Cyberstalking is when someone is specifically targeted through the use of electronic communications and technology with repeated, unwanted actions and behaviour. This can include, for example, receiving unwanted image-based abuse, being spammed, being tracked via a location or through malware / surveillance tools on devices, or being impersonated in fake posts or profiles online, amongst others.
Cyberstalking is a form of targeted online violence which poses increasing physical safety risks. It very often translates into real world stalking, where someone is repeatedly targeted by behaviour which can make them feel fearful or afraid, or put them at risk. The online element of it means the threat is more susceptible to go viral, elicit mob reactions, and to radiate to members of the target’s community (family, friends, colleagues, etc).
A 2015 UN Human Rights Council resolution “recognizes that violence against women, including domestic violence, can take the form of an isolated act or pattern of abusive behaviour that may occur over a period of time, which as a pattern constitutes violence against women, and can include acts such as cyberbullying and cyberstalking.”
The world’s first anti-cyberstalking law was passed in California in 1999. Cyberstalking is now listed under ‘Acts intended to induce fear or emotional distress’ by the United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime (UNODC)’s 2015 International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS); a human rights violation according to the European Union (EU) Charter of Fundamental Rights, Article 6 - “everyone has the right to liberty and security of person”; a violation of one’s personal dignity per the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”; and as a violation of one’s privacy according to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR): “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.”
More complexly, cyberstalking is also a freedom of expression issue; freedom of expression is protected by Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Cyberstalking can often go hand in hand with other online harms, such as doxxing (brought into the mainstream by Gamergate in 2014), online identity theft, or hacking online. It can also be fuelled by ‘sock puppets,’ described in The Verge as ‘fake profiles created for the sole purpose of harassment’ (Schiffer, 2021). Harassment can also manifest in the form of impersonating chatbots (McQue, 2025).
In modern internet culture there are also other definitions which belong to the ‘cyberstalking’ field, including ‘stan, which is considered a portmanteau of ‘stalker’ and ‘fan’ - ‘stan armies’ are defined as online communities dedicated to individual celebrities or groups’ (Rosenblatt, 2020). Stan networks use emojis / swarming to target and cyberstalk / harass people online, which is being actively researched.
NOTE: In Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)’s 2023 Guidelines for monitoring online violence against female journalists, stalking is cited in 2 of the 15 “indicators” identified as signalling an escalation in online abuse by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and University of Sheffield researchers: “Doxxing as a signal for potential escalation to physical stalking & violence”, and “Transference of online threats to physical contexts (e.g. physical stalking, being abused in public with disinformation narratives prevalent online; graffiti reflecting online threats)” (Posetti, 2023).
The bar is low – most judicial rulings against cyberstalking documented by ICSJ in the legal chapter for the UNESCO-ICFJ report The Chilling look at sustained and persistent campaigns of emails, calls (also via doxxing), posts on social media platforms, use of sock puppets, as cyberstalking.
As shown in a February 2025 case documented by The Guardian, existing online platforms such as CrushOn.ai and JanitorAI can be used to generate chatbots that can impersonate victims on social media platforms (in the case above, OkCupid, X, Yahoo, Classmates.com, Facebook and escort websites) (McQue, 2025).
Cyberstalking can have both negative psychological and professional impacts.
The perpetrator may be aiming to ‘chill’ the person’s participation in the public sphere, but this form of abuse has also been connected to domestic violence and the declining health and wellbeing of children.
One key example of stalking online with deadly offline consequences is the 2021 Public Inquiry into Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination in October 2017, which established that online abuse contributed to a climate of impunity, partly from the Maltese state, in Galizia's (car bomb) killing outside her home. Online stalking of Galizia, for example at a flower market in Malta with her husband, is an example of that threat -- with some of the online perpetrators found to be government officials. Galizia also stopped going to the beach because of pictures of her that would be taken and photoshopped / memed online; she was once chased into a church by a mob; her dog was killed outside her house, and her home set on fire while she and her family were sleeping inside.
For an example of cyberstalking escalating to physical violence in the US, we can look to a case from 2018, where one man "killed five staff members of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland."
The man had been stalking the paper's staff via Facebook and harassing them on Twitter (now X) and by email after the staff had reported on the man's legal case, where he had been found guilty of harassing a woman online (Robertson, 2018).
On an international note: A 2015 UN Human Rights Council resolution “recognizes that violence against women, including domestic violence, can take the form of an isolated act or pattern of abusive behaviour that may occur over a period of time, which as a pattern constitutes violence against women, and can include acts such as cyberbullying and cyberstalking’ (UN Human Rights Council, 2015); and a 2022 UN Human Rights Council resolution found that cyberbullying - connected to cyberstalking - ‘can inflict physical, psychological and social harm, and that, although rates differ from country to country, bullying, online or in person, has a negative impact on the fulfilment of the rights of the child and is among children’s main concerns’ (UN Human Rights Council, 2022).
AI can allow perpetrators to vastly increase the scale of their harassment of their target. In a US case from February 2025 (documented in The Guardian) a man used two online AI platforms (e.g. CrushOn.ai, JanitorAI), to design chatbots to harass a woman for seven years. “Florence admitted to using the victim’s personal and professional information – including her home address, date of birth and family information to instruct the chatbots to impersonate her and engage in sexual dialogue with users, per court filings. He told the chatbots to answer “yes” in the guise of his victim when a user asked whether she was sexually adventurous and fed the AI responses of what underwear she liked to wear. Florence himself had stolen underwear from her home. One chatbot was programmed to suggest ‘Why don’t you come over?’ to users, which led to strangers pulling into her driveway and parking outside her house.” This case, filed in Massachusetts federal court, is believed to be the first in which a stalker has been indicted for using a chatbot to impersonate their victim to facilitate their crimes. Florence has agreed to plead guilty to seven counts of cyberstalking and one count of possession of child pornography. According to Stefan Turkheimer, vice-president for public policy at Rainn, an anti-sexual-violence non-profit, the case brings to light a new and “incredibly disturbing” use of AI: for predators to target victims...“This defendant was harassing and extorting people, and that’s been done forever, but the tools that he’s been able to use here really made the damage so much worse.”
The Coalition Against Stalkerware documented a 373% increase in stalkerware detection between 2018 and the same period in 2019 (Kaspersky, 2019). While this measures detection rather than actual prevalence, it suggests rapidly growing use of these surveillance tools.
American women ‘are more likely than men to report having been stalked (13% vs. 9%)’ (Pew Research Center, 2021).
‘According to a survey by the Serbian Independent Journalists Association
Almost 30% of the 82 women journalists who responded to a survey by the Serbian Independent Journalists Association (NUNS), said that 'the threats they had received turned into months of stalking’ (Djuric, 2020).
"[An] increasing use of fake social media profiles" is used "to stalk, harass and denigrate [Pakistani] journalists," and a 2019 survey found that “at least one in every three respondents said they were either stalked online, cyber bullied or the victim of impersonation on social media” (Posetti, 2022; Kamran, 2019).