The internet has brought us a lot of good but it has also led to the phenomenon that strangers can now easily become obsessed with us without us having an idea of that until it’s too late and it starts impacting out lives and livelihoods big time.

A great deal of this has to do with neurodiversity, with differences in communication style and brain structure, hence also empathy, as well as with otherization and anger. Particularly if you are a kind person, you can be like a warm blanket on which someone else starts to depend without you realizing it.

Such persons often have no idea of the impact their actions can have on others. Their reasoning can be “Getting flowers is nice, so if I send someone flowers every day, that’s a really nice thing to do.” If the person they send flowers to gets angry or afraid, it causes a lot of confusion. It can also lead to anger and resentment.

It’s really a failure of our society and of our health care systems. That’s not easy to correct. Fixing it will take time.

Of course, stranger-stalking isn’t always like this at all. You may for example also serve as someone to take revenge on in a form of displaced or redirected aggression.

There are lots of simple practical things that you can do to create a buffer around you, though. They can make a big difference.

There are lots of simple practical things that you can do to shield yourself a little, though. They can make a big difference.

I wrote a guide for how to do that, for to shield yourself if you’re your own boss.

Did you know, for example, that doorbells, toys, Apple Air tags and other lost item finders can also be used to spy on you? Did you know that there’s an app that you can use to check whether you’ve been “tagged”? A person who tags you may think he is merely watching out for you, looking after you. After all, the tag enables him to come to the rescue if, say, your car breaks down. You, however, may not see it that way at all.

Some of this was highlighted by The Guardian on 5 September 2022 (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/sep/05/i-didnt-want-it-anywhere-near-me-how-the-apple-airtag-became-a-gift-to-stalkers), but it regularly makes the news.

I’ve just updated the booklet that I wrote. You can download it from this site as a PDF file. Did you get it from Amazon? Did you import the earlier version of the PDF file into your Kindle? Check the title page in your Kindle and update the file if it still says “5 January 2022”.

If you don’t have it yet, then you can get the Kindle version on Amazon. It’s only $2.99 and it’s free if you have Kindle Unlimited.