2005 CYBERSTALKING STATISTICS RELEASED BY WORKING TO HALT ONLINE ABUSE WHOA Shares Its Sixth Year of Statistics

    /24-7PressRelease/ - DOVER, NH, February 26, 2006 - Working to Halt Online Abuse released their 2005 Cyberstalking statistics today, as well as cumulative statistics for six years, from 2000-20005. In 2000, responding to law enforcement requests, Working to Halt Online Abuse began gathering demographic information from victims and plan to continue to document and track meaningful statistics in the future. They are the only online organization to provide the most up-to-date cyberstalking statistics.

"We've found that harassers tend to be white collar, don't have a criminal records, are not Internet experts or hackers, and are just like you and me," says Working to Halt Online Abuse President, Jayne Hitchcock. "They can be teachers, lawyers, businesspeople, students, doctors, the kid who bags your groceries - online harassers and stalkers are not who you may think they are."

Statistics represent cases where the victims filled out the questionnaire as completely as possible, but the figures do not portray the total number of cases Working to Halt Online Abuse handles each year.

"In addition to victim questionnaires, we work on cases directly with law enforcement, on high profiles cases we have been directly approached for, or with victim assistance organizations or lawyers," notes Hitchcock. "On average, we can see up to 50 cases a week. We don't see cyberstalking going away. In fact, it is increasing every day, mainly due to the fact that more people go online for the first time every day. Currently there are over one billion people online worldwide - if only one percent become victims, that's ten million people!"

The trust Working to Halt Online Abuse receives from victims they have helped enables the group to develop reliable cyberstalking demographic numbers. However, as the statistics are generated from information supplied by the victims, verification is not always possible. In 2005, there were 443 completed questionnaires submitted as compared to 196 in 2004. Cumulatively, in six years, Working to Halt Online Abuse has processed 1,664 cases.

In 2005, they found that:

• More men applied for help, an increase of 7% over 2004

• Male harassers decreased by almost 10% over 2004, most likely due to a new trend - cases involving multiple harassers, which accounted for 2.5% of cases in 2005

• The victim's age has changed, there was a 10% decrease in those 18-40 and a 7% increase in those over the age of 40

• More victims of different races are applying for help - there was a 5% decrease in Caucasians, while Hispanics almost doubled, from 3.5% in 2004, to 5.5% in 2005; African-Americans and Asian victims increased by 1% each, Native Americans more than doubled from 1% to 2.5%

• Although singles were the most common victims in past years, 2005 saw the gap decreasing between singles and married victims at 37.5% and 31.5% respectively

• There was an increase of victims who knew their harasser previously, up 4.5% from last year, although just over 50% stated their harassers were strangers

• For those who did have a previous relationship with their harasser, the harasser being an ex dropped significantly from 53.5% in 2004, to 33.5% in 2005; online acquaintances (meaning someone they knew from an online forum, Instant Messaging, chat, etc, but were not romantically involved) increased from 20% to 26.5%, while online exes (virtual romance) was a new category added which accounted for 5.5% of cases. Another new category involved eBay auctions, which involved 4% of cases where either the seller or the bidder harassed the other.

• There was a big shakeup as to where the victims and harassers were located and only 30.75% of cases involved the victim and harasser in the same state or country.

• California topped the list for locations of both victims and harassers, but Canada moved up to second place for victims and Texas for harassers (New York was second for both in 2004).

• Third place for victims was Florida, then New York and Pennsylvania; harassers was New York, Georgia, then Florida.

• Although email dropped 6% as the primary way the harassment began (no matter where the victim encountered their harasser previously, if they did), it was still #1, followed by message boards (including news groups and Yahoo Groups), which increased 3% over 2004, then Instant Messaging, which surprisingly dropped 1.5%, then chat, which increased by 3%. Harassment via web sites, eBay, blogs and dating web sites followed.

• Online escalation of the harassment almost doubled from 40.5% in 2004, to 60% in 2005, but threats of offline harm actually decreased from 40.5% in 2004 to 22% in 2005.

Working to Halt Online Abuse successfully resolved 73% of the cases they received in 2005. These sometimes included multiple actions, but the top resolutions were:

a) Filing complaints on behalf of victims with the Internet Service Provider(s) the harasser was using

b) The victim changed their username, email address, password and/or changed Internet Service Provider(s) upon advice from Working to Halt Online Abuse

c) The victim stopped responding to the harasser upon advice from Working to Halt Online Abuse

d) The victim changed their profile(s) upon advice from Working to Halt Online Abuse

e) The victim changed their home and/or cell phone numbers upon advice from Working to Halt Online Abuse

So, why do online harassers do it?

"There is no one answer," Hitchcock says, "but for the cases where the victim knows their harasser, it's usually revenge. For the stranger-on-stranger cases it's most often what I call 'Internet road rage.' What is it that causes a person to chase someone down a highway offline? The same goes for the superhighway - it could be something as simple as the harasser not liking the victim's username (one case I actually worked on) to a perceived injustice to not liking what someone posted online. It could be anything."

Working to Halt Online Abuse, the oldest and largest all-volunteer online safety organization, has been helping adult victims of cyberstalking since February, 1997.

Jayne Hitchcock routinely trains law enforcement and advocate groups how to track down cyber criminals and work with victims, and conducts educational seminars, raising awareness of cyber crime and online harassment. She is a high profile, dynamic educator of the dangers on the internet and author of Net Crimes and Misdemeanors at http://www.netcrimes.net, which highlights the various crimes that can happen to users online, how to stay safer and what to do if they become a victim. Requests for the copyrighted statistics for each year by the media and other professionally interested parties in .pdf versions should be sent to [email protected]. Media and web sites may quote statistics with appropriate recognition to Working to Halt Online Abuse.

WHOA is the largest and oldest all-volunteer online organization devoted to promoting online safety and helping adult victims of online crimes. WHOA-KTD (Kids/Teen Division) is for kids, teens, their parents, teachers and others concerned about cyberbullying, predators, and the dangers of online blogs, profiles, IM and more.

# # #