Hearing Pang Jitong describe cyberbullying as a chronic murder, Fu Liangtao's face sank, in fact, even without Xu Jingjia's reminder, Fu Liangtao knew how difficult it was to convict the perpetrators of Li Zhou's case.

The next night, Fu Liangtao was a little suspicious of Xu Jingjia's motive for mentioning these names to him. Is Xu Jingjia's intention to make him realize that his work can't really help them, or is he teasing him for not being able to do anything to her?

Thinking of this, Fu Liangtao replied: "We just talked about these cases that are still only in the online world, and in online harassment cases, the offender has often intruded into the real life of the victim, making the victim in fear all the time."

Fu Liangtao reached out and tapped a few dozen on the keyboard, and the news of another cyber harassment case popped up on the computer screen, which was a cyber stalking case that occurred in South Carolina in the United States in 2004.

The offender followed his ex-girlfriend through the Internet for many years, not only sending harassing emails to the victims, disseminating false information about his victims through the Internet, but also sending indescribable emails to the victims' colleagues and making people believe that the victims had committed them. The offender was eventually sentenced to five years' suspended sentence and 500 hours of community service.

Fu Liangtao estimated that after Pang Jitong finished reading, he opened another cyberstalking case in California, USA, on his computer. The content of this case gave Pang Jitong a sense of déjà vu, because he knew that similar cases had happened in Hong Kong.

Prisoner Hilton. Gaskell (not his real name) was the first person to be convicted of the newly revised stalking law. After failing to woo the victim, the offender posed as a victim on the Internet and posted advertisements claiming that he had been assaulted, encouraging strange men to provide them with personal information such as the victim's address and telephone number by email.

As a result, the victim received a message from an invited unknown man, and some of them even appeared directly at the victim's home. Subsequently, the victim posted a denial advertisement on the door of his home, but the offender posted a message online stating that the advertisement was also part of the victim's fantasy.

Later, the victim recorded every message in the voicemail box and contacted each caller to ask for information about the stalker. Based on the information collected, the victim's father disguised himself as an invitee and contacted the offender before collecting sufficient evidence and forwarding it to the investigators.

After Pang Jitong finished reading, Fu Liangtao continued: "In 1996, there was a case very similar to this one. The victim also received an anonymous message mentioning that the victim and his five-year-old daughter had been followed in real time. Only then did the local police begin to take over the investigation. Prior to this, the police had been claiming that there was nothing they could do about the incident.

People have been telling the victims of this case that the harassment is online and not real, but it turns out that the harassment is clearly relevant to real life."

After that, Fu Liangtao stretched out his finger and pointed to the end of the news report, Pang Jitong's mouth suddenly slowed down and he asked in a daze: "If it weren't for the clumsy methods used by the prisoners in this case, and the use of e-mail, which leaves evidence on the computers of both the service provider and the sender and the recipient, how would they have collected evidence?"

From the first day of his transfer to TCD, Pang Jitong already knew that cyber harassment and cyberbullying cases required the victim to file a case in person, and the premise of filing a case was that the victim had evidence showing that he had suffered damage.

Although in similar cases in Hong Kong before, the Hong Kong police had intervened in the investigation after the victim's information was circulated on the Internet, if the offender's computer skills were more sophisticated and secretive, how could the victim collect evidence on his own? Not everyone has the computer skills to be as savvy as the prisoners, or to turn to the expensive digital forensic experts in the private market.

Fu Liangtao responded: "Therefore, the cases we have come into contact with in the news and cases are only the tip of the iceberg, at least their grievances are known.

As you can imagine, there are many similar cases that remain unrecognized. In recent years, there have been fewer and fewer cases of cyberbullying, and I believe it is not because there have been fewer cases of this type, but because the offenders have become smarter than before."

According to a 2015 survey of Asian populations in several countries, 22% of adolescents between the ages of 8 and 16 had experienced cyberbullying and 52% had been involved in cyberbullying.

In 2012, a survey of teenagers harassing other teenagers in the United States showed that the rate of abusive comments posted by teenagers online increased from 14 per cent in 2000 to 28 per cent in 2005 and then to 40 per cent in 2010.

From these figures, it can be inferred that the prevalence of such behaviour has increased in recent years.

Pang Jitong thought about it for a while, and couldn't help frowning and asked, "This is the reason why you often contact the MEs of various police districts and receive suspicious cases from them?"

Fu Liangtao nodded and said, "That's right. This is because the victims of the cases in question often only notice the harassment of the offender and mistake the case for a nuisance. Such cases are still not well known in Hong Kong, and in many cases even the victim and ME police officers may not know that it is cyber harassment that is causing distress to the victim.

What they don't know is that cyberstalking is called cyberstalking because these harassments coexist with covert surveillance, and the stalker doesn't necessarily need to be tracking in the real world to be able to know the victim's movements in real time.

Prisoners often do more than the victim knows. When investigating a case, we should try to look at the harassment described by the victim from the perspective of the stalker, and guess what the offender is preparing to do before harassing the victim.

Belch...... I am referring to the way in which offenders monitor their victims in order to understand their movements."

Pang Jitong turned around and glanced at the document wall behind him, and couldn't help sighing, "Sir Tao, in fact, you don't have to do this......

Fu Liangtao was noncommittal to Pang Jitong's words, and took a sip of coffee nonchalantly. The vibration of the mobile phone interrupted Fu Liangtao's thoughts, and Fu Liangtao took out the mobile phone that had just been shaken from his trouser pocket.

Fu Liangtao clicked on the message he had just received, and it turned out to be a notice of payment of the monthly fee for his mobile phone, and the monthly fee for this month was close to 700 yuan. At a glance, Fu Liangtao instantly choked on the coffee that flowed into his throat, Fu Liangtao has been using a mobile phone monthly fee plan of 298 yuan a month, comparing the payment notices of the previous two months, but there is no abnormality.

Fu Liangtao immediately called the mobile phone service provider to confirm, and the other party responded that Fu Liangtao's data usage this month exceeded the scope of the plan, so he would need to pay an additional 30 yuan for every 5G data beyond the range.

It was rare to see Fu Liangtao's puzzled expression, and Pang Jitong, who was sitting next to him, couldn't help asking, "What's wrong?"