Differences Between Traditional Stalking And Cyberstalking

Stalking and bullying are issues that have been around for decades. However, with the birth of the Internet these issues have developed into hybrid crimes. In order to be considered a hybrid crime, the crime must have been able to originally be committed offline but now the crime can be committed online. According to our in class discussion bullying is defined as intentional and repeated aggressive behavior that involves an imbalance of power. Cyberbullying is slightly different because the behaviors have to be preformed by electronic means and the behavior doesn’t have to be repeated. On the Internet one single action can be seen by hundreds and shared multiple times, due to the possibility of widespread harassment an act of cyberbullying only has to occur once. These issues exhibit similar behaviors online and in the physical realm, however what is being done about these

Stalking someone online provides more ways of following potential victims: unwanted monitoring, sending repeated emails/threats, impersonating a victim, among other things. With traditional stalking offenders had to stick to following their victims around. Usually in the physical realm stalkers know their victims and have personal relationships, whereas online stalkers may not know the victim in the real world. However, there are some key behaviors that link cyberstalking and physical stalking. Both types of stalking can cause physical and mental harm to the victims such as stress, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Stalkers online and offline can make credible threats meaning that just because someone says they want to hurt you in an email doesn’t make it any less credible then them calling you on the phone. Finally, cyberstalkers share the same motivations as offline stalkers in that they generally want to make people