Important dos and don’ts of what to do when you are confronted by a cyber stalker
Stalking has been going on forever and now stalkers have new
tools to harm you in ways not conceivable just 10 years ago. Today a stalker
can attack a victim on social media, bulletin boards, comment sections on media
and lastly on negative review web sites. To make things worse it can all be
done anonymously and therefore protects the stalker from prosecution. Here is
how a victim can fight back.
The first thing a victim needs to do is take a step back and
do not do or write anything online acknowledging the stalker for a couple of
reasons. Number one is replying to the stalker will often give them
satisfaction that they know they are causing the victim pain and in other cases
can anger the stalker worse. In both cases the fact is, acknowledging the
stalker is only more likely to bring on more posts and further exacerbate the
situation. The second reason and more important is when a victim replies to
these attacks it actually makes the attacks stronger in the search engines as
it has more content. Whatever a victim does do not respond in any way to these
attacks.
A second thing a victim can do is contact webmaster of sites
the stalker is utilizing to attack the victim. Many, not all web masters will recognize
the fact that the content on their site is being used for cyber stalking and a
mere email request will get things done. Other web masters may take a little
more persuasion and constant emails will often help. Please note not to
threaten the web master and simply plead your case. For certain sites the web
master is looking to charge a fee and it can be a great deal of money and that
option will probably be off the table for many victims. Additionally some of
the sites are negative review sites that actually promote negative content and
have high web authority so removal from these sites will usually be the most
damning and costly to remove.
The third thing a victim can do is a full blown reputation
management campaign. I would suggest hiring a quality firm for this if the cost
is within the victims budget. Reputation Pros has a very good and cost
effective membership program at less then $300 per month. If these costs are
out of reach then it is time to roll up your sleeves. A full blown reputation management campaign is
very laborious, but a victim can achieve good results simply by building a positive
web presence that can push the negative content deep in to search results. This
is achieved by posting a vast amount of positive content through social media,
blog posts, owning a URL with the victims name and finally by garnering positive
news pieces with the victim named in articles.
Last if not least a victim can sue the stalker in court and
gain “injunctive relief” that the victim can bring to the search engines in request
for de indexing the sites posting the negative content. If a victim chooses this method it is important
to note that the victim should have every single page listed within the order
to make sure all pages with negative content are removed from search results.
It also needs to be noted that suing can be a complicated and costly process.
In conclusion a victim can fight back against cyber
stalking. It will not be easy. It will not be free, but if the victim is as
motivated as the stalker they can achieve a positive outcome. It will take
patience and perseverance and a lot of learning, but a positive outcome can be
achieved.
By Don Troiano
About the author
Don Troiano is an executive with Reputation Pros a
reputation management company and a former cyber stalking victim.
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