False Identity/Identity Theft?

[flowingwind]

My jurisdiction is: United States

On a forum not too long ago, in a chat room, I switched my name to that of another member and her business. It was a joke, and I never actually intended to make people believe I was her. It only went on a couple minutes, everyone knew it was really me, and then the joke ended. It was basically a "Haha, look at me." joke.

I e-mailed her and apologized for my immature mistake of taking on her name as a joke, but tried to assure that it was only a joke and would never be done again. I felt the joke was harmless.

Now she is taking it to the extreme, and I am getting threats that she is looking to pursue legal action for falsifying her identity, identity theft, ect. She claims someone sent her screen captures, chat logs, ect. and will not stop until I am jailed.

Does she have a leg to stand on, basically?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

What were her damages? Jailed? In most instances this kind of thing never goes anywhere. If you did cause real, measurable damages, then that's what you'll have to worry about - and potentially losing your forum account.

 

[flowingwind]

Well, I left the forum willingly.

It was just a chat room, one that allowed a command where you could change your screen name while in there. I changed mine to her forum name. Everyone in there knew it was me. I only was under her name for maybe 2-3 minutes, and hardly anything was said. It was basically, "Oh, look at me, I'm here" type of joke. But everyone in there knew it was me. It was just a harmless joke. Then she showed up in the room, and that ended everything.

Now she's trying to drag it out, and I'm being told she's looking to find out my location, contact local authorities, and have my jailed for falsifying her identity. When nothing wrong was said, nothing was done publicly, it was just a basic joke in a chat room.

I've been told that she's the type to take things to the extreme though, so I was wondering if she really had anything to go on, since no harm was truly done.