Stalkers: What to do if you are a victim

Stalking is when someone causes emotional distress to someone by following them against their will, showing up at places without a reason, making unwanted phone calls, sending unwanted messages/emails, spreading rumors, or posting personal information on social media. The person who does these activities is called a Stalker.

The victim might feel fear of life, safety, or safety of someone else. According to the Supplemental Victimization Survey (SVS), if you experienced any one of the above-mentioned behaviors on at least two separate occasions, you are a stalking victim.

Most of the time, your stalker will be someone you know or someone with whom you have had an intimate relationship in the past.

Some important facts on Stalkers

National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) says, 1 out of 6 women and 1 out of 17 men have experienced stalking in their lives. Around 7.5 million people are stalked in the United States every year. More than 85% of the stalking is done by the people known by the victim. 61% of the female victims and 44% of the male victims are stalked by someone who has been there intimate partners in the past.

Online Stalkers

Online stalking or cyberstalking means snatching someone’s privacy by invading their personal profiles without their knowledge or consent. As offline stalkers try to confront their victims in real life, an online stalker hides behind the curtains of the internet to stalk his victim. Online stalkers may use social media platforms like Facebook, E-mail, or forums to approach their victim.

Different types of Stalkers

Before you can find a solid solution for the person who has been stalking you, it’s important to understand all the different types of stalkers. You can’t fix a human-caused problem until you know the intentions of the person causing that problem. So, here are all the different types of stalkers you need to know about:

Rejected Stalkers: If you have rejected someone’s friendship or relationship proposal in the near past, they might end up becoming your stalker. If you know that person to be very self-centered and jealous, the chances of them becoming a stalker are even higher.

Domestic Stalkers: After a fresh breakup or divorce, it’s likely that your ex-partner would become a stalker of yours. This is the most common and widespread type of stalker found all around the globe.

Revengeful Stalkers: When a relationship ends, a revengeful stalker feels very humiliated and develops a sense of self-pity. He feels very angry and can go up to any heights to seek revenge from his ex-partner. Revengeful stalkers are known to be very verbally abusive to their partners during the relationship.

Lustful Stalkers: These stalkers aren’t following a single victim at a time. These lustful predators may be studying and spying on multiple victims at once. All they want is to intercept at least one of their victims to fulfill their lustful desires. Lustful stalkers may also end up becoming serial rapists and murderers if they aren’t stopped earlier on.

Celebrity Stalkers: These stalkers are always on the hunt for famous and rich people. Their targets are socially well-known people who could be proven useful for the stalker in the future.

Intimacy Seekers: An intimacy seeker is a person whose intentions might not be bad, but his way of approaching his goals may cause many problems for the victim. An intimacy seeker’s first and foremost aim is to get in a romantic relationship with his victim.

When he gets rejected, he might send unwanted messages and letters to the victim. He may also phone the victim to the extent of being uncomfortable for the victim.

Political Stalkers: These stalkers have only one reason for the hate for their victims and that’s politics. A political stalker is very obsessed with politics and doesn’t feel ashamed to hatefully stalk people of the opposite political party.

The mind of a Stalker

Rebecca Schaeffer, who was a successful television actress was shot dead in 1989 at the age of 21 by a out-of-his-mind fan. Later it turned out he has been stalking her for a long time. So, what motivates a stalker to go to such extents in the first place? Not an easy thing to answer. But we have information for you, of course. Let’s look at some factors which can motivate a person to be a stalker:

Rejection: Rejection is one of the biggest motivating factors for stalkers. When a mentally- weak and self-centered person gets rejected, he feels like he’s been toyed with. They see themselves as the victims in this scenario. The blow of rejection serves as a massive motivating factor for them to be a stalker.

Fantasy: Another huge motivating factor for someone to be a stalker is imagining themselves in a romantic relationship with their victim. They may develop a feeling that their victim entirely belongs to them and they have the right to do whatever they want. As a result, they end up harassing the victim.

Mental weakness: In certain cases, a person might end up becoming a stalker if he’s mentally weak. Such a person cannot absorb other people’s decisions which are against their own will. For example, if such a person gets broken up in a romantic relationship with their partner, they will start stalking and making lame excuses for their actions. They might try to justify their actions by saying that “I’m the victim, others should be too” or “I’m hurt, so I can hurt others as well”.

Stalking Intervention

Now as you have learned enough about what stalkers are, what are their types, and what are their motivations, it’s a good time to learn some tips to intervene stalkers, both offline and online. So stay with us and read on, here are some tips for you to stop stalkers from harassing you:

Block their phone number: The first thing to do if a stalker is harassing you through your phone number is to block their phone number. It will make sure you don’t get more calls or SMS messages from them. Don’t worry if they start approaching you from a new number, it only takes less than a minute to block the new number as well.

Block them on social media: If an online stalker is invading your private space on social media and making you uncomfortable, it’s time to block them. No matter if it’s Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or any other social media platform, you always get the option to block unwanted people.

Don’t engage with them: If a stalker is harassing you in person, the best thing you could do is to ignore them. Stalkers seek your attention, don’t bless them with what they want.

Collect Evidence

If you are planning to take legal actions against a stalker, be sure to collect as much evidence as possible. You can secretly capture photos or videos of the offline stalkers while they are making you uncomfortable. Collecting evidence against an online stalker is easier, keep backup or screenshots of the messages or emails they send you and you’re good to go.

Answering your Questions

While trying to digest the information given above, you might have developed certain questions in your mind regarding stalkers. You’re not alone. Literally, almost everyone would develop these questions. Looking for answers? Not a problem! Read up and you’ll find answers to the majority of your common question about stalkers and online stalkers.

How do I found out who stalks my profile on Facebook?

Facebook is the biggest social media platform there is, with over 1.69 billion users as of January 2020. It’s also the first pick of an online stalker for stalking you on the internet. Let’s face the truth, in the modern world of the 21st century, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have a Facebook profile.

That’s why an online stalker heads towards Facebook first of all. With that in mind, here are some tips for you to find out if someone is obsessed with monitoring you on Facebook:

Check your friend list: According to a report by Vice, the preview of your friend list that is shown on your profile isn’t random. It’s actually a part of the Facebook algorithm. When someone checks out your Facebook profile very often, they will appear higher in your friend list and might also appear in the friend list preview. So, keep an eye on that preview list.

Check notifications of your old posts: There’s a high possibility that when someone checks out your profile on Facebook, they might keep scrolling down and down and end up on your 3 years old photos. While checking out these photos, they might accidentally like a photo or tag themselves in the photo. As a result, you’ll receive a push notification notifying you about the like or tag.

Keep an eye out for new profiles of blocked people: There could be several reasons for you to block someone on Facebook. They might be sending you unwanted messages, tagging you in unwanted posts, or making you uncomfortable by any other means. If that blocked person reappears on Facebook after you have blocked them, there’s a possibility they are here to stalk you.

Use third-party tools: If you’re lazy and want to depend on some third-party tools to this job for you, you’ll be happy to know there are many such tools available. However, if you are obsessed with internet privacy and don’t trust third-party tools, you might want to skip this one.

Keep checking Facebook security emails: A super-obsessed online stalker wouldn’t be ashamed to try to log in to your Facebook account. When he does so, you’ll receive an email telling you someone tried to log into your account. That’s a clear sign someone is stalking you and is absolutely obsessed with it.

What age group has the highest prevalence of stalking?

To put it simple and straight, people aged between 18 and 24 are the most vulnerable to stalkers.

What does it mean to stalk someone on Facebook?

Facebook stalking is very similar to regular online stalking. The only difference is that Facebook online stalker uses Facebook to stalk someone’s Facebook profile. There are a couple of things that a person could do to stalk someone on Facebook, they are as follows:

Spends a lot of time on the victim’s profile: One way to stalk someone on Facebook is to spend a lot of time scrolling through their profile. The online stalker might spend a lot of time reading the victim’s posts and navigating through their pictures and videos.

Interacts with older posts: An online stalker on Facebook has no shame in diving deep into the older posts of the victim. He might like, comment, or share older posts of the victim and it’s a clear sign for the victim that he’s being stalked.

Do people know if you look at their Instagram?

If you’re an active user on Instagram, you might be wondering if it’s possible for the people you visit on Instagram to find out that you’re checking out their profiles.

That’s a complicated question with a complicated answer, but don’t worry, you’re not leaving without getting your question answered. Let’s look at each type of post possible on Instagram separately and see if people can know if you looked at them.

Instagram photos: It’s absolutely not possible to find out if someone has looked at your Instagram photos. So, if you have been checking out someone’s images from last week’s vacations on Instagram, they will never know.

Instagram videos: Instagram displays a handy number of the number of views one gets on one’s Instagram videos. However, it’s not possible to check who actually watched the video. So, even if a person can see that someone watched their Instagram video, they can’t see it’s you.

Boomerang posts: Just like Instagram videos, people can see the number of views a Boomerang post has, but can’t see who actually viewed the post. Hence, nothing to worry about here.

Instagram stories: This is where things start to get a little different. Instagram stories feature was a massive hit upon release. Just within 2 months of its release, this feature achieved over 100 million active daily users. One of the reasons for its popularity is, of course, the ability to check out who actually looked at your stories.

The person who posts the story can see the list of people who have watched their stories. So, beware. People will know if you look at their Instagram stories.

What is the Initial Chat Friends List?

Some years ago, an image surfaced on the internet and went viral in a speedy manner. The text in the image promised to disclose your biggest stalkers to you just by a simple trick. This “trick” was performed by viewing the source code of the Facebook website in a browser and then searching for the keyword “initialchatfriendslist”.

A set of numbers would appear and you had to copy and paste the numbers in the Facebook website URL like “facebook.com/numbers”. It was said that the list of the people who appeared were the people who visit your profile the most.

But later, that turned out to be absolutely wrong. A Facebook spokesperson said “It is the initial order of friends displayed on the right-hand side chat bar when the page is loaded. We rank this list based on who you are most likely to message; we determine the order of friends based on a number of factors”. As interesting as it sounds, this myth was eradicated at the same pace as it appeared.

Can I see who visits my Facebook page?

Hold on, another complicated answer on the way. Social media companies, especially Facebook, don’t disclose this kind of information for privacy and data breach reasons. For the same reason, it’s not possible to see who visits your Facebook page. But there’s a catch, let’s discuss.

You can see how many people have visited your Facebook: Even if the names of the people who visited your Facebook page aren’t disclosed, you can see the number of people who have visited your Facebook page categorized by different metrics.

For example, you can see the age group of the people visiting your page. You can also see their gender, country, city, and device type. To get your hands on this information, open your Facebook page, then click on “Insights” and then on “Page Views”.

Who viewed my profile picture on WhatsApp?

The simple answer is; you cannot find out who viewed your profile picture on WhatsApp. WhatsApp application on Android and iOS has no such built-in feature to give out that kind of statistics. It also doesn’t give any permissions publically through which other applications could find this information. CWP

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