I’ve Had a Cyberstalker Since I Was 12

There&#x27;s a moment in the pilot of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt where the women are rescued from the bunker and put on a daytime talk show and Matt Lauer asks one of the women how she ended up in the bunker:<p>&quot;I had waited on Reverend Richard at a York Steak House I worked at, and one night he invited me out to his car to see some baby rabbits, and I didn’t want to be rude, so… here we are.&quot;<p>And Matt Lauer responds: &quot;I’m always amazed by what women will do because they’re afraid of being rude…&quot;<p>It&#x27;s often hard for men to understand the societal pressure placed on women to be accommodating and not be rude and how this can be manipulated to constrain female agency in the world.

Yeah, it sucks, but no surprise. Stalking is an old, old problem. And the police won&#x27;t do anything until it turns violent. You can stalk normal people, movie stars, business people - pretty much anyone other than a psychiatrist. (It turns out that psychiatrists have a really easy time getting their stalkers committed to insane asylums.)<p>I know a woman who owns nothing in her own name, changes her phone number frequently, and whose own family often does not know how to reach her. All to make it harder for her stalker to keep tracking her down. When she acquired the stalker she was high profile so the FBI actually did send someone to give her advice. The advice was basically that she was screwed, how to best hide, and to get trained guard dogs.<p>I wish I was joking.

&quot;When I got a Facebook account in 2006 he found me again and, not wanting to be rude, I accepted his friend request.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s hard to understand why, having previously already blocked this person elsewhere, they would accept a friend request from them. I suppose now, 10 years later, one can hope that people exact greater control over their online social networks.

I feel for this person. I recently had a stalker over the summer, a family friend whom I met at my sister&#x27;s wedding. He had some sort of break down, declared me to be his lover, received my email via unwitting family members. Luckily someone had raised the alarm. Said stalked flew out of state fully expecting to find me and be with me. It did not happen, but I certainly was preparing for an altercation and was traumatized by every unexpected knock or ring at the door.

End result: The thing resolved itself, likely because someone else sued her stalker.<p>I have to wonder though: If her local police was ignorant of actual laws applying to her case, as she indicated, couldn&#x27;t she just tell the officers under which exact laws she is making a complaint?<p>Further, if the local police is generally ignorant and incompetent, what would her chances for success be in using a lawyer to try and identify appropiate channels and contacting them?

One thing I learned in this article is that it&#x27;s someone&#x27;s job to call the victims of stalkers, apologize on their behalf, and ask to be notified if the behavior continues. It makes me wonder what process is initiated if they inform the lawyer that &quot;Danny&quot; has resumed harassing them. Will the lawyer call &quot;Danny&quot; and tell his client to shut up? Will he be billed for that time? Is the idea that, given a sufficiently expensive lawyer, he won&#x27;t be able to afford his stalking habit?<p>It is interesting that they appear to have published this under their real name. No doubt &quot;Danny&quot; has read it with interest.

What I&#x27;ve read from the article, beside the obvious, is how unaware people are about how technology works.<p>&quot;With Apple and Google unable to help ...&quot;.<p>She thinks Apple and Google should help with spoofed mails b&#x2F;c an Apple mail client is used and the spoofed email was from a Gmail address.<p>Also not understanding identity theft:<p>&quot;including Danny’s latest identity theft.&quot;<p>Also not understanding the difference between civil legal action and crimes.<p>In most western countries education about technology and how it works is insufficient. Same goes for law basics that help with life.<p>Edit: I don&#x27;t blame this in any way on her.

While this must have no doubt been a horrid experience, I can see why the cops would not have considered it worthy of launching a criminal investigation.<p>This is a perfect case for civil law: causing emotional distress, harassment, defamation, etc. You should attempt to sue him and get a no-contact order if you can.

Not a woman, but Garry of Garrysmod fame has a very interesting set of blog posts about dealing with and eventually befriending his internet stalker in an attempt to curb the guy&#x27;s worst behavior.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;garry.tv&#x2F;2015&#x2F;11&#x2F;10&#x2F;stalkers-and-abuse-part-1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;garry.tv&#x2F;2015&#x2F;11&#x2F;10&#x2F;stalkers-and-abuse-part-1&#x2F;</a>

&gt;<i>I was never physically afraid of Danny and never will be.</i><p>I would be. Danny clearly has more than a few screws loose.

Okay, so this creep&#x27;s behavior pretty clearly rises to the level of harassment at a minimum.<p>But legally the FIRST thing to do with a stalker or harasser is to TELL them unequivocally that you want NO further contact. Preferably document in writing; in New York, you can record conversations that you are party to. At this point further unwanted contact becomes more clearly a criminal matter.<p>Too often, those on the receiving end ignore or laugh off bad behavior. This is natural enough, but unless someone is clearly threatening, if they haven&#x27;t been told unequivocally to stop all further contact, then they can always argue, sincerely or not, that they didn&#x27;t know their contact was unwelcome. Or that in any event they were free to continue their advances.<p>The closest the author explicitly posts is &quot;I caved and sent him a message asking him to please stop messaging me so much or I’d block him.&quot; That is unlikely enough to suffice as &quot;clearly informed to cease that conduct.&quot; All it would take is a message saying &quot;never contact me again.&quot; Period, full stop. Better yet, add &quot;or I will report you to police.&quot; At that point, further contact is actionable, criminal harassment.<p>That being said, much of this cyberstalker&#x27;s behavior is independently harassing, e.g. forged emails to friends etc. But putting someone on notice is a first step to protecting yourself. It is premature to go to police to say, &quot;X is bothering me, I&#x27;m not afraid of him and I haven&#x27;t told him firmly to go away, but I really want him to go away.&quot; If someone isn&#x27;t in any way actually putting you in fear, and all that is involved is unwanted communications&#x2F;nonphysical contact, then it&#x27;s on you to first tell him to go away before involving police. Then if he won&#x27;t, you have an unambiguous complaint.<p>Edit: The author does also describe some poor policing. Good community-oriented policing centers around mediation. Ideally the police in this situation would not simply say &quot;it&#x27;s not a crime&quot; and make the complainant feel helpless and ignored, but would try to solve help solve the problem. Specifically by taking a report and offering to communicate to the person that all further contact is unwelcome and may lead to a criminal complaint, and documenting this. This type of approach is likely to help bring an end to the behavior, or in the alternative lay a foundation for a future, actionable criminal complaint. In the best case, behavior improves, complainant can move on with her life, police don&#x27;t have to deal with future complaints, everybody wins. Sadly many departments just don&#x27;t want to get involved or have the resources to deal with community mediation, even if it pays for itself over time.

&gt;Two years passed before I finally decided to take legal action, in late 2014. Maybe it seems weird that I waited so long<p>What seems weird is it does not sound like she ever tried to actually confront him. Block after block, but not really confronting him. It seems she didn&#x27;t want to hurt his feelings. But waited until police action? That seems like a terrible approach.<p>The most confrontational she got was &quot;I caved and sent him a message asking him to please stop messaging me so much or I’d block him.&quot; How surprising that didn&#x27;t work.<p>You need to be more confrontational in a situation like this - either a heart to heart approach where you lay it on them, or something more aggressive. Blocking for the umpteenth time is not going to work.<p>You could call this critique victim blaming, but the my intent to encourage people to handle the situation better, without someone repeating her mistakes.

Most of these amount to libel, at worst. File suit.<p>There are excellent reasons for police to be uninvolved in what amounts to people saying mean things, even if those mean things are directed at your employer or friends.

...so how many women are actually commenting on this post? Raise your hands please?<p>Hahaha, this is a <i>classssic</i> hackernews discussion. &quot;There is absolutely no discrimination. Women are held to the same standards as men. They just complain. Saying that women have it unfair is ITSELF sexist&quot; type arguments are the best (for entertainment value).<p>@dang and other hackernews people: Regardless of if you agree with them or not, you do realize that this will reflect on Ycombinator&#x27;s perception&#x2F;PR right? No amount of office hours for women is going to counter this RIDICULOUS volume of INSANELY UNAWARE sexism going around in these forums. I mean, for YCombinator&#x27;s sake I hope you guys agree with most of the comments here, otherwise this is just deadweight on whatever your &#x27;diversity&#x27; aims may be. Calling them lazy, complaining fools is how you put the bullseye on your backs for the time when the pitchforks come out.<p>Just saying. This is ridiculous. It doesn&#x27;t have to be this way. Really.

I think this person misses a key point here. She does not have a &quot;Cyber Stalker&quot; - She has a Stalker ... No matter the medium of the majority of these incidents if materially affects her life in several ways and more and more as our world blurs from the real world to a digital reality these things are really one in the same and should be treated as such.<p>I say this not to say that she is wrong but to help raise all of our personal awarenesses and biases to this type of situation.<p>The term &quot;Cyber Stalker&quot; tends to make it seem less threatening or serious when in reality it can be just as dangerous and possibly even more so to the person on the wrong end of this.<p>I hope she gets this remedied in the near future, but I also hope she and maybe others reading this will realize how closely that line is walked and how we should start considering it the same crime as our data and our digital footprint becomes more an integral part of our lives.

I know this is entirely inadequate, but what about suing for defamation?<p>The police, I fear, want to start getting a bit more proactive. When someone is able to get away with sabotaging someone else&#x27;s life with complete impunity from authorities, a lot of people take actions in their own hands.

&gt; Men can be victims of cyberstalking, too, but the majority of victims are women, who tend to experience “particularly severe” harassment online, according to the survey. Just about everyone has been name-called or subject to some other sort of verbal abuse online, but women are the predominant targets of sexual harassment and the sustained abuse that constitutes cyberstalking, typically considered the most serious form of internet harassment.<p>Love how she so quickly brushes men under the rug. &quot;This is a woman problem! Not a mans porblem!&quot; Why do we generalize issues? Why not focus on all cyber stalking, not just cyber stalking by men? Its serious issue that I sympathize with.

There should be laws against this. A judge should be able to tell when a behavior is harassment, and forbid the harasser from contacting the person again with more severe charges if he does again.

I knew two women who were being stalked online. Both took physical violence to end their stalking.<p>The first woman I told a friend about. We worked together as landscapers for a local company. He was a low level drug dealer and had some sketchy friends. The more I talked about her and the ongoing saga, he finally told me for a few hundred bucks, he could get it to stop. A few weeks went by and I didn&#x27;t think much about it, until she said her stalkers messages started going up a notch just like in the story.<p>I never told her, but I found out the guy&#x27;s name and after a quick DOXing, I found out where he lived and some other useful information like the bars he frequented. I paid my buddy $200 and turned the information I had on my friends stalker over to him. A week later, my friend said she stopped getting messages from the guy. I found out much later he sent two of his &quot;associates&quot; over to talk to the guy at work. They got him out in the parking lot and assaulted him pretty good. Broken nose, busted lip and several broken ribs. They warned him they would come back and pay him another visit if he didn&#x27;t stop stalking my friend. It did work and less than a year later, she graduated and moved out of the city.<p>The other situation was very similar. Another friend of mine was being stalked by a college ex-boyfriend. He was unrelenting, showing up at her work, following her to the bar, and other strange stuff. She finally told her father about after almost two years of him stalking her. Her dad was an ex-marine and had done several tours in Vietnam. He was a quiet guy, but you could tell you didn&#x27;t want to cross him.<p>She lived in the city where we were going to college, so most of the time, she lived at home. Her stalker made the mistake of following her home one day. She went in and her Dad asked why there was a car parked down the street. She went to look out the window and knew it was her crazy ex and told her Dad to call the police. Instead, he told <i>her</i> to call the police and hurry because something bad was about to happen. He took his handgun and went through the backyards in order to sneak up on his car. He yanked him out of the car (he later said, &quot;You should have seen the terror in his eyes!&quot;) and slammed him on the ground and put the gun in his face and told him he knew who he was and if he ever came near his daughter he would make sure he would walk with a limp the rest of his life or worse. He make it clear not to mess with him or his family ever again. The cops showed up a few minutes later and arrested him for an outstanding warrant and thanked her Dad for calling them. Thankfully, that was the end of her ordeal.<p>I would never advocate violence in these situations, but when you feel helpless, sometimes there are no other alternatives.

OK, first of all: I don&#x27;t question that this guy turned out to be an asshole and a stalker and that author is a victim.<p>But I can&#x27;t help but raise a question of definitions here. He was a stalker for 4 years, not for 12. His behaviour during first years of their relationships wasn&#x27;t something that I would even remotely call &quot;stalker behaviour&quot;. Up until this point:<p>&gt; I caved and sent him a message asking him to please stop messaging me so much or I’d block him. “Ok. good luck on your quest,” he wrote back three minutes later. “Huh,” I thought. “That was easy.” Then he sent three more angry messages in quick succession and I blocked him on Facebook.<p>there&#x27;s literally nothing in the description of his behavior that calls for the term &quot;stalker&quot;. (Later — of course).

Amazing.<p>&quot;I caved and sent him a message asking him to please stop messaging me so much or I’d block him.&quot;<p>... &quot;so much or I&#x27;d block him.&quot; &lt;--- the stalker?

What&#x27;s with the image overlay. Can&#x27;t read the text. Is that some sort of art? It looks cool but makes the site unusable. Entire layout seems broken (latest FF, OSX) Edit: seems to be broken on the entire site not just for this article

Honestly, this guy needs to be thrown away in a cell and forgotten about. He clearly is not willing to stop on his own, and, quite frankly, I can&#x27;t see him stopping for anything other than being locked away.

Is it weird that when I saw the article title, I thought it was going to be about the NSA?

Seems like a great opportunity for a company that &quot;bounty hunts&quot; cyberstalkers - tracks them down then physically intimidates them for you.

So...<p>Why didn&#x27;t she just give him a firm, but polite &quot;I&#x27;m not interested&quot;?<p>I&#x27;m not saying that stalking and&#x2F;or harassment are acceptable. I&#x27;m just saying that she probably could have avoided 14 years of misery if she had just politely told the guy that there was no potential for anything more.<p>Women need to learn to reject people in whom they&#x27;re not interested. They think they&#x27;re being &quot;nice&quot; or at the very least, being &quot;not mean&quot; but they are being incredibly cruel by letting the other person think there&#x27;s hope when there isn&#x27;t.<p>Don&#x27;t expect him to take the hint. Tell him directly.

So this woman is unlucky enough to both be the target of a persistent stalker and persistent stalker who manages to stay withing the letter of the law while being incredibly annoying. Big deal, people get struck with lightening and bitten by sharks from time to time too. She just happens to be able to write about her bad luck in a particular corner of the internet that gets more than nil for traffic.<p>Sure it probably freaks her out a lot (and rightfully so) but did she really expect any authority to be able to take action on that basis. Think of the kinds of shit that would hit the fan if &quot;distasteful behavior that freaks others out&quot; was enough to get someone arrested (and all the life ruining things that go with it).

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds a little too perfect? A totally sympathetic female victim, the evil older male, the dismissive male police force ... it reads like a movie. I&#x27;m probably too jaded by such stories on the internet, but if she was in my office I would probably have a few questions. Of course if she was in my office then it would be far more than a story I read on the internet.