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 websites. To make things worse it can all be done anonymously and therefore protects the stalker from prosecution. Here is how Cyberstalking 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 the 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 and increases the sites domain authority 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 webmasters will recognize the fact that the content on their site is being used for cyberstalking and a mere email request will get things done. Other webmasters may take a little more persuasion and constant emails will often help. Please note not to threaten the webmaster and simply plead your case. For certain sites, the webmaster 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 than $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 victim's 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 a 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 cyberstalking. 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 Market Pros a reputation management company and a former cyberstalking victim.
