STALKING ON THE INTERNET

Ah come on, you've all done this!  Whether it's a tiny winny look to see if your ex has gone bald or the girl you hated at school has grown fat.  We are all guilty of utilising the internet to find out about people we don't really want to get in contact with again.  However, beware!  As you are doing the stalking, so is someone stalking you.  Sure you can do a lot to lock down i.e. not show info on FB or don't get involved with twitter or Linkden or even have a photograph taken at some event that can tag you.  Do you really want to be that annoyomous especially as you may well be using the internet to promote yourself for work.

Where is this leading to?  Ah to this.  I have heard of three cases now of internet stalking that has lead to divulgence of information the owners of which would rather it did not get out.  Let's begin with the least interesting:

1. Some delusional lady thought to stalk her boyfriend's wife.  Yes, I know it should be the other way round.  Her obsessive jealousy lead her to believe her boyfriend was cheating on her with his wife!  She became a facebook friend of the wife (very daring given the wife might have triggered something but then I heard she had disguised herself as a man).  Over the course of the year she stalked and then discovered the wife was pregnant!  I guess that's proof of a cheating boyfriend!

2. A-way back ex of someone began an internet search to discover his ex girlfriend was now married and running a small pension in rural France.  For some strange and explicable reason the stalker booked the entire pension for  two weeks in July.  Even sent over a small deposit as required and naturally never showed, but wrote an email stating they were running late and would be there 3 days later and would pay for the days they couldn't make, thus buggering up rental options for at least a week.  I feel particularly bad for this one since who knows what this had cost the owners.

3. A renter left his apartment without completing the contract.  The owner of property did not lie low on this but went to work discovering his ex renter had a Facebook profile.  He went to work on setting up a fake facebook profile and friended the ex renter.  He then, over sometime, managed to extract the ex renters new address.  Not easy, I grant you and I would like to give you the full story but won't, on account I might have to use that in the future as I think it's just the best story line ever.  Once the address was in hand the ex renter got a warning letter from the lawyer for non payment of rent.  My advice to him would be to pay up or face a court case that would cost him a lot more since the livid owner of the apartment has had enough of delinquent renters and has vowed to track defaulters down and sue them to the limits of the law.

So up to you guys how guilty you are of pissing someone off as to whether you lock down or continue to brazenly go on believing no one out there has an axe to grind with you.