Stalking the Shadows: My Ex, His Obsession, and the Digital Chains

There is a moment survivors of cyber‑enabled abuse often describe before they have words for it. A calendar shift no one claims. A forwarding rule that appears and disappears. A login prompt that goes to the wrong device at the worst time. It’s easy to dismiss as noise or user error—until the system finally goes quiet after access is removed. Only then does the pattern snap into focus: this was never a mystery hacker in the dark; it was someone nearby using authorization against you.

That recognition sits at the core of Stalking the Shadows: My Ex, His Obsession, and the Digital Chains, by cybersecurity strategist and educator Dr. Rachel Levitch. The book is unusual in the space because it marries lived experience with the technical fluency of a former CISO. Levitch has guided teams through cloud security, SIEM and EDR integrations, privacy engineering, and compliance work—disciplines that train you to watch not only for code and exploits, but for identity‑layer risk: sessions, tokens, recovery paths, delegated access, and the “remembered” devices we stop noticing when life gets busy. That vantage point lets her tell a more honest story about modern cyberstalking: most real‑world harm is not a cinematic breach. It’s over‑trusted access plus time, aggravated by resentment.

The book opens in the intimate spaces where coercive control is most plausible. At first, “help” looks benign: a partner who “manages” your account recovery, a colleague who offers to “clean up” calendars, a relative who signs in on a shared computer to “take care of it.” In those seconds—often while an account is already authenticated—persistence can be established without ever tripping a classic alarm. Browsers remember, tokens refresh, mailboxes inherit delegates, forwarding rules tuck themselves into corners the average person never checks. If you only reset passwords, you’re cleaning the doorknob while the intruder keeps using the key. Levitch translates that dynamic into plain language and useful steps, not fear.

What makes this narrative so effective is its refusal to sensationalize. The psychological mechanics—gaslighting, triangulation, entitlement—are treated with the same precision as the system mechanics. A folder reappears with restored sharing. A two‑step prompt bypasses the device you intended. A recovery contact you never added seems to “stick.” The point isn’t to flood you with anecdotes; it’s to teach you what to capture and how to read the signs. That is why the book treats evidence discipline as an act of self‑respect. Hash‑anchored screenshots with full timestamps and visible URLs, exports preserved with provenance, a dated change log—these behaviors are not for “a courtroom someday.” They are how you turn a distressing experience into a legible narrative you can use to make decisions, ask for help, and, if necessary, seek enforcement support.

Levitch’s broader body of work gives the memoir context and credibility. She has written and spoken about technostress—the cognitive and emotional toll of always‑on, algorithmic workplaces—and the invisible labor required to maintain professional visibility in digital ecosystems. When your day job quietly demands constant posting, analytics monitoring, and tool juggling, small security rituals get deprioritized. A remembered device feels helpful, a persistent login feels efficient, a delegated inbox feels collaborative. That is precisely how identity‑layer abuse spreads: not because people don’t care about security, but because modern digital work structurally erodes the attention needed to maintain it. For deeper background on that argument, see her interview on the technostress strain of digital labor published by CBHerald (https://cbherald.com/unpaid-invisible-unmanageable-ceo-founder-dr-levitch-on-the-technostress-strain-of-digital-labor-in-the-ai-economy/). The connection is simple and damning: when systems are designed to make speed and visibility the default, trust gets automated—and what’s automated can be exploited.

The legal landscape doesn’t make this easier. As Levitch notes, computer‑crime statutes were built to catch unauthorized access. By contrast, relational cyber abuse often operates through authorized sessions and familiar devices. The result is a compliance gap: the harm is real, but it doesn’t always fit the letter of older laws. If you’ve ever felt unprotected by frameworks that talk about “intrusions” while your problem is illegitimate legitimacy—someone the system still recognizes—this book will make sense of that tension without turning into a treatise. For readers who want a systems‑level companion analysis, the essay “Cyberstalking – U.S. Code § 2261A: A Systems Problem” hosted by Charles Edda & Charles Bouley connects evidence, platform policy, and prosecutorial thresholds in accessible terms (https://charleseddaandcharlesbouley.com/article-dr-rachel-levitch-cyberstalking-US-code-2261a-a-systems-problem.html).

What Stalking the Shadows offers, beyond diagnosis, is a vocabulary that restores agency. Levitch names privacy labor—the unpaid, ongoing work required to keep your data, presence, and boundaries intact in an AI‑mediated world. She reframes “cautious” not as fearful, but as pace‑correct: the ability to sequence changes so your nervous system stays steady while you clean up identity. And she turns security controls into humane practices. Revoking sessions and rotating app tokens isn’t paranoia; it’s how you remove stale trust. Auditing mailbox rules and delegates isn’t suspicion; it’s hygiene. Resetting recovery from known‑safe hardware isn’t theater; it’s prudent. Splitting personal and professional identity domains isn’t cold; it’s healthy boundary design. If your organization needs help institutionalizing these practices—especially if you support vulnerable clients—the orientation behind Mangosteen Privacy is aligned with that goal (https://www.mangosteenprivacy.com/).

The most radical claim in the book is also its softest: healing is a security control. Hypervigilance is adaptive in chaos but expensive in calm; shame invites over‑disclosure; isolation tempts reconciliation in exchange for “help.” Levitch shows how those states become attack surfaces—and then she offers ways to close them without hardening your heart. “No Contact” can be both a personal boundary and a technical setting. Community can serve as redundancy—trusted allies who witness changes, confirm outcomes, and help you keep your footing when doubt returns. Pacing becomes governance: when to act immediately, when to rest, when to document, and when to ask for specialized help.

One of the book’s quiet achievements is that it reads like a memoir but functions like a manual. You can follow the story. You can also follow the steps. It will gently move you from trying to prove someone’s motives (a loop that rarely satisfies) to building a timeline of observable changes you can use to restore control. If you’re a clinician, advocate, or attorney, it gives you language for experiences your clients may struggle to articulate; if you’re an IT generalist supporting a small team, it shows you where to look when the “fixes” fail and the noise persists.

No single work can end coercive control or erase the past. What Stalking the Shadows can do—and does—is remove the mystique from a set of problems that, by design, feel foggy from the inside. It argues that the second kind of quiet—the quiet that lasts—is not luck. It’s the downstream effect of withdrawing illegitimate legitimacy from your accounts, of returning authorship to your daily routines, and of treating your attention as the scarce, precious, protective resource it is.

If you’re ready to move from recognition to action, start with the core product: the book itself. Learn more about Stalking the Shadows: My Ex, His Obsession, and the Digital Chains at the author’s site (https://rachellevitch.com/stalking-the-shadows.html). Pair it with the companion podcast for short, actionable episodes you can listen to while you implement changes (https://whff.radio/stalking-the-shadows.html). If your organization needs a posture that supports survivors and reduces privacy labor at scale, explore the programmatic approach and tooling philosophy at Mangosteen Privacy (https://www.mangosteenprivacy.com/). And if you want the policy‑and‑prosecution lens that complements personal recovery, the CECB systems essay above will help you translate lived experience into evidence the law can use.

You did not cause someone else’s entitlement by trusting them. You did the human thing. Now you can do the wise thing: set boundaries, reclaim identity, and choose the kind of quiet that proves the work is working.

The Quiet That Lasts — Book & Talk Tour (Summer 2026)
Select dates will be televised on WHFF.TV.

• Zeffy: Ticketing and donations for all tour stops will be processed through Zeffy’s fee‑free nonprofit platform (link to be added).
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drrachellevitch
• X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/qualityfiles
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-rachel-levitch/

Sponsored by Charles Edda & Charles Bouley and The Cognitive Institute of Dallas.