What can I do? Internet harassment..more

[diamond123]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? MO

I do not know if I can do anything about what has and is happening to me. Please, if I have any options I hope someone will tell me what they are. I do not know if this is civil, criminal, etc. so any help would I would really appreciate.

I will try to make this short, but after nine months of this it will be hard to do.

Ok, nine months ago a little girl went missing from Florida. I am not sure if I can say her name so I will not, but something about this little girl captured my heart. I was not hearing much about her on the news so I went looking for a message board to see if I could find out more information. OMG, I did not know what the next nine months would bring.

A very small group of about four people love to harass others, but for some reason I seem to be their number 1 target.

I have changed user names to hide, I have changed message boards to hide, and so far they somehow always figure out who I am and the harassment never stops.

I have tried standing up for myself, ignoring these posters, it seemed nothing would work so I finally stopped posting at all about three weeks ago. I feel like my Freedom of Speech has been taken away from me. I have been emotionally harassed, embarrassed on message boards, etc.

I want to post about this little girl but I am now scared ( see below on this).

I do not have a twitter account and I do not even know how twitter works, but one day before I stopped posting I did receive a personal message and this poster told me to go to this twitter account and so I did. Horrible things are being said about me and they are lies, the rest is just personal insults but they do hurt.

Ok, to back it up, I will give one example of what happened on a message board one day. One poster said they were sleeping with my husband ( this is not true and I have no doubts) and the other posters chimed in and said that they had even seen the video's of this affair. Then the comments went to rude and crude about this. Even though I knew this was not true, it was completely humiliating to me because I was afraid others would believe it. I know these are strangers to me, but this is still a terrible thing to go through.

I turned the post in to the moderator and all they did was delete the post. ( After several hours I will add). I immediately closed my account and left the message board.

I waited a few weeks and joined a different message board and here the same people started again. I tried all the same as I did before and finally I have left that message board also.

I am no longer on any message boards for almost a month now, but the twitter accounts and message board post will not stop. In fact, others have been harassed because they think it is me using a different name, that is how bad it is.

I can still read the last message board even though I am not a member. I can't post, so they think I am still there and I am not.

Ok, now back to the personal message I received before I closed my account about the twitter.

I have kept the links to some of the twitter accounts and I read them from time to time. Well, the other day a twitter account - used my user name and said that they were going to shoot my a**.

Now, I do not know if this person knows where I live or if they are all talk, but I am SCARED.

I started to post the twitter account and the message on here but I do not know if that is allowed.

I know this sounds crazy and I know some will think - what did you do to cause this. I do not know what I did to cause this internet harassment. This is the only thing I know that started it.

A group of people think one of the family members could be involved with this missing little girl - it is our opinion and I always state in my post it is my opinion with whatever I say.

I am not the only person getting harassed. It seems almost everyone that believes one of the family members are involved ( the same member) of this missing little girl - is getting harassed in one way or another.

I do know that some have posted letters of desist ( I think that is what it is called) on the internet and they say it is what their attorney told them to do. I do not know if they are serious or if they are just trying this to get the harassment to stop.

I do not truly know anyone on the message board to trust so I can not ask anyone if they really have an attorney to stop this or if it is for real.

As far as I know, I am the only one that this small group has threatened to shoot.

I have turned this into the Florida police where this little girl is missing, but I have not heard nothing back.

What can I do to stop this harassment? It is emotionally draining and now I am scared. I have not posted in almost a month now, but the message boards and twitters are still going strong about me and some others.

Oh, these posters have been banned from this last message board ( the one I feel the safest on) and the people somehow come back with a new *nic* ( user name) but, it doesn't take long before you know who they are again.

I have wrote a long letter to the moderator ( I am sure I am not the only one) and all she says is she tries to bann them, but somehow they get around the IP banning and come back. All she can do is keep banning them. I do not feel this moderator takes this stuff serious at all.

It is a well known message board for missing children, etc. If I can post the name, please let me know. Of course, the bad post have been deleted but at least you could see it is a well respected message board.

Please, what do I do? What are my options? I do not know who these people are or even where they live. This group seems to be very smart about the internet,etc. I have even heard they have figured out a way to have more than one twitter account, etc. I am not sure how true that is.

I am so sorry I am horrible at writing and I am very upset so it makes it worse. I really need some help because I want this to stop as soon as possible.

Thanks for listening to me and I hope to check soon and I hope I do have some options to make the harassment go away.

 

[printman31]

There's this little X in the upper right hand corner of your monitor as you are looking @ the monitor. When these people are around some message board you are on. Then hit that X and your problem will be solved.

 

[diamond123]

I appreciate your post to me, but what if this poster that has threatened to shoot me is serious? I now want to know what they are saying just in case more threats are made. I keep hoping they will forget me but so far that has not happened yet and I have been off the boards for over 3 weeks.

I do not mean to be sarcastic, but if you are married and someone had threatened to shoot your wife - Would you tell her the same thing?

If your wife was talking on a message board - would you want her Free Speech taken away because others were saying - you were having an affair and there was a video floating around and others posted they had seen the video?

I know there is no affair and no video but at the same time it embarrassed me so bad I cried all day long and that was AFTER I clicked the little red x.

This person and three others have caused me a lot of emotional stress and now they have threated to shoot me. So, in a LEGAL aspect - do I have a civil suit or a crimanal?..or nothing I can do at all?

I do not want to continue to be lied on and I do not want to keep looking over my shoulder waiting to see if this unknown poster is serious or not. I am aware that they are really crazy people in this world and how do I know if this is one of those crazy people?

I came here for a legal question and I do hope someone will give me some legal advice.

 

[Proserpina]

I appreciate your post to me, but what if this poster that has threatened to shoot me is serious? I now want to know what they are saying just in case more threats are made. I keep hoping they will forget me but so far that has not happened yet and I have been off the boards for over 3 weeks.

I do not mean to be sarcastic, but if you are married and someone had threatened to shoot your wife - Would you tell her the same thing?

If your wife was talking on a message board - would you want her Free Speech taken away because others were saying - you were having an affair and there was a video floating around and others posted they had seen the video?

I know there is no affair and no video but at the same time it embarrassed me so bad I cried all day long and that was AFTER I clicked the little red x.

This person and three others have caused me a lot of emotional stress and now they have threated to shoot me. So, in a LEGAL aspect - do I have a civil suit or a crimanal?..or nothing I can do at all?

I do not want to continue to be lied on and I do not want to keep looking over my shoulder waiting to see if this unknown poster is serious or not. I am aware that they are really crazy people in this world and how do I know if this is one of those crazy people?

I came here for a legal question and I do hope someone will give me some legal advice.

How much of your personal information is online (ie, available to these people)? Have you listed your town, etc in your message board profiles?

 

[Proserpina]

I have tried standing up for myself, ignoring these posters, it seemed nothing would work so I finally stopped posting at all about three weeks ago. I feel like my Freedom of Speech has been taken away from me. I have been emotionally harassed, embarrassed on message boards, etc.

Nothing has been taken away from you; you have voluntarily stopped posting.

One poster said they were sleeping with my husband ( this is not true and I have no doubts) and the other posters chimed in and said that they had even seen the video's of this affair. Then the comments went to rude and crude about this. Even though I knew this was not true, it was completely humiliating to me because I was afraid others would believe it. I know these are strangers to me, but this is still a terrible thing to go through.

Seriously, ignoring it is the quickest way to get it to stop.

I turned the post in to the moderator and all they did was delete the post. ( After several hours I will add). I immediately closed my account and left the message board.
I waited a few weeks and joined a different message board and here the same people started again. I tried all the same as I did before and finally I have left that message board also.

What did you expect the moderator to do?

A group of people think one of the family members could be involved with this missing little girl - it is our opinion and I always state in my post it is my opinion with whatever I say.

I am not the only person getting harassed. It seems almost everyone that believes one of the family members are involved ( the same member) of this missing little girl - is getting harassed in one way or another.

Ah, so there you are. That is certainly an understandable reason why disagreement and harassment may result from your posts.

I do not truly know anyone on the message board to trust so I can not ask anyone if they really have an attorney to stop this or if it is for real.

As far as I know, I am the only one that this small group has threatened to shoot.

I have turned this into the Florida police where this little girl is missing, but I have not heard nothing back.

What then do you wish to happen?

What can I do to stop this harassment? It is emotionally draining and now I am scared. I have not posted in almost a month now, but the message boards and twitters are still going strong about me and some others.

Stop posting. Stop viewing. Seriously.

Oh, these posters have been banned from this last message board ( the one I feel the safest on) and the people somehow come back with a new *nic* ( user name) but, it doesn't take long before you know who they are again.

I have wrote a long letter to the moderator ( I am sure I am not the only one) and all she says is she tries to bann them, but somehow they get around the IP banning and come back. All she can do is keep banning them. I do not feel this moderator takes this stuff serious at all.

What do you want her to do?

Please, what do I do? What are my options? I do not know who these people are or even where they live. This group seems to be very smart about the internet,etc. I have even heard they have figured out a way to have more than one twitter account, etc. I am not sure how true that is.

I am so sorry I am horrible at writing and I am very upset so it makes it worse. I really need some help because I want this to stop as soon as possible.

Thanks for listening to me and I hope to check soon and I hope I do have some options to make the harassment go away.

Seriously - I'm not entirely sure what (as you have reported it to the police already) you want to have happen?

 

[diamond123]

How much of your personal information is online (ie, available to these people)? Have you listed your town, etc in your message board profiles?

No, I have been very careful on the internet or so I thought, but I do think the person that threatened to shoot me knows where I live and I will explain below.

The first message board I left ( closed my account) I slowly figured out that the person that has threatened to shoot me is very good friends with the moderator. I now feel the moderator would tell my personal information to this group.

The owner of this message board EVERYONE will know there name HERE. That is why I felt safe and now that is why I am scared, etc.

Can I post a link or say the persons name that owns this message board?

I wrote to him a few times and he finally replied once. He held up for his moderator, but I truly feel he is to busy of a man to read his message board or he would NOT let the harassment go on. I can only HOPE, that is the reason. I had so much respect for this man and I have now lost most of it.

Please, I have PROOF of the " shooting threat" on a twitter account. I have PROOF this person post and is good friends with the moderator of this mans forum.

Can I post the links or names here? If so, I truly feel like some may understand me a little more.

Thank you so much for your help and I truly appreciate it.

I always taught my now grown children how to be safe on the internet. Never, did I think this would happen to me.

I do not know how to answer to several quotes, but I will be back as soon as I can to reply to your 2nd post to me. It should be sometime this morning.

Thanks again for your help and I hope others will help me also.

 

[quincy]

diamond123, any threats of physical harm should be turned over to the police. Then refer back to the other threads you have posted here, and follow the advice that has been given previously.

See https://forum.freeadvice.com/libel-slander-defamation-88/whatshouldido-433091-p2.html, among the other threads you have posted.

You seem to be having WAY too much trouble with internet forums. I am not sure what you are writing to attract the attention of so many harassers, but I think the problem MUST originate with what you are posting. While it is not at all unusual to be harassed by others on a site, to be threatened on several different forums by several different people over the years seems odd, to say the least.

Review your own posting history on these sites to see if you can locate the reason why you have become such an attractive target to so many.

If problems persist, your best option is the one printman31 gave you. Click off the internet and find some other way to communicate your thoughts and ideas, or write in a journal to pass the time.

 

[diamond123]

I see I came to the wrong place again - Now, can someone tell me how to CLOSE MY ACCOUNT?

I should have learnt my lesson from before IN MY OPINION this is not a place for help. It is a place to judge people.

Please, I am not good with computers and I want to close this account and I will NEVER BE BACK. Can someone at least tell me how to do that without judging me ? TIA

 

[TigerD]

I see I came to the wrong place again - Now, can someone tell me how to CLOSE MY ACCOUNT?

I should have learnt my lesson from before IN MY OPINION this is not a place for help. It is a place to judge people.

Please, I am not good with computers and I want to close this account and I will NEVER BE BACK. Can someone at least tell me how to do that without judging me ? TIA

Go to the back gf the computer and locate the black wire that connects to the wall. Remove the cord from both the wall socket and the socket on the back of the computer. Discard cord.

This will solve all your computer issues.

DC

 

[quincy]

diamond, you close your account by following DC's sure-fire approach, or you close your account by not posting anymore. It is as simple as that.

I wasn't trying to be cruel with my post. You have been given excellent advice and direction in the past from forum members here. Your thread about the internet harassment problems you were having on the Canadian horse site, for example, offered you many suggestions (which is why I provided the link), and also detailed some of the problems you can face when trying to stop online harassment.

You can use the "search" feature at the top of this page (write "internet harassment" in the box) and this will lead you to many many other threads (about 300) that deal with internet harassment and threats on the internet, if you want additional answers. Or you can just browse the few threads posted below yours here, as they address issues similar to the ones you are having.

But there is no easy way to stop an anonymous harasser from harassing.

It is not unusual, by the way, for internet users to change their user names and change forums, and still be recognized by others. Everyone has a unique style of writing and this writing style can often identify a poster as easily as if he were to state his real name at the end of every post. We have on this forum, for example, a poster who returns with some frequency and who posts under all sorts of different user names each time he returns. He cannot disguise himself for long, however, because the more he writes, the clearer his identity becomes.

That is probably what is happening to you on the forums where you post. You are telling others who you are, intentionally or not.

But, finally, and as has been pointed out several times now, the ONLY way ANYONE can avoid entirely the problems encountered on the internet is to avoid the internet entirely.

And, once again, report all threats to the police.

 

[Ty Broussard]

You are harrassing her also!

This poor woman with an obvious problem with stalking is being given psyche advice by junior attys. How much crueler can you get? At least encourage her to get her husband involved in some way! Stalking and other "social" type mobbing is becoming more and more common and cnbc just did a piece on celebrity and just "common" people being blackmailed just for the vicious thrill of it and the meaness of the act itself. It is pervasive across the nation and the police are afraid to do anything as they become victims of the same. I mean their families become victims! The federal authorities should act but are not doing so from what I've read and my own experience in Vancouver, Wa. It goes on and on and no one cares , pretty much like your junior atty's response-it must be the victims fault! The fault is those who choose to not help or get involved in any way because of fear. I would love to band together with those suffering under "false" accusations and find the root person and find out why the maliciousness goes on and on with people that have nothjiong to do with it. I'm in the phone book!

 

[TigerD]

This poor woman with an obvious problem with stalking is being given psyche advice by junior attys. How much crueler can you get? At least encourage her to get her husband involved in some way! Stalking and other "social" type mobbing is becoming more and more common and cnbc just did a piece on celebrity and just "common" people being blackmailed just for the vicious thrill of it and the meaness of the act itself. It is pervasive across the nation and the police are afraid to do anything as they become victims of the same. I mean their families become victims! The federal authorities should act but are not doing so from what I've read and my own experience in Vancouver, Wa. It goes on and on and no one cares , pretty much like your junior atty's response-it must be the victims fault! The fault is those who choose to not help or get involved in any way because of fear. I would love to band together with those suffering under "false" accusations and find the root person and find out why the maliciousness goes on and on with people that have nothjiong to do with it. I'm in the phone book!

Have you considered Prozac?

I didn't help because I believed the poster to be several cards short of a full deck -- kind of like you.

DC

 

[Isis1]

This poor woman with an obvious problem with stalking is being given psyche advice by junior attys. How much crueler can you get? At least encourage her to get her husband involved in some way! Stalking and other "social" type mobbing is becoming more and more common and cnbc just did a piece on celebrity and just "common" people being blackmailed just for the vicious thrill of it and the meaness of the act itself. It is pervasive across the nation and the police are afraid to do anything as they become victims of the same. I mean their families become victims! The federal authorities should act but are not doing so from what I've read and my own experience in Vancouver, Wa. It goes on and on and no one cares , pretty much like your junior atty's response-it must be the victims fault! The fault is those who choose to not help or get involved in any way because of fear. I would love to band together with those suffering under "false" accusations and find the root person and find out why the maliciousness goes on and on with people that have nothjiong to do with it. I'm in the phone book!

this thread is over a month old. prehaps she took the advice given and actually got OFF the computer?

 

[quincy]

Ty, diamond123 has posted several times here before (you can click on her name to read her previous posts), and this is not the first time she has had difficulties with others when posting on a message board - hence the responses she received with this thread.

Diamond123 has not taken the advice given in the past by forum members here, and she has not sought the help of the police or consulted with an attorney, although advised to do so. There is only so much an advice site like this can do to help someone if they are not willing to take any advice or help themselves.

I agree that internet harassment is becoming more of a problem and more people are finding themselves victims of vicious attacks, and yet the problem of internet harassment is a difficult one to solve. With anonymous users and with worldwide access to the same sites, it is very hard to, first, locate from where the posts are originating and to, second, identify the people who are posting the abusive messages online, and to, third, sue them or have them prosecuted. The abuse, afterall, may be directed at someone in Kansas by someone from Japan.

Anonymity on the internet brings out a meanness in people that you probably would not see in any face-to-face meeting.

When prosecutions do occur or when lawsuits are filed, it is generally only after long and expensive investigations. The investigations are generally followed by long and expensive court battles.

Unless the abuse and injury suffered is severe and/or the stalking comes with a real threat of physical harm, it is often not worth the time or expense of pursuing any legal action. The police in most states have computer crime units that can assist when a computer crime has been committed and when the investigation is warranted, but rarely will name-calling, insults, or baseless threats be followed up on. Resources are limited and reserved for the most egregious of violators.

Certainly the internet has advanced faster than the laws to address the crimes committed on it, and the logistics of bringing suit against someone in a different state with different laws or in a different country with different laws adds to the difficulty.

The best advice for anyone who wants to avoid the major causes of problems on the internet is to avoid posting on internet chat rooms and forums and social networking sites. The best advice for anyone who wants to avoid becoming a victim of any computer crime at all is to toss their computer out a window.

As for diamond being "harassed" by these posts, your post addressed to the forum members here could be seen as just as "harassing." The difference between your post to us and our posts to diamond, however, is that I do not take any unreasonable offense at your post.