The Myth and Reality of
Online Stalkers
by Judith Broadhurst

"An awful lot of what is being bandied about in this case as 'stalking' does not even qualify for harassment, legally," says [Detective] Clark. "A lot of it is just flaming. Most of what's going on is offensive, but not an offense."

Note: Some of this information is outdated now, particularly about the commerical online networks that were more popular then and the outcomes of the criminal cases. Yet the advice is still valid. And it's good reporting!

When they first met through a video dating service, it seemed like it could be love at first sight for Andrew Archambeau, a graphic artist in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, and the 29-year-old sixth grade teacher, whom we'll leave anonymous. But when they started courting daily by phone and America Online's e-mail, he became so obsessed with her so fast that she got uneasy. When he sent her even more e-mail rather than backing off, as she asked, she got so scared that she filed charges against him for stalking her, despite his insistence that all he intended to do was woo her.

"He didn't just send her e-mail," says Thad Morgan, the Oakland County special prosecutor who's handling the case. "He waited outside her school, and watched her, sent her mail other than the e-mail, and left phone messages. We have the tape of one which says, 'I stalked you today. I watched you leave work.'

"He seems to make light of it, but he's scaring the victim to death. With national publicity, such as the 'Current Affair' show, she's being victimized all over again. The publicity's causing her concern about whether the parents of kids where she teaches will think she's placing their kids in jeopardy, because he could be around the school."

Archambeau was arraigned May 10 and, as we went to press, due for pretrial hearing June 29. Unlike most other states, Michigan's stalking law specifically covers "sending mail or electronic communication." They classify stalking as either a misdemeanor or, if it involves threats of bodily harm, a felony. Archambeau was charged with a misdemeanor, according to Morgan. If convicted, he will be sentenced to a maximum of one year in jail or a $1000 fine plus, either way, up to five years probation.

The Prodigy Case

Meanwhile, another case was making headlines, largely due to what CBS aired on Connie Chung's "Eye to Eye." In that one, Prodigy accused Mark Johnson, of Fresno, of being "Vito," the person who had relentlessly bombarded at least eight people with voluminous e-mail for more than 18 months, according to Detective Frank Clark of Fresno PD's computer crimes division. Just one of these alleged victims got more than 500 e-mail messages, he says.

Prodigy tracked 53 separate, fake ID numbers to the suspect, and says he used at least 188 starter kits. Most of those were confiscated by police, although Johnson bragged to Clark that he obtained ID numbers from Prodigy without new kits and had as many as one thousand different ones.

Vito's alleged victims weren't all through e-mail or all women. He purportedly sent a fax to magazines that one of them, Larry Greenberg, writes for, and accused Greenberg, falsely, of distributing pornography and of child molestation. Still, Johnson couldn't legally be charged with stalking, even though that's what his alleged victims were calling it in daily diatribes online.

Brian Ek, Prodigy's spokesperson, asked, "What makes you think there's been any actual stalking?" Yet Clark told us: "Bill Schneck, a prosecutor with Prodigy's security division, called it stalking. Their attorneys kept using that term. There's definitely harassment and definitely death threats. But so far there's no evidence of stalking, because there's no evidence of an overt act to show that he could carry out his threats." Meaning, partly, that Johnson has not traveled to any of his alleged victims' cities nor pursued them by phone calls or in person.

Separating hype from harm

"An awful lot of what is being bandied about in this case as 'stalking' does not even qualify for harassment, legally," says Clark. "A lot of it is just flaming. Most of what's going on is offensive, but not an offense. Regardless, it makes the victims feel vulnerable and makes their lives miserable."

Because stalking didn't apply in the Prodigy case, and harassment is a misdemeanor, Clark says the U.S. Attorney's Office in California will file formal charges of credit card fraud, grand theft and fraudulent application for credit, plus possibly other charges, all felonies. If convicted, Johnson could get as few as 16 months in jail, and even that could be suspended and reduced to probation only.

Part of what's in question is whether stalking, threats to kill or do bodily harm, or harassment laws apply to electronic communication. "It's all so new that the courts, the cops and the prosecutors don't know what to do, so we all watch to see what happens in other cases," says Clark.

Many law enforcement officials as well as reporters have been so ignorant of what really goes on online that there has been a lot of misinformation. For instance, The San Jose Mercury News — which maintains its own section on America Online — reported that Archambeau's accuser told them, "The way our computer system works, if you don't read the mail someone sends you, it stays on the system for 37 days. I don't have the option of putting on it 'return to sender.' I have to look at it for 37 days, which is more harassing than postal mail."

To the contrary, America Online's e-mail menu allows you to choose "ignore" or "delete," and you don't keep getting the same message again once you've read it unless you choose "save as new," or someone actually resends the same message.

All experts we interviewed agreed that true stalking is rare online. But as John Lucich, an investigator for the Organized Crime and Racketeering Bureau of the State of New Jersey Attorney General's Office (who also runs the High-Tech Crime Network BBS) says, "Just because it's a small thing now doesn't mean people shouldn't be concerned about it."

Lucich says there are currently more than 300 law enforcement officials assigned to computer crimes of one kind or another. With an estimated 20 million Americans online, and the number growing exponentially each month, it seems, that may be far too few. Even when they do find a suspect, cops are often hamstrung, as Clark was for months, by murky laws and wary attorneys and judges.

To change that, existing laws have to be either amended by legislators or interpreted by courts to encompass e-mail and other electronic communication, or new laws have to be passed, specifically governing cyberspace. Joel Reidenberg, a law professor at Fordham University, says, "The courts don't like to construe criminal statutes broadly."

So the problem may be dumped in the laps of legislators instead. The federal government and all states now have some variation on a stalker law, according to the National Battered Women's Law Project, as well as laws against written threats to kill or do bodily harm. Those are sometimes the same, sometimes not. Lee Hollander, an Assistant State Attorney who prosecutes high-tech crimes for the State of Florida, says, "Each state can have a different version of the same law, and federal law sometimes pre-empts a state law.... Therefore the crime could come under that state's jurisdiction, as well as federal."

Who's the culprit?

So until the legal system uses its clout to warn weirdos to keep to themselves, many members expect the online networks to fend off the bad guys. The main complaints are that they're not doing enough to verify the identities of new members or stop the disturbing e-mail.

Although online services are not public utilities, thus cannot be treated or fully compared as such, that's like asking the phone company to stop obscene phone calls altogether. Besides, the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 prohibits online networks from reading e-mail unless one party in the exchange asks them to.

As for verification of identity, all the commercial online services claim they use special software to verify the validity of any credit card used to join the service. Those services that allow EFT from checking accounts, instead, require voided checks as proof of authorization.

All the services claim they call members if they suspect something's strange. Prodigy calls, for example, if a new member uses up the 30 free e-mail messages in the first few days. The first month is still free on Prodigy and other networks. CompuServe puts the basic-rate charge through, then rebates the fee, which at least requires a tad more serious commitment from new members, and maybe discourages some window shoppers. The Pipeline, an Internet provider that offers a proprietary Windows interface, charges for the first three months up front, at $45 minimum. That could get pretty pricey, pretty fast for would-be stalkers.

No online service lists members in its system-wide directory automatically. Members must choose to make their names, ID numbers and cities accessible to any member. As added protection, some services, including Genie and Prodigy, have a "squelch" or "bozo button" feature that allows you to reject e-mail — or even forum or conference messages in some cases — from any ID number that you want to ignore. Also, the networks each kick people off when they violate prominently posted rules and ignore warnings, although CompuServe's spokesperson, Deborah Young, says that online service has barred no more than a dozen people ever.

Of course they could do more, theoretically, as Lucich does. Every member who signs up for his High-Tech Crime Network must be in law enforcement or related fields. To make sure they are, he calls each agency to verify the new member's employment. "And I don't use the number they gave me," he says. Plus, every fifth time members log on to his network, the system automatically asks them to re-enter their dates of birth, and every seven times it requires their phone numbers again.

On a commercial service, that would probably generate flame wars about risks, invasion of privacy and plain irritation. Over-zealous marketing creates part of the problem Some of what the networks do, rather than what they don't do, causes part of the problem.

For instance, Brian Ek of Prodigy concedes that their liberal distribution of free starter kits contributed to the problem. So in June, after the brouhaha over Vito, they changed their policy so that all new members have to use credit cards to join. Where and how the networks advertise also makes a difference. It's a matter of what marketers call "positioning."

America Online has polybagged its software with computer magazines sold on newsstands, and mailed it to seemingly anyone and everyone on any computer-interest mailing list. Prodigy advertises on prime time network TV, and positions itself as a family and consumer-oriented service, much as AOL also does. Both apparently want their "reach" to have no boundaries other than, at present, within the U.S.

CompuServe, in contrast, is international, and advertises in business magazines and on cable TV. They have always positioned their service as the one for the serious user, whether for the computer savants or businesspeople. True, you can find the usual pets, hobby and free-for-all forums on CompuServe too, but the common perception remains that it's the most "serious" service. Deborah Young, their PR rep, even uses that term.

However, for years that was largely because it took serious money to use CSi. To compete, they lowered their fees twice in the past year. You still hit the pay-as-you-play rates sooner on CSi than you do on the services that offer a few free hours each month. But basic and hourly rates are now much the same for all major commercial nets, so the dollar dividing line has diminished significantly. The fare wars and the aggressive advertising that those three services engage in will continue to make their populations more and more alike, just as it already has made Prodigy and AOL almost indistinguishable in nature, right down to their online ads.

Whether it's the paid ads on Prodigy or the sponsors on AOL, an ad's an ad. Rusty Williams, VP and General Manager of Delphi Internet Services, says that over the next two years, they'll join the all-out attack to capture the widest possible audience.

The fare war-fee war comparison between airline and online rates also applies because the effect of all this is much like what happened to airlines when 747s were introduced. Before that, flying was so expensive that traveling by air carried prestige, and far fewer people could afford it. People dressed up, accordingly. Once the appropriately nicknamed airbus was airborne and airlines had to offer reduced rates to fill hundreds of seats per flight, women came on board with curlers in their hair and men wore shorts, not suits. And people who previously took the Greyhound flew, instead.

Similarly, Ek predicts that things will get worse, not better, once all the commercial nets get true full access to the Internet, which is unmanaged and unmanageable. Internet purists are vehement about free access and free expression for all. The closer we get to that ideal, the further we get from being able to control what goes on or who goes on the nets.

This is certainly not the only realm of life in which security and freedom are mutually exclusive, however. Lucich — who, bear in mind, runs a BBS — says people are expecting too much of the system administrators and accepting too little responsibility for their own behavior.

"Is the sysop going to be responsible for messages left to somebody else when he does not have the right to read that e-mail? What if he only checks the board once a day or once a week? Does he have the right to delete those messages? Or to report to the police?

"It's one thing with a private board, and another thing with the volume of e-mail that goes through the major networks. They're blaming the wrong people," he contends. "Let's go after the people leaving the messages, not the networks that are, after all, providing a valuable service."

Risks and realities

Even if you consider Ek and Lucich foxes guarding the chicken coop, they make good points. Yet, as Lucich also said earlier, online stalking is a serious thing to be taken seriously.

Park Dietz, the forensic psychiatrist for the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit who has consulted or testified on many high-profile cases, including that of Jeffrey Dahlmer and John Hinckle, says, "The kinds of harm that can be done are quite different between voice mail or e-mail or letters, on the one hand, and physical presence where weapons may be used, on the other. It is far preferable to receive harassing communications from afar, rather than visits, and little should be done to discourage written harassing communications from an individual directed at a target victim. There are multiple reasons for that, and I don't believe they ought to be published. But I would not discourage an individual from making written harassing communications.

"Usually, anonymous communication can be identified, if not through physical characteristics through psycholinguistic characteristics. So surprisingly often, it's possible to determine, with a degree of certainty, who authored the communication. But if there won't be any prosecution or the situation doesn't pose a risk of physical harm, it may not be worth the effort to pursue the identification."

What you can do to protect yourself

If you're worried nonetheless, here's what others we talked with suggest you do to prevent sinister e-mail or protect yourself if you ever get any:

Although most people we interviewed agreed that the number of undesirables will inevitably increase as more people get online, we want to stress that genuine stalkers are very rare, and are likely to remain rare. Go by what Lucich recommends: "Don't be afraid of using the service. Just be responsible for the safety of yourself and your children."

(The original article included a sidebar about parental controls and how to block chat messages.)

Copyright © 1994, Judith Broadhurst. All rights reserved.
Published in Online Access magazine, September, 1994