The Impact of Online Stalking, Threats and Harassment
In March 2022, Apple and its CEO Tim Cook finally got a court to enforce a restraining order against a mentally disturbed stalker who falsely claimed to be married to Cook, tried to set up fake companies under Cook’s and Apple’s names, and sent Cook pictures of guns and ammunition.
The stalker, Julie Lee Choi, was never jailed.
It was doubly worrying for Cook and Apple, because two years ago, the company was granted a restraining order against Rakesh Sharma, who visited Cook's house twice and threatened him, as stated in court documents.
Again, Sharma wasn’t imprisoned – leaving Apple with costs of $USD630,000 to pay for Cook’s security. That cost was just for 2021 alone.
There is an increasing trend of people online threatening to kill, maim, rob or blow up those they dislike – sometimes adding the words “In Minecraft, that is” or “In Call of Duty, of course” to try create plausible deniability.
The stalkers, threatener and harassers all leave plenty of activity on the web. If we use the right tool to cut through internet chatter and zero in on the threats, we can pre-empt the worst outcomes.
But how did this come to be– and how do we know which harmful online trends will have real-world consequences?
The Costs and Consequences of Internet-Driven Harm
According to Forbes, since March 2020, global internet usage has soared by 50-70% in most countries due to lockdowns keeping people inside and angry and internet-capable devices becoming ubiquitous.
The company Cybersecurity Ventures estimates the cost of internet-derived harm as having risen past $3 trillion USD in 2015 to an expected $USD 10.5 trillion in 2025. The basis? Hostile nation-state sponsored and organized crime gang hacking activities, damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal and financial data, embezzlement, fraud, post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, forensic investigation, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, and reputational harm.
Online activity’s real-world consequences are sometimes financial, sometimes reputational, sometimes against individuals, and sometimes against corporations.
For example:
In 2021, a Massachusetts-based supervisor at eBay was sent to prison after he was found to have cyber-stalked – and harassed in the real world – online critics of the company. The supervisor was sentenced to 18 months in prison for cyber-stalking a couple critical of the company who published an online newsletter that covered eBay and other companies. The victims were sent disturbing packages including a preserved pig fetus and a book on dealing with the loss of a spouse. Ten other employees were charged in relation to the case – severely embarrassing eBay.
In early May 2022, DGL Group's chief executive Simon Henry made personal comments about celebrity chef Nadia Lim which were sensationalized by social media commentators and opinion columnists, leading to DGL having $304 million wiped off its market value over four trading days in the wake of Henry’s comments, with some fund managers blacklisting DGL, small shareholders selling – and a share price bounce-back of 5% following news Lim had been sent an apology
In January 2021, a ‘short squeeze’ saw supporters of GameStop reverse GameStop’s plunging share value by colluding to assist ‘Meme stocks.’ The supporters collaborated on a subreddit called r/WallStreetBets, forced the value of GameStop stock to rise and cost investors who owned shorts on the stock billions of dollars – all thanks to Redditors colluding on an online discussion board.
How Online Obsessions Can Transform into Harassment
When it comes to personalized hatred of individual, identifiable human beings, the more public a person, the more likely they are to be a target, sadly.
Fixated individuals may post thousands of times a day for years on end, obsessing over a public figure. Even when blocked, they will simply create new accounts to continue the behavior – potentially causing significant negative impact on those they target.
Often there are elements of delusion wrapped up in the obsession, viewing a twisted view of reality. (ie. viewing things said by a news anchor as being targeted at them or people walking by as conspiratorial attempts by corporations to ‘gang stalk’ and silence them)
Obsession can quickly turn from romantic overtures through to ultimatums and physical threats. Spurned attention can lead to increased rhetoric.
How Signal Supports Companies to Combat Online Stalking and Harassment
Several media companies are Signal customers, and they deal with multiple instances of this sad reality. The victims are often female, sadly, and Forbes says harassment of women is 2.5 times more frequent in Western countries, and gaining at a rapid pace non-Western countries.
Signal is here to help, however. Cutting through the chatter, the open source security intelligence solution – which integrates with several related threat management systems – has taken care of the following:
Signal has have helped find comments related to what people were wearing on a particular day,
Signal can capture written records of stalkers admitting to watching targets undertaking family activities such as dropping kids off to school, marriage proposals, transfer of interest
Signal can trace accounts between a multitude of platforms, establishing records of planning and organization before potential attacks.
Signal has helped identify changes in behaviors that helped assist with identifying potential escalation of harassment
Safety of your employees is critical and a requirement as part of an organisation’s duty of care responsibilities. Get threat intelligence tool Signal today, save your employees and business from harm, and capture evidence for prosecution.
Contact Signal to learn more or schedule a demo.