Busting a Cyberstalker: How Carla Franklin Fought Back—and Triumphed
I remember feeling stunned, then sick. Sitting at my desk at a New York City consulting firm in 2009, I had randomly Googled my name. The jarring result: a series of strange montages on YouTube—all containing snapshots of me, along with the label “whore.” The photos, cobbled together from various corners of the Internet, were shots from a beauty pageant and a few acting jobs I had held in the past, when I was signed with a regional modeling agency. My mind raced. Who hated me this much to post these things? Who would call me a whore?
Carla Franklin shares her story.
A worthy read, even beyond the insights into Franklin’s compelling and creepy personal story, as it relates to laws (and the lack thereof) on internet harassment.
Today in slightly-amusing stalking: So, Tom Hanks is shooting a movie in Virginia Beach. In honor of this, the local paper, The Virginian-Pilot, has set up a mini-site where you can track Hanks sightings in the Hampton Roads region. If you’re in the area and spot a two-time Oscar winner walking down the street, go here and tell them. First sighting? A breakfast joint in Norfolk.
Creator of “Girls Around Me” app defends itself: In case you haven’t heard about it, the iOS app tracks where women have recently checked in on Foursquare or Facebook — well, until recently, when Foursquare took away the app’s API access as it received bad press due to allegations it encouraged stalking. The creator of the app, i-Free Innovations, defended its work: ”It is impossible to search for a particular person in this app, or track his/her location. The app just allows the user to browse the venues nearby, as if you passed by and looked in the window.” The Russian firm says that the app has been downloaded 70,000 times since December. What do you think? Creepy or overblown?
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