being harassed via email & web

[ohumanity]

I befriended someone online last year through business and due to having mutual occupational interests continued that friendship for some months. As my significant other and his are also in the same line of work, we all bonded. However, things soured in the relationships early this year. Due to some very sporatic and disconcerting emails he sent me, we ended all contact with him. He was upset by this and sent multiple emails to which I never replied and bounced. We still continued our friendship with his other half who we discovered had ended their relationship with him for the same reasons we did. It was light contact with large spaces of time in between. We were told he was harassing others, filing random lawsuits against them, losing his business, being evicted and generally causing much mischief. My partner had some business dealings with him prior to this and wrote one impersonal email to him inquiring about it. He did not receive any reply, so he let them go as it was obviously just a loss and came with the territory of mixing business with personal.

It's been quiet (to our knowledge) for months until several weeks ago I found he'd been posting defamatory altered photo's of me on the web along with slanderous statements & copies of my partners work for about a month. As he was obviously doing this to start trouble, I bypassed contacting him altogether and we filed NOI's with the service providers.

There were many statements and photo's posted about his ex as well. My partner wrote to his ex asking simply what was going on and received an inexplicably offensive email back in reply. As it was rather out of the blue and insulting, his reply to it was not very pleasant either. I was not involved in any of this. Neither of us ever emailed him.

However, when he found the images had been removed from the web, he began emailing multiple emails to both of us. Attached was a copy of the email my partner had last sent to his ex, so we only assume it must've been forwarded to him. The emails contained many offensive things in them along with threats to put more slander up and cause damage to my business and reputation. When we bounced them back as "address not found" he sent them again from all his other email addressess and even from his ex's address. After that attempt failed, he sent them to all our alternate business addresses as well. In the emails he said that by blocking his email address we were harassing him and by reporting the copyright violations, we were stalking him, so he was going to speak to an attorney. Which would be laughable if this had not been going on for days fielding the emails, filing reports, filing more reports for new offensive photo's and statements he's posted of me since, threats to my livelihood and having to take the defamatory things he's written on the chin because we refuse to engage in conversation with him.

Upon the advice of a cyberstalker help website, I emailed him a single line email that stated: "Do not contact me in any way in the future." cc'd to his ISP. In reply he sent two different, yet very threatening emails to both my partner and I mimicking what I wrote adding he was going to speak to an attorney about us harassing him and take legal action against us. I've contacted his ISP's (there are numerous addresses he uses on several different service providers) to report the email harassement, but none have responded thus far and some are not even taking the abuse claims because I do not use their services myself.

I am extremely exhausted by all this, emotionally and physically. It's taken time away from my business and is generally just a massive drain of energy. Added to that is the unbelievable stress it's causing over my sole source of income being threatened by him. Since May of this year I've wanted nothing more than to be left alone by this person. I've been through the turmoil of being harassed and stalked in real life before, but the internet is a whole different ball of wax and one I'm having great difficulty in getting help from. He has not made any threats of violence (yet), so I don't believe I can file for a restraining order. Service providers are notoriously negligent when it comes to protecting things other than copyrights or their assets, so I'm having difficulty getting any assistance from them in this matter.

I made a very large mistake in ever speaking to this person in the first place, but that does not justify the harassing behavior he's exhibited since I cut the relationship off. His intention is to cause me much distress and it is working. I am officially distressed, tired, sick, stressed out and apparently incapable of protecting myself and loved ones from harassment on the web. I need help!!!!

Thank you.

 

[ohumanity]

correction...

It just escalated. He just posted a blog with more defamatory rhetoric, obsenities and has added threatening physical violence towards us.

Help please!!

 

[Michael Wechsler]

I befriended someone online last year through business and due to having mutual occupational interests continued that friendship for some months. As my significant other and his are also in the same line of work, we all bonded. However, things soured in the relationships early this year. Due to some very sporatic and disconcerting emails he sent me, we ended all contact with him. He was upset by this and sent multiple emails to which I never replied and bounced. We still continued our friendship with his other half who we discovered had ended their relationship with him for the same reasons we did. It was light contact with large spaces of time in between. We were told he was harassing others, filing random lawsuits against them, losing his business, being evicted and generally causing much mischief. My partner had some business dealings with him prior to this and wrote one impersonal email to him inquiring about it. He did not receive any reply, so he let them go as it was obviously just a loss and came with the territory of mixing business with personal.

It's been quiet (to our knowledge) for months until several weeks ago I found he'd been posting defamatory altered photo's of me on the web along with slanderous statements & copies of my partners work for about a month. As he was obviously doing this to start trouble, I bypassed contacting him altogether and we filed NOI's with the service providers.

There were many statements and photo's posted about his ex as well. My partner wrote to his ex asking simply what was going on and received an inexplicably offensive email back in reply. As it was rather out of the blue and insulting, his reply to it was not very pleasant either. I was not involved in any of this. Neither of us ever emailed him.

However, when he found the images had been removed from the web, he began emailing multiple emails to both of us. Attached was a copy of the email my partner had last sent to his ex, so we only assume it must've been forwarded to him. The emails contained many offensive things in them along with threats to put more slander up and cause damage to my business and reputation. When we bounced them back as "address not found" he sent them again from all his other email addressess and even from his ex's address. After that attempt failed, he sent them to all our alternate business addresses as well. In the emails he said that by blocking his email address we were harassing him and by reporting the copyright violations, we were stalking him, so he was going to speak to an attorney. Which would be laughable if this had not been going on for days fielding the emails, filing reports, filing more reports for new offensive photo's and statements he's posted of me since, threats to my livelihood and having to take the defamatory things he's written on the chin because we refuse to engage in conversation with him.

Upon the advice of a cyberstalker help website, I emailed him a single line email that stated: "Do not contact me in any way in the future." cc'd to his ISP. In reply he sent two different, yet very threatening emails to both my partner and I mimicking what I wrote adding he was going to speak to an attorney about us harassing him and take legal action against us. I've contacted his ISP's (there are numerous addresses he uses on several different service providers) to report the email harassement, but none have responded thus far and some are not even taking the abuse claims because I do not use their services myself.

I am extremely exhausted by all this, emotionally and physically. It's taken time away from my business and is generally just a massive drain of energy. Added to that is the unbelievable stress it's causing over my sole source of income being threatened by him. Since May of this year I've wanted nothing more than to be left alone by this person. I've been through the turmoil of being harassed and stalked in real life before, but the internet is a whole different ball of wax and one I'm having great difficulty in getting help from. He has not made any threats of violence (yet), so I don't believe I can file for a restraining order. Service providers are notoriously negligent when it comes to protecting things other than copyrights or their assets, so I'm having difficulty getting any assistance from them in this matter.

I made a very large mistake in ever speaking to this person in the first place, but that does not justify the harassing behavior he's exhibited since I cut the relationship off. His intention is to cause me much distress and it is working. I am officially distressed, tired, sick, stressed out and apparently incapable of protecting myself and loved ones from harassment on the web. I need help!!!!

Thank you.

Realy sorry to hear about this situation. I dealt with this kind of problem on a regular basis at one time.

(1) To protect yourself, make sure to save copies of entire pages and the graphics. This can usually be done within Internet Explorer or other web package. I won't get into specific preservation methods for evidence because I don't think issues will escalate so far, I would print out the pages in addition to saving full page copies.

(2) Service providers are generally people who don't want trouble. You can usually deflect problems by not copying the ISP generally. Go right to the legal department if there is one, and make sure you address the support person and give them the facts. How are they supposed to figure out all that is going on? They will likely half read a copy, if at all.

Best to hit this person first at their large accounts. You should provide them with "legal notice" that the individual at that specific account has placed unlawful copyrighted material upon their web site including other defamatory material that has been used in conjunctions with violent threats. In the event that the ISP does not take any action, you will hold them accountable for all damages, criminal and civil, that may result due to the ISP's failure to adequately respond. You can always send them a "DMCA letter" which alerts the ISP as to the copyrighted material but, in short, make sure to clearly identify what you are sending them, e.g. the photo XYZ is copyrighted and owned by me, photo ABC is an altered photo that was taken from my web site at www.mysite.com, etc. Chances are this will provoke a response.

Note -- if this is as serious as you say, you may want to send a copy of all the materials via certified mail to the largest ISPs this offender has. This will very likely shut down his accounts permanently. When I was counsel to a large Internet company the last thing we wanted was to have a user whose potential liability greatly outweighed the cost of retaining him/her.

(3) If you were physically threatened, do NOT hesitate to report this to the police. Your failure to do so will only result in this threat not being seen as a threat. If the police insist they won't take a report -- insist that they do. Note that the threat needs to be specific, not some half remembered phrase that you can't be sure of. Make copies of the posts, make sure the URLs are clearly identified, and provide them.

I'm very sorry that you are going through this. By shutting him down at his ISP and making these reports with the police, at least they are steps in the right direction. Let us know what happens and if you need assistance.