During the last five years, the instances of cyberstalking-related crimes have proliferated. Virtually all of the reported cases of cyberstalking have occurred in the past three or four years. In addition, the report cites a study on sexual victimization of college women, conducted at the University of Cincinnati.
Real life stalking laws are relatively new.
In the US, for example, no laws against real life stalking, that is, stalking in physical space, were passed until 1990. Rather, it suggests that such crimes might be prosecuted under different legal statutes than those of cybercrime. Cyberstalking, an exploitative crime that typically targets women, is exacerbated both in terms of ease and scale by the Internet. There, a woman may be able to get a court injunction against someone who physically stalks her. In the case of online stalking, however, there is no concept of distance.