on a website. The cyberstalker has threatened to rape and kill her.
"He told people that I was on drugs, that I was looking for sex," said Deborah, not her real name. "He enlisted (his) Internet friends to harass me."
Frightening scenarios like this are increasingly common as more people use the Internet and blindly trust those they meet online.
And too often, untrained police officers do not address the situation as they should. Advocacy groups say that when victims report their situation to authorities, a frequent response is "turn off your computer."
"They are scared out of their mind and no one takes them seriously," said Parry Aftab, executive director of the Internet safety group Cyberangels. "The victim is victimized twice."
The first cyberstalking law went into effect just over a year ago in California, and Congress is considering a federal law. The Stalking Prevention and Victim Protection Act of 2000 passed in the House, and currently is pending in the Senate.
Cyberstalking is defined as repeated threats or harassing behavior over email, the Internet, or other electronic communications.
As with offline stalking, most perpetrators are men and most victims are women who have met them before. But cyberstalking can be carried out in places as close as the same room as the victim, or as far away as another state.
The technology, moreover, makes it easier for stalkers to harass their victims because they do not need to physically confront them.
There are no clear statistics on the number of cyberstalking victims, but an August 1999 report from the Department of Justice estimates that there could be hundreds of thousands affected, and the numbers are growing.
"The rate of cyberstalking has escalated enormously in the past few years with the spread of the Internet," said Linda Fairstein, chief of the sex crimes prosecution unit for the Manhattan district attorney. It "provides a new method of committing the same kind of crime."
The anonymity of the Internet -- with free email and anonymous remailers readily available -- also enables cyberstalkers to easily conceal their identities.
"The Internet is both anonymous and public," said San Francisco Police Lt. Lon Ramlan. "(People) need to take the common sense that they use in the physical world and use those sensibilities in cyberspace."
But because not all law enforcement officers are familiar with technology, not all departments are trained to effectively deal with the problem.
"It's really a new area for police," Fairstein said.
An "unevenness of response" exists based on how technologically sophisticated and well-funded law enforcement is, she said. Large cities are more likely to have a computer crimes unit, whereas smaller departments often are unable to specialize.
"They're not equipped to handle it right now," agreed Morgan Wright, a former Kansas state trooper and police detective who heads up the advanced training unit of the International Association of Computer Investigative Specialists in Virginia. "It's not that they don't want to, it's just that they haven't been trained."
"The fact that Congress is considering making it a federal crime and a felony is an indication of how serious the problem is and that we need a national solution to it," said Nancy Savitt, chief legal officer for Cyberangels.
Savitt points out that fewer than half of the states currently have cyberstalking laws, and most offenders, if caught, face only a misdemeanor.
Victim advocacy groups are hoping that the bill in Congress will bring attention to an issue they deal with daily.
"We need to get the information out there. It's potentially going to be a very big problem if people don't learn about it, don't understand it, and don't know how to protect themselves," said Jayne Hitchcock, president of Women Halting Online Abuse.
Aftab estimates that Cyberangels receives 500 complaints of cyberstalking per day, 65 to 100 of which are legitimate cases.
In addition to providing support and guidance to victims, Cyberangels and WHOA regularly contact ISPs to alert them about harassers. This will often halt the abuse, but there are cases like Deborah's that are more serious and require police involvement. These advocacy groups also talk to the police for the victims to alert them to the seriousness of the crime.
Deborah's case still is being investigated, but she is skeptical that anything is getting done.
"I feel like I'm being placated and not taken very seriously because it is happening on the Internet," she said. "I feel like a sitting duck in a shooting house."
