Forum - Lies and more lies

[Septima]

I run a couple online businesses and although small do well. I participate on a forum where many other program owners of the same type participate. I have spoke out loudly against fraud and fairness to members and scam programs. I have on a few occassions spoke out on practices of other program owners changing their terms of service or injustices done to members or their advertisers.

Now there is another program owner trashing me on a forum I am not a member of because she has been banned from the forum I do post on and she was warned on the other I post on to stop harrassing me with her private messages and foul mouth.

She has emailed me repeatedly harrassing me, has tried to get my msn from other program owners or members to no avail. I have even warned her not to send me email again or I would report her for harrassment.

Well she has gone to far. She has taken everything I have said and twisted it. She has stated other posts I have made were about her which were not. She has put up lies on this other forum about me. I have ask the owner of the forum to remove the posts instead they refused to remove it. The stated let her look foolish. Well she is harming my business by stating things like I posted private mails and am violating privacy policies. I did snip a piece of her email and posted it in quotes in defense on one forum of someone saying I was the one harrassing her with her comment of I was only jealous and my programs were a piece of cr**.... She has go on for a year privately about me but now has posted first 12 posts in a 30 min time period with lies about me. Now she is baiting I join this forum so she can trash me.

I would like to know what suggestions you all might recommend on getting this trash removed about me. I don't want to go as far as court I just want this to end. It is quite mean and offensive. She has spent her entire day trashing me on any forum she can get someone to listen. I will not respond as I will not have her get her jollys attacking me in public when no matter what I say she will not be reasonable. The worst part is she is offering a reward to anyone who will send her posts where I mention my programs in the body of a message or say anything about her. It is getting scarey as there are a lot of nuts out there that will do crazy things for $1 believe it or not.

Some of my fear is my who is info is available on all my sites with my home number and address. I hope it wont go this far but I fear that she will go as far as finding a hacker or nut or start harrassing me at home.

Any suggestions to get this to quit?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

I run a couple online businesses and although small do well. I participate on a forum where many other program owners of the same type participate. I have spoke out loudly against fraud and fairness to members and scam programs. I have on a few occassions spoke out on practices of other program owners changing their terms of service or injustices done to members or their advertisers.

Now there is another program owner trashing me on a forum I am not a member of because she has been banned from the forum I do post on and she was warned on the other I post on to stop harrassing me with her private messages and foul mouth.

She has emailed me repeatedly harrassing me, has tried to get my msn from other program owners or members to no avail. I have even warned her not to send me email again or I would report her for harrassment.

Well she has gone to far. She has taken everything I have said and twisted it. She has stated other posts I have made were about her which were not. She has put up lies on this other forum about me. I have ask the owner of the forum to remove the posts instead they refused to remove it. The stated let her look foolish. Well she is harming my business by stating things like I posted private mails and am violating privacy policies. I did snip a piece of her email and posted it in quotes in defense on one forum of someone saying I was the one harrassing her with her comment of I was only jealous and my programs were a piece of cr**.... She has go on for a year privately about me but now has posted first 12 posts in a 30 min time period with lies about me. Now she is baiting I join this forum so she can trash me.

I would like to know what suggestions you all might recommend on getting this trash removed about me. I don't want to go as far as court I just want this to end. It is quite mean and offensive. She has spent her entire day trashing me on any forum she can get someone to listen. I will not respond as I will not have her get her jollys attacking me in public when no matter what I say she will not be reasonable. The worst part is she is offering a reward to anyone who will send her posts where I mention my programs in the body of a message or say anything about her. It is getting scarey as there are a lot of nuts out there that will do crazy things for $1 believe it or not.

Some of my fear is my who is info is available on all my sites with my home number and address. I hope it wont go this far but I fear that she will go as far as finding a hacker or nut or start harrassing me at home.

Any suggestions to get this to quit?

There unfortunately always are crazy and irrational people and they come out in droves on the Internet.

As a whole, forum owners want to keep posts available online. It's content for searching and provides beef in the forums. For the most part, the moderators are right in that the idiot usually ends up making a complete buffoon of themselves. Your prolonging the facts might have the result of confusing people, rather than clarification.

Here are a couple of tactics you can take -- you may want to review the contents of the policy of the board and see whether the words violate their terms of service. From what you are implying, they likely do and you should notify that you are compiling evidence to show that this individual's unsubstantiated claims are false and hurting your business. You will hold them civilly responsible for contributing to disseminate this information after having been warned that it is false and defamatory and has caused you financial loss. In addition, you may want to point out a few posts where this individual is clearly seeking private information and using their boards to carry it out. Perhaps this will jolt them into some type of action. Legal actions in these cases are extremely rare, expensive, and don't provide the return on investment -- all assuming you can easily sue the defendant(s).

A challenge that forums owners have is that they should not necessarily be forced to comply with the request of everyone who yells that they don't like what is being said about them. It's a difference when the comments actually break the law -- most, however, are just "flaming" and the typical foul disagreements that are best left to fade into oblivion and for use by you in the event you really need to reference a series of psychotic looking posts by your adversary.

Good luck and let us know what happens.