Surveillance & Stalking
Online surveillance happens when someone monitors your digital activity—whether by tracking your posts, messages, or online movements. This is often used to harass or control women, girls, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Stalking can also extend to digital spaces, making victims feel unsafe even in their own homes.
What You Can Do
Assess Your Risk
If you’re feeling unsafe, trust your instincts. Consider temporarily relocating or informing someone you trust through an encrypted channel.
Report It
Stalking is a crime in Malaysia. If you choose to report it, having documentation can help.
Note: Reporting may seem simple, but it can be overwhelming for victims. It’s okay to ask a trusted friend for help to avoid retraumatization.
Want to make a report but don’t know how?
Block & Secure
Cut off all contact by blocking the stalker from social media, messaging apps, and emails. Update privacy settings and secure your accounts with strong passwords and two-factor authentication. Learn how you can create and maintain strong passwords with Security in a Box and Surveillance Self-Defence.
Document Everything
Keep records of messages, threats, and incidents. Screenshots with timestamps can be useful if you need to report the harassment later. If this feels overwhelming, ask soeone you trust for help
Know Your Rights
Section 507A of the Penal Code (Anti-Stalking Law) provides that a person is deemed to have committed stalking if the individual repeatedly by any act of harassment, intends to cause or knowing or ought to know, that such an act causes distress, fear or alarm to any person with regard to their safety
Anti-Sexual Harassment Act 2022 penalises any act of sexual harassment which is defined as “any unwanted conduct of a sexual nature, in any form, whether verbal, non-verbal, visual, gestural or physical, directed at a person which is reasonably offensive or humiliating or is a threat to his well-being”. This will extend to sexual harassment committed or assisted by digital technologies.
Cyberflashing
Doxxing
Gendered Disinformation
