When The Spying Stop: Recent Criminalisation Of Cyberstalking In Malaysia

Abstract

The ubiquity of the ICT and the Internet has made them integral to our daily lives in the past two decades, bringing numerous benefits and the risks of victimisation from various cybercrimes, including cyber harassment and cyberstalking. Stalking is generally understood as unwanted or unsolicited persistent and continuous following, pursuing, contacting, spying, harassing, threatening the victim, and causing fear and apprehension. Unfortunately, given the seriousness of cyberstalking and its severe and traumatic impacts on the victims, the existence of the law and any legal protection for victims remains elusive and vague in the Malaysian legal landscape for decades until August this year.