tech
I stalked a stranger
I am a stalker – at least I know I have the capacity to be. When I started researching my new psychological thriller about obsession, featuring a character who compulsively stalks another, I decided to find out just how vulnerable we are to someone tracking us. And what I found scared me silly. I quickly learned just how easy it is to uncover personal information and how vulnerable we all are to the intrusive gaze of strangers. For my research, I selected a friend of a friend on Facebook. We had never met, spoken, messaged or even ‘Liked’ one another’s social media posts.
TL;DR
- The author was able to uncover significant personal information about a stranger using only open-source intelligence and a laptop.
- Social media platforms, despite privacy settings, offer numerous avenues for obtaining personal data.
- Technological advancements and social media have created new and inventive ways for offenders to contact victims and cross boundaries.
- Stalking is a serious crime, with over 1.5 million cases recorded in the UK last year, and young people are particularly vulnerable.
- While common sense checks on online dates are acceptable, the normalization of obsessive online checking and joking about stalking is concerning and dangerous.