Cyber-stalking, Privacy Intrusion at It's Scariest

Many crimes that are committed in the real world also occur on the Net. These include fraud and embezzlement, harassment, 'stealing' an identity and stalking. A lot of information is available about you on the Net and an enterprising criminal can find out a lot about you and use this information to his/her disadvantage. A criminal could use basic information about you (discovered on the Net) and then engage in 'social engineering'--contacting your friends co-workers relatives etc.--to learn even more. Social engineering is the art of soliciting participation of a person instead of hacking into a system directly. Most often the target is information the person or victim gives without knowing it at least until it's too late. Because even though it's a slower process human vulnerabilities make it easier to obtain information that leads to more information via the net. But what if the target is the physical person instead of data or hardware? It's called Cyberstalking a serious problem that is increasingly becoming more of a threat as stalkers take advantage of the Internet and other technologies. This paper describes Cyber-stalking and what you can do or not do to prevent it.