By JOSH LANDIS
Another alleged stalking incident has led to another death.
Nimzay Aponte knew her alleged killer, but she didn't know who he was. When Raymond Dennis met her online and cyber-stalked her, he said his name was "Mike."
Police said that Internet encounter ended with Aponte's death.
"Once we start talking to someone online we tend to forget they're strangers. We really don't know who they are. That cute 30-year-old guy may not be 30, may not be cute, and may not be a guy," said Parry Aftab of wiredsafety.org
Aftab said it isn't just people looking for relationships who are at risk.
"More adults are cyber-stalked and harassed than kids are cyber-bullied. They just don't talk about it as often," Aftab said.
Real estate marketer Amy Taylor said she was harassed by someone who might have found her number on the Internet.
"Somebody pretty recently was calling me from a blocked number. I reported that to the local police department here so they had that information on file just in case something should happen to me," Taylor said.
If you're one of millions of Americans who visit sites like Facebook or LinkedIn and Twitter, you're sharing more information about yourself than you realize. And it wouldn't take long for a determined stalker to track you down.
"This is a phenomenon that's with us to stay," NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
"The Internet is a great place, but it is a vast billboard and don't put anything out there that you wouldn't put on a billboard on Route 80," Aftab added.
If you do become a victim of cyber-stalking, three steps: stop responding to the sender's messages, block their e-mail address and tell your boss or the police. (Take this article to the police with you if you think they won't believe you, demand they make a report and don't leave until you get a copy of the report.)
Authorities say more than a million women and nearly 400,000 men are stalked each year -- many of them online.
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