How Women Protect Themselves From Stalkers | Xtreme Urban Survival Kit
The world is increasingly becoming a dangerous place. How can you protect yourself from stalkers as a woman? Below, we analyze changes that you may need to make. Urban Safety Solutions has tools that you need for better personal protection.
Cut all communication with the stalker
You can protect yourself from stalkers by ensuring that your contact information remains private. That may mean switching all your social media accounts to private and thoroughly scrutinizing whoever requests to follow you or be your friend.
If you have had an experience with a stalker in the past, it would similarly be helpful to block them, blacklist them, and make your contacts unavailable to them.
Beware though that when reporting the case, you may need to produce all evidence of phone calls and text messages. If you get these from a stalker, do not delete, just archive them. But don’t reply or answer the calls.
Protect yourself from stalkers. Don’t let them know where you are or where you are going to be.
Carry a phone with you all times along with a spike stun gun
Phones and stun guns are some of the emergency tools for high-risk women. High risk means having a crazy ex-boyfriend or husband. It means living off-campus or in a dangerous part of the city where sexual predators thrive. Your handbag should have a phone and a compact palm-sized Spike Stun gun.
Your phone, as you may expect, is for calling for quick help when you find yourself in a precarious situation with a stalker. As such, please ensure that it’s loaded with emergency phone numbers. As well, save your close friends’ and family members’ contacts on speed dial.
The stun gun readies you for the worst-case scenario. When the stalker gets too close or becomes physically or sexually abusive, you can use the Spike Stun gun to unleash 20 million volts in their groin or neck regions. This a highly effective solution to protect yourself from stalkers because it is non-lethal (apart from about 40 minutes of immobility, no harm will come to them), it is discreet, and it’s easier to operate. UrbanSafetySolutions.com has many self defense devices to keep you safe from being victimized.
Have a safety plan in mind when you step out of the house
Just like putting on makeup or wearing the right dress, it’s advisable to have a safety plan in mind whenever you step out of the house. Whether on your way to work, school, or a party, you should have a plan to protect yourself from stalkers when they show up out of the blue.
Strategy 1: Go to a public place. If someone is following, chances are they will do you no harm when people are watching. So, to protect yourself from stalkers, navigate to a busier street or a populated park, and call a trusted friend.
Strategy 2: Go to a police station or church. You are safer among people, and police stations and churches are some of the places where stalkers and rapists may never go.
Strategy 3: Have closer access to your personal protection items. If someone has been following you for the last few minutes, you might want to check your handbag and confirm that you have fast and speedy access to your pepper spray.
The WildFire Pepper Gel comes highly recommended because it works effectively from a distance. Before the stalker gets a hold of you, you can unleash the spray in their face, give them hell and make a run for it. Unlike other pepper sprays, this model has a 1.4% concentration of Capsaicinoids, making it hotter and more painful. Whoever you spray this on, they will be momentary breathless with distorted vision.
Strategy 4: Don’t head home. If someone is following you and you head home, it’s tantamount to showing them where you leave. You can protect yourself from stalkers by going to a friend’s house when you suspect being followed. You can also head to the police station or domestic violence shelter if there is one in your location.
Travel with people
You should be able to enjoy your freedoms as a single woman or when far from your spouse and family. But when a stalker comes into play, things change. You are much safer with people.
If someone is always lurking around your home or place of work, you may want to make the trips with a close friend. When you go for the early morning run, go with a workout buddy. It would help to ensure that you are not alone and vulnerable in the crack of dawn.
If that’s a tall order, inject unpredictability into your routines. Stalkers have it easy when the women they follow do things habitually. Protect yourself from stalkers by varying your routes, shopping at different stores, and varying your daily schedules. Go for a run in the evening some days. Leave the car and call an Uber other days. Stay over at a friend’s place—do everything to make yourself unstalkable.
Be wary of the rescuer
Most stalkers like to play hero when the opportunity shows up. They may even go on to create situations that put you in desperate need of help such as a flat tire, running out of gas, or a car that doesn’t start. They then use that opportunity to get close to you.
Deep down, you will know when something is not right. You may remember bumping into the same person at work or the grocery store earlier in the day. Stay alert and have a fallback plan. Borrow from some of the strategies earlier discussed in protecting yourself from stalkers that pretend to be heroes.
Let your friends and family know that you may have a stalker
Experts categorize stalkers into four groups, namely:
1. Public figure stalkers –Fans that may stalk you because you are famous.
2. Stranger stalkers—Random people that may meet you and start stalking you from then on
3. Acquaintance stalker— The coworker or schoolmate mate that may turn out to be the midnighter in your life
4. The intimate stalker—This is rated as the most dangerous type of stalker. Your intimate stalker is a friend or ex that makes you no longer want to associate. In 74% of the cases, it ends up in violence when you let them too close.
If you have any of these stalkers and are alert, it wouldn’t take long to realize that you are being followed. Inform your friends and family. Inform your apartment building personnel as well and provide these people with detailed descriptions or even a photo of the stalker. Ask your friends, neighbors, and family to call the police or notify you if they see the suspect at your house.
Keep your home address confidential
There is no need for that new coworker or college mate to know where you live. Keep your current home address private, and restrict it to your close circle of friends and relatives. Watch out not to let details of your place show in what you post online. You might also want to consider disabling the ‘show location’ feature on social media to protect yourself from stalkers.
You can similarly register for an address confidentiality program in your state. The latter gives you an alternative address to use for official and public records. It’s also advisable to use a post office box that is unknown to your stalker. At the same time, inform your friends and family not to disclose your address or contact information to strangers.
Invest in a home alarm system for safety at home
Despite all efforts to protect yourself from stalkers, some of these people are cunningly innovative and determined to get to you. They may follow you home and make you another victim of their heinous acts.
These stalkers could be serial killers, rapists, or exes with obsessive-compulsive or psychopathic tendencies. You must stay safe. Consider buying a Super Door Stop Alarm. This is a small and compact portable alarm device that wedges in the space between your door and the floor. It keeps the door securely bolted so you can sleep peacefully at night.
And when someone tries to push it open from the outside, the friction triggers a loud alarm that can be heard ten blocks away. Your neighbors and building security personnel will come out to see what is happening, and your stalker will have no option but to flee.
Ask school mates or coworkers to watch out for your stalker
You will be much safer if your coworkers and school mates know that you may have a stalker. Provide details or a picture of the suspect stalkers and ask them to call the police if they see them acting suspiciously around you.
Ensure that your contact information is kept safe by school mates and coworkers. Experts recommend asking the office staff or school administrator to bookmark your file for safe handling so that your information is not haphazardly shared.
Psychology Today reports that one in every four women is stalked at least once in her lifetime. If it has not happened to you, odds are it will happen soon. How safe are you?
Get the right tools and solutions to protect yourself from stalkers. The Xtreme Urban Survival Kit contains the Spike Stun Gun, WildFire Pepper Gel, and Super Door Stop Alarm for your protection at home, at work, or on the go. Invest in your safety now.