stalkedinAZ
New Member
I am in the unique position of being harassed online by the organization that claims to help people who are being harassed on line.
I posted some information on a yahoo newsgroup and a few weeks later I received a poorly written cease and desist order from someone claiming to be legal counsel for W.H.O.A. working to halt abuse on line. I am in possession of e-mails in which Jayne A. Hitchcock, who is trying to make a name for herself as the ultimate 'educator' about on-line harassment, misrepresents herself as an attorney in order to intimidate a Native American woman who is trying to expose one of those phony New Age scam artists who sells Native American ceremonies for profit. Ms. Hitchcock's organization is full of supporters who are impersonating Native Americans for the purpose of selling their ceremonies for profit, but only after they have distorted them beyond all recognition.
This so-called attorney told me that I could not post or refer to these e-mails and that I had to destroy them. He told me that he had established an attorney client relationship (with him?) by sending me the cease and desist e-mail and that I couldn't post that either. I went to the electronic frontier foundation's chilling effects page and input the letter.
A few hours later, I started getting these gray pop up messages (I was working on a paper in MS Word, but my yahoo mail was open in another window.) Whoever was sending these messages kept asking me to meet him or her outside. Why would anyone do this? This didn't stop until I closed by yahoo mail. Could this person have actually been in the library where I was working watching me? My friend said that there was a guy snooping around the department that I'm enrolled in at the University asking questions about me.
These people are starting to scare me. The group to which I posted has had a lot of problems with lurkers who get members e-mails and impersonate them. The only way this "attorney" could have gotten my e-mail was by joining this group or getting someone else to join the group (probably with a fake e-mail – the moderator wouldn't let W.H.O.A. members in because of a history of past impersonations, stalking and harassment of members)
How worried should I be and what can I do to protect myself. I don't want a bunch of private investigators scaring my girlfriend or harassing my family in order to get me to stop criticizing W.H.O.A., but I won't be intimidated into silence either? I have proof of everything I said in the forum, but this attorney is telling me I have to destroy the e-mails and that you can't post any e-mail without the writer's permissioin. Is this true if the e-mail shows that the author has done something wrong?
Has anyone had similar problems with this group?
I posted some information on a yahoo newsgroup and a few weeks later I received a poorly written cease and desist order from someone claiming to be legal counsel for W.H.O.A. working to halt abuse on line. I am in possession of e-mails in which Jayne A. Hitchcock, who is trying to make a name for herself as the ultimate 'educator' about on-line harassment, misrepresents herself as an attorney in order to intimidate a Native American woman who is trying to expose one of those phony New Age scam artists who sells Native American ceremonies for profit. Ms. Hitchcock's organization is full of supporters who are impersonating Native Americans for the purpose of selling their ceremonies for profit, but only after they have distorted them beyond all recognition.
This so-called attorney told me that I could not post or refer to these e-mails and that I had to destroy them. He told me that he had established an attorney client relationship (with him?) by sending me the cease and desist e-mail and that I couldn't post that either. I went to the electronic frontier foundation's chilling effects page and input the letter.
A few hours later, I started getting these gray pop up messages (I was working on a paper in MS Word, but my yahoo mail was open in another window.) Whoever was sending these messages kept asking me to meet him or her outside. Why would anyone do this? This didn't stop until I closed by yahoo mail. Could this person have actually been in the library where I was working watching me? My friend said that there was a guy snooping around the department that I'm enrolled in at the University asking questions about me.
These people are starting to scare me. The group to which I posted has had a lot of problems with lurkers who get members e-mails and impersonate them. The only way this "attorney" could have gotten my e-mail was by joining this group or getting someone else to join the group (probably with a fake e-mail – the moderator wouldn't let W.H.O.A. members in because of a history of past impersonations, stalking and harassment of members)
How worried should I be and what can I do to protect myself. I don't want a bunch of private investigators scaring my girlfriend or harassing my family in order to get me to stop criticizing W.H.O.A., but I won't be intimidated into silence either? I have proof of everything I said in the forum, but this attorney is telling me I have to destroy the e-mails and that you can't post any e-mail without the writer's permissioin. Is this true if the e-mail shows that the author has done something wrong?
Has anyone had similar problems with this group?
