Stalkers are using today's technology to make their miserable pastime easier.
Electronic communication devices, including text messages and instant messages, are becoming the modus operandi for people who are bent on following, annoying, threatening and perhaps harming their victims.
It makes sense, we guess.
Technology today can provide a stranger with all sorts of information about a person. Simply type someone's name into a search engine, such as Google, and it can reveal a wealth of knowledge. In some cases, it can be discovered where that person lives, who their neighbors are, where they went to high school or college and, in some cases, even their social habits.
Of course, part of this problem is compounded by the personal information that so many people intentionally post about themselves on the Internet.
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Scammers, too, are using today's technology to their advantage. A few weeks back, we told the story of a Mitchell woman victimized by a scammer who claimed he was her grandson and tricked her out of a sizeable amount of money. The scammer certainly must have learned some of this information via the Internet.
It's obvious scammers are lying in wait on the Internet. Even here at The Daily Republic, we receive e-mails that describe all types of wealth that can be achieved by, say, investing in a gold mine in Africa. Seriously.
Scamming is one thing and albeit terribly unfortunate, we don't consider scammers as dangerous as stalkers, whose lives are getting easier as technology evolves.
A recent national report shows that 26 percent of stalking victims were stalked by people using some form of electronic means. Most reported being stalked by e-mail which, of course, is the offspring of the Internet.
Not much can be done, we suppose, and we mark up this trend as an unfortunate byproduct of technology.
But we do wish to remind people that any information they put on the Internet could come back to haunt them.
