Hey, welcome to Kim Commando explains. Each day, determination drives people like you to do better. Sometimes it goes well. Maybe that extra workout at the gym helps you run faster for that marathon. You made yourself study a difficult topic, and it paid off. Now you have an understanding of the world. But sometimes determination leads folks down dark paths. Say a man feels slighted

after a woman rejected him. He writes her hateful letters for 10, 15 years, sabotages her

jobs, spoofs her accounts. He sends messages, pretending to be her, saying she hates her friends

and her family. He's determined to destroy her life, all because she

wouldn't date him in college. This is a true story, a story about a cyberstalker. Online harassment

hurts roughly four in ten Americans. That's according to the Pew Research Center. Almost half of

American adults have been harassed online. A quarter of people say the harassment was severe.

But online harassment can be tough to understand if you've never gone through it. A lot of people shrug and go,

well, so what? Just put the phone down, get off the internet. Yeah, well, the victim can get off the

internet, but the bad guy or gal won't. He might go to her boss,

her friends, her family, even federal government agencies, trying to smear her reputation and frame

her maybe in imaginary crimes. Yeah, this is also a true story. So let's be clear, online harassment

is a serious issue. It's a long-term campaign designed to break you down over days, months, years.

It's born of hatred and the worst type of determination.

And modern-day tech makes it more common than ever before.

In this episode, I'm looking into the defense strategies you should take

if you're ever the target of a hateful stranger's

evil eye. Consider this an essential cybersecurity lesson. As we become more and more polarized

as a society, a lot of people feel emboldened to destroy anyone they see as an enemy. You can do

something as innocuous as liking a tweet or smiling at the wrong person. Anything.

That's right.

Anything can earn a cyberstalker's eternal hatred.

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