Almost one in seven people living in Russia (15%) has experienced stalking (online harassment) by a new romantic partner at least once in their life. socialbites.ca learned this from a study conducted by Kaspersky Lab, the results of which were made available to editors.
Kaspersky Lab statistics also showed that 35% of Russians have experienced some form of violence (financial, digital or psychological) from a boyfriend or girlfriend at least once. At the same time, 32% of respondents believe that secretly monitoring a partner’s online activities is unacceptable. At the same time, 28 percent of Russians do not see a problem in this, and 19 percent think that stalking is a normal practice if it is mutual.
According to Kaspersky Lab, online surveillance can be carried out in different ways. Special stalker software is used especially for this purpose. Cybersecurity experts stated that the popularity of such software is increasing year by year. This is evidenced by the fact that at least in 2023 the number of stalker software victims increased by 20% compared to the result in 2022.
“Using such malware, malicious actors can gain access to the victim’s personal data: messages, photos, pages on social networks, geolocation data, audio and video recordings, including real-time ones,” said Tatyana Shishkova, cybersecurity expert at Kaspersky Lab.
Another previous study showedOne in ten Russians cannot imagine life without a smartphone.