{"id":35367,"date":"2025-07-31T08:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T08:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/35367\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T08:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T08:34:09","slug":"cyberstalking-has-surged-by-70-in-the-uk-since-2012-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/35367\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyberstalking has surged by 70% in the UK since 2012, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Published on
\n 31\/07\/2025 – 7:00 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

On the receiving end of unsolicited text messages, emails, being harassed on live streams, or seeing personal photos posted online without your permission?\u00a0<\/p>\n

If so, you could be a victim of cyberstalking, an online behaviour that is becoming more common in the UK.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A new study, published in the British Journal of Criminology, found that cyberstalking is growing at a faster pace than traditional types of stalking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It examined responses from nearly 147,800 people who answered crime surveys in England and Wales. The surveys asked about the prevalence and perception of cyberstalking, physical stalking, and cyber-enabled stalking from 2012 to 2020.<\/p>\n

The UK\u2019s Crown Prosecution Office describes<\/a> cyberstalking as \u201cthreatening behaviour or unwanted advances\u201d directed at someone online. It can be combined with other types of stalking or harassment.<\/p>\n

Cyberstalking could include threatening or unsolicited text messages and emails, harassment on live chats, or posting photoshopped photos of a specific person, their children or workplace on social media, the office said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cyber-enabled crimes<\/a> are ones that don’t depend on technology but have changed significantly because of it, like cyberbullying, trolling, or virtual mobbing. <\/p>\n

Over the eight-year period, 1.7 per cent of respondents said they had experienced cyberstalking, up from 1 per cent in 2012.<\/p>\n

Cyberstalking identified as \u2018wrong but not a crime\u2019<\/p>\n

While physical stalking remains more common overall, the 70 per cent rise in cyberstalking over the eight-year period was the only type with a \u201csignificant\u201d increase over time, the researchers found.<\/p>\n

Complaints of physical stalking increased by 15 per cent and cyber-enabled stalking actually fell during that time period.<\/p>\n

Women, young people, and LGBTQ+ people were more likely to say they had been cyberstalked than other groups, the study found.<\/p>\n

Almost half of the respondents that had experienced cyberstalking in the previous year said their experience was \u201cwrong but not a crime,\u201d which the authors found could impact the number of people that report their experience to law enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a clear disconnect between the lived experience of cyberstalking and how it is understood legally and socially,\u201d Madeleine Janickyj, one of the study<\/a>\u2019s authors and a researcher in the violence, health and society group at University College London, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis not only affects whether victims seek help, but also how police and other services respond,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem, Janickyj said, could be that young people are \u201cso used to cyberstalking that they don\u2019t see it as a crime\u201d.<\/p>\n

The researchers said the UK government should improve public education, clarify legal definitions, and provide additional support for victims of cyberstalking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 31\/07\/2025 – 7:00 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT On the receiving end of unsolicited text messages, emails, being harassed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[21027,20958,59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-35367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-cyber-crime","tag-cyberspace","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}