Cyber technology impacts interactions between offenders and victims in countless ways like staying anonymous online while they stalk or harass a victim, facilitating cyber harassment and stalking by giving access to millions of online users, and threatening individuals with violence. While someone is online, they can hide their identity and motives by using a fake name or masking their IP address with a VPN. In fact, according to a survey conducted by Forbes Advisor, “50% of respondents use a VPN on public Wi-Fi.” That means that the other half of the surveyed individuals are unprotected on public Wi-Fi and an easy target for a cyber stalker or harassment. Moreover, stalkers and harassers can use VPNs to their advantage and keep their true location hidden, which can add more fear to the victim because they are unable to find the location of their offender. With the advent of the world wide web in 1989 people who live thousands of miles away can communicate with each other as if they were next door neighbors and although that brings many advantages to society it also brings a plethora of opportunities for crime, harassment, and stalking. As found by Statista’s Research Department , “As of February 2023, Google sites were ranked first amongst the most visited multi-platform web properties in the United States, with just over 274.49 million unique visitors and a market share of 61.4 percent among the leading U.S. search engine providers.” This statistic only covers people in the United States; now imagine how easy it is to offend victims that are globally connected. Stalkers can also threaten to find out who someone is and inflict violence on them and since the user does not know who is threatening them or if they know where they live it adds a layer of fear and uncertainty to their threats. Lastly, cyber technology has an uncountable number of effects on the engagement between offenders and victims like staying incognito online, hiding their location, and claiming to be able to inflict harm to a victim.
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