These days, the invasion of privacy has taken on a frighteningly technological dimension. Stalkers, just like thousands of other people worldwide, have found their way onto the Internet, only to exploit the technology to their own end.

As the Internet grows – with tens of thousands of new users signing on each month – more and more of us become victims of electronic stalkers. In areas like San Diego, as many as 20% of the stalking cases involve cyberstalking. In New York, the number could be as high as 40%.

Though cyberstalking may sound somewhat benign since it doesn’t necessarily involve actual contact, the preponderance of information about your personal and professional life that’s available online makes it downright ominous. Even if you’re working hard to maintain your privacy, a single credit header can undo all your efforts. Credit headers, which top credit reports, include your name, residential address and unlisted phone number, social security number and employer, data that’s routinely culled from any bank or car loan applications, mortgages, or credit cards. And though the credit report itself is legally held to be confidential, the header is not. So the personal information you supplied in good faith gets sold by the country’s top three credit reporting agencies to online information brokers. They, in turn, sell it to anyone who wants it.

As with regular stalking, cyberstalking often begins when you attempt to break off a relationship. The posting online of naked pictures taken when things were good during a relationship has become an increasingly popular method of revenge for the jilted. Online vendettas can also stem from downright impersonal contact. The beliefs you express online can make you a target if someone disagrees with you. Even the way you express them – especially if you’re new to the online rules of the road – can inadvertently offend or trigger someone. An obvious lack of cyber-smarts can make you a target, the same way a real-life stalker will target the easy mark.

To avoid being targeted, learn netiquette, the rules and regs of online behavior. With that under your belt, follow these tips:

• Opt for free email services where you don’t have to provide your name or address, since most Internet Service Providers make membership directories publicly available. If you’re having a problem, change your email address.
  
  
• Since women are especially vulnerable to online harassment, select a genderless screen or ID name.
  
  
• Don’t use your real name or nickname.
  
  
• Choose a complicated password that combines letters and numbers, then change it often.
  
  
• Don’t respond to online provocation.
  
  
• Don’t flirt online.
  
  
• Immediately get out of any hostile online communication by logging off or finding another site.
  
  
• Guard your privacy jealously. Avoid giving out personal information in discussion groups or chat rooms, including your real name, where you live, and what you do for a living. Remember that these online conversations are archived, and can be accessed by anyone.
  
  
• On the commercial front, don’t fill out forms (including product registration forms) online, or participate in on- or offline contests, sweepstakes or surveys.
  
  
• If you’re a university student, refrain from providing biographical information for the free university email service. Better yet, sign up for your own private email account.

In the end, the responsibility to protect yourself electronically begins and ends with you. Unfortunately, however, even following every possible precaution may not be enough to protect you completely, due to the Internet’s almost total lack of regulation. So user, go carefully into that dark ‘Net.

For more information on cyberstalking and the stalking of kids online, read Linden Gross’s ground-breaking book, Surviving a Stalker: Everything you Need to Know to Keep Yourself Safe.