What do you all consider to be stalking?

What do you all consider to be stalking?

DeepEmbrace​(dom female) • Jul 8, 2023

Hi everyone,

We talk a lot about safety, confidentiality, and boundaries in bdsm/kink communities, so I wanted to start a thread specifically about stalking because it is a breach of all three of those things.

I just want to create a space so people can talk about the following questions or anything directly related to stalking:

1) What do you consider to be stalking online?

2) What do you consider to be stalking in person?

3) Have you or someone you know ever dealt with a stalker? If yes, then how was the situation handled?

4) What do you do to prevent or lessen the chance of being stalked?

aradialspire​(dom femme) • Jul 8, 2023

1) There is a gulf between showing interest in someone and basically hunting them online. It's good to do your due diligence and check someone out before engaging them online, for example. Let's say you want to check out a provider, educator or a domme's reputation in the community, you want to make sure they're on the level. I think that's totally fine.

But going back 20 years to find out all their scene drama, knowing all the names of their previous partners? Forming a parasocial relationship where you know way too much about them and they don't even know you exist? Well that's a big fucking problem right there. That being said parasocial relationships are not stalking, they're passive and part of the online social landscape we all find ourselves in these days.

They do cross over into the realms of stalking when the person doesn't realize that it's a one-way street and the object of their interest doesn't know who the hell they are. That they are not friends, that they do not know each other. That the level of interest exhibited is a bit (or much) too deep. When someone goes from fan of a certain someone to actively trying to insert themselves into the life of that person (I like to call it "becoming part of the story"), that's when it becomes stalking online.

How does someone insert themselves? Contacting you via text, messenger, discord, social media even when you've made it clear you don't want to talk to them. Reaching out to people who know you if you won't speak with them. Showing an unsettling/unwarranted familiarity with you. Sending you unwanted gifts. Things cross the line from the benign into malignant when they start threatening you when things don't go their way. Whisper campaigns, monitoring your behavior online, various crazy stalker shit.

2) Real life stalking is basically the same as online stalking, they just know of you offline or reach into your life offline. You may not necessarily even know who the person is, they could have just seen you at a coffee shop one day or figured out where you live. They could be a jilted expartner hell bent on making your life hell, or your expartner's new partner hellbent on making your life hell because you exist. A random that figured out where you live from a picture of a doorknob in your condo.

Sometimes stalking IRL is like stalking online, it's not always fear-based and could seem like something nice to the outside, like someone sending you loads of gifts. But if you don't want it, you don't want it. It's not all bunny boiler stuff. Don't get it twisted though, someone following you around and messing with your property is definitely a possibility with IRL stalking, though I feel like more people do stuff online these days because it's easier and harder to build a case against with law enforcement.

3) I will not answer this question.

4) Practice common sense, make peace with the fact that there are certain people out there that could get tilted just because they see you buy paper towels on a Tuesday.

Know if someone wants to fuck with you they are going to find a way to fuck with you. Databases of websites can be breached and personally identifying information can be discovered. Pictures can be run through massive databases to find similarities, you drop little breadcrumbs of who you are in every post you make online.

So what are we going to do? Live in little faraday cages, hoping no one figures out who we are so we can avoid a situation? And even then, someone still might figure it out? You can be careful, but I don't know if it's possible to ever be careful enough. If you exist online you draw attention to yourself, no matter how lowkey you are.

Nitrev​(dom male) • Jul 9, 2023

1) What do you consider to be stalking online?

Reposting their pictures online, monitoring activity, trying to be in the same public spaces as them "by coincidence," locating mutuals, family, work, etc. Stalking is when the activities become suspicious beyond any need for vetting someone for safety purposes, and the information they gather is instead used maliciously such as to intimidate or blackmail.

2) What do you consider to be stalking in person?

Much of the same actions online can be done in-person, the difference is in-person adds the additional threat of that person being close you and where you live. In addition to the above in person stalking would include following you, tracking your routines, spying and stake outs, etc. In person has additional risks in assault, battery, kidnapping, and murder.

3) Have you or someone you know ever dealt with a stalker? If yes, then how was the situation handled?

I've known a few folks that have had stalkers. I myself had some online stalking/blackmail incidents as well. I actually have a couple pics posted to someone's personal XVideos, benign pics of selfies, no nudes. It's for these reasons I have strict rules against sending any nudes, and I'm currently pursuing AI generated photos to further take myself offline and use likeness.

I think the solution in all those cases was to go dark while it blew over. Never give into the demands because either you're giving them more ammo and/or showing them that they have power over you that they don't have to get rid of. Don't trust promises to remove it either. It's on the internet forever more than likely, but the Internet is so vast, your pics and info will be buried eventually. In the meantime, stay safe. If you think your home has been compromised, consider staying at a friend's for a while, consider moving, etc. It will die down, but before it does, you need to keep yourself safe.

4) What do you do to prevent or lessen the chance of being stalked?

The actions to take to lessen stalking are the same as reducing your digital footprint. You digital footprint are the many traceable actions you leave behind online. Accounts, posts, activities all are used to create a unique dossier of your information that major information firms such as Google/Facebook sell online. The primary use of the digital footprint is to sell you targeted advertising, but if the information is publicly accessible or on the dark web following a breach of a lesser service, then malicious users can also get their hands on this info and eventually reverse engineer their way to finding your real identity. So what you do in reducing your digital footprint is you remove these publicly accessible information by removing accounts, controlling who can see your posts in the first place, and creating your own dossiers completely separated from your real identity. If you don't think your info is compromised right now, it is. You can look for yourself at https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Burners. Accounts, names, phone numbers, emails that are separate from your personal identity. Tools will give you voip numbers while you can spin up as many gmails as you want. Essentially create a fake persona: burner numbers and emails, and fake names, birthdates, and locations. Don't give them anything with which to find you. In the US you can get a P.O. Box instead of registering your addressing as well, and there are tools to further remove your address from places if may be posted.

Consider things like freezing accounts from companies that track and sell your data such as TWN here. In the US, you can freeze your tracking info with Equifax, which is tax and work-related information that they send to TWN and sell to other companies, thus propagating your info into more places online when you Google search your name. If someone finds your info, it's outdated and you're still relatively covered from some blackmailer. Use less pics. I run my pics through some image searches to see what comes up. My two favorites are Google images and Yandex. I did this a couple months ago and proceeded to remove every one of my accounts that showed up. Haven't seen a pic of myself since. I do the same process to vet someone's pics when they send them to me but their "phone camera is broken" or some other bs. It's not a fool-proof system, but it's the best I've found. Also keep a tab on pics you think might be "compromised," that is you sent them out to someone on good faith that turned out to be a scam or collector. If it's the same pic, then there's a lot less to build an online dossier around your persona. I don't mind sending the same pic to someone over and over again cause they message me from new accounts, making sure that pic is not connected to anything else.

Even on video, people can take screenshots of you. I'd say dress modestly and keep it safe for work. Don't send nudes or play online until you're good and ready to trust each other. If you do play online, conceal your identity. Masks, hoods, and sunglasses are all good ways to do that. You could also go even farther with hair, makeup, and colored contacts to further distinguish yourself from your professional profile.

Last thing to consider is to accept the rise of AI and deep fakes. Anyone right now could make porn of you. As that idea catches on, it should throw into question the legitimacy of anything found online. For people already posted online, this can be a comforting thought as if anyone found your pictures, there'd be no way to tell if it was real or an AI deep fake somebody made with your likeness.

Miki​(masochist female) • Jul 9, 2023

To be succinct.. To me online stalking is all of the above in general but specifically an individual who does searches on one's name, photo, asks for more photos and in general goes Sherlock on me -- so to speak.

IRL stalkers, pretty straightforward Following, studing places I would go to, showing up there, loitering outside my home or workplace. Pretty much what you might see on 20/20 before they find the body.


Prevention? Online.. Make it hard to be traced. maintain a very limited online presence and what Iactually do-- No personal info to be found here aside from what I choose to let people know.

No phone numbers and keeping where I live vague at best.

If they have to dig too hard, a lot of them tend to give up, unless they're a psycho or even just a creep.

Avoiding IRL? Easier said than done, but I am already hyper aware of my surroundings, given my disability and how it renders me vulnerable. But for others, just situational awareness, attention to detail, and varying one's routine.

Won't stop a stalker hell-bent on catching someone, but makes it harder for them.

jkillaaa​(sub female) • Jul 9, 2023

Have you ever seen “You?”

House Talion​(dom male) • Aug 5, 2023

Continued chase after being told directly of no chance in hell for any relationship, freindship, or dynamic.

autisticbarbie • Aug 6, 2023

I like this topic a lot, thank you for posting it.

1) What do you consider to be stalking online?

Sending excessive emails, texts, phone calls and not quitting when you tell them to go away because you feel scared. Then they usually try to run background checks or hire private investigators to get info about you and show up to the places you work at or go to regularly (gym, church or synagogue, coffee shops, whatever) When you tell them you don't like them and you don't want to talk to them, they keep doing it. Depending on how psycho, they may try to make friends with your family or friends or even exes to get info on you to use. They send mail to your house or show up. Sometimes they go through your trash and stuff.

2) What do you consider to be stalking in person?

All of my stalkers have started with the internet so I don't know

3) Have you or someone you know ever dealt with a stalker? If yes, then how was the situation handled?

Tons of them and I still deal with a couple of them. I have goons and cybersecurity knowledge, so I stalked one back and blackmailed him after he threatened to kill me. Another one hired a private investigator and shows up at every address I move to locally. I put up a bunch of cameras and that stopped the home visits. I also started discussing gun ownership. He still sends mail. One of my close friends stalked him back and now he just sends money sometimes. The cash is welcome contact.

4) What do you do to prevent or lessen the chance of being stalked?

Don't share personal details about yourself to anyone online. I don't do this, but I'm prepared to deal with any asshole who tries me at this point because it's old hat now. Other than not sharing personal details, I recommend being very transparent about what the hell you do online unless you have a slush fund to pay off stalkers and blackmailers.

Stay safe folks!