I have a bizarre problem that had grown into something really upsetting. I had a blog on Live Journal, and as is customary in these venues, became loosely 'acquainted' online with a number of people. A few I met in real life and subsequently had a conflict with and therefore I ended up locking most of posts for privacy. One of these people, I'll call her Party A, was a part of this very loosely affiliated circle, and I really didn't have a lot of contact with her at all from, oh, maybe October or November of last year, 2005. The conflict with her friends, which was personal, and not violent or public or even particularly nasty, aside from ending friendships, did not involve her, and she and I never had a conflict.
In May or June (I'm not sure which, because my granddaughter was born around then and I naturally had better things to do than worry about internet crazies), an acquaintance wrote to me and informed me that Party A was posting and ranting in her blog about how I was allegedly plagiarizing her posts and stalking her online. Frankly, I blew it off because it was so unlikely and nuts, and just thanked God I hadn't had much contact with her.
Sadly, this was not the right way to handle it.
She has never attempted to send me any email with the vilification and slander, and she has not phoned me, but in a bizarre twist, she's apparently pre-emptively stalking me.
I had already changed account names for privacy, and unless the post was innocuous and void of personal details that could be used to further invade my privacy, the privacy of my son and his wife and kids, or my daughter's privacy, I posted exclusively with a filter of about thirty people I am acquainted with in both real life and online. At the end of July, while I was recuperating from surgery and thus had more online time, she had a nuclear meltdown, and when I did, idiotically, respond via a post of my own that said I had no idea where she was getting this paranoid delusion, but it was not true, things got worse. I left the Live Journal account open to comment to the people who are real life friends, and eventually set up a blog on VOX, mostly because they have a marvelous photo option and hey, new grandmother here.
She has an account on Vox.
She took screen prints of my journal and posted them, and I dealt with that by filing a formal copyright violation. LJ insisted she take it down. For a blessed four days, there was no further harassment, and she even deleted her Live Journal account, I'm told.
My livejournal account name, and yes, I am an idiot and a moron, was my given name concatenated with my surname because it was unusual enough I figured no one would ever know it was my given and surnames concatenated. She's used it many many times to list how I'm alleged to have stalked and plagiarized and how batshit crazy I am.
I could care less, frankly, about whether or not anyone online believes this crap. The Blog audience? No big.
What is creeping me out totally is that she is stalking me in whatever forum I go to. I have completely withdrawn now to the point I'm only doing research on genealogy with original images available because I'm honestly afraid that posting anything anywhere, genealogy forums, blogs, whatever, is going to end up with her slandering me there. The genealogy forums? A big deal. That's my real name and she's going to easily figure out that it is my real name because, yes, I was a complete moron.
To make matters more complicated, she's physically located in the UK. (Ah, the internet, bringing you sociopaths from the global community!)
I filed a TOS complaint with LJ based on their posted Terms of Service.
"Terms of Service state as follows:
MEMBER CONDUCT
You understand that all Content, including without limitation, all information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content originated. LiveJournal does not control Content posted via the Service and, as such, does not guarantee the validity of such Content. You also understand that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent, or objectionable. Should Content be found or reported to be in violation with, but not limited to, the following terms, it will be LiveJournal's sole discretion as to what action should be taken.
You agree to NOT use the Service to:
Upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive to another's privacy (up to, but not excluding any address, email, phone number, or any other contact information without the written consent of the owner of such information), hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;"
The response by the abuse team on Live Journal was this:
"Dear LiveJournal user shearebliss,
Thank you for your report. We have investigated the links you have provided, and have found that they are not in violation of LiveJournal's Terms of Service.
In order for a violation to exist, there must be content present which is invasive to your privacy -- such as an address or phone number -- or encourage others to harass you through other means. The links you have provided do not contain any such material, and as such the contents are considered permissible under the Terms of Service and the ideal of free speech. While a full name is considered invasive to an individual's privacy in most cases, choosing your full name as your LiveJournal username gives others implicit permission to refer to you using your full name.
The FAQ located at http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=108&view=full contains further information on what steps you can take to minimize your contact with this user.
Users are entitled to dislike you. They are even entitled to post about this dislike so long as it does not cross into the boundaries of inciting harassment against you or invading your privacy as described above. We respectfully suggest that if the user's posts disturb you that you simply cease reading them.
Regards,
Helen
LiveJournal Abuse Team"
So that's that. What other recourse do I have and is there any? It's gotten so that my 22 year old daughter won't go on line anywhere this fool may be because it upsets her to see me vilified. (Which, I suppose I should be grateful for in a way, some 22 year olds would cheer to see their parent vilified, but still.)
Obviously, the real life friends can keep in contact with me other ways, and those who aren't don't need to, and Party A is clearly intelligent enough not to send me harassing email or exhort her circle to do so, but I have to admit, it is the outside of enough to be accused of stalking someone who is stalking me, and accused of plagiarizing someone who isn't good enough a writer to bother plagiarizing. Okay, that last was elitist, but really. Any advice would be helpful, because if I really do not have any recourse, and if LJ's abuse idiot was correct, then the clear answer is simply to vanish from online and make very sure that I have something to spoof my ip and change user names everywhere in the genealogical community to keep her from continuing. However, if there is something I can do, please, please offer me some idea of what it might be.
I'm not some socially retarded 24 year old living in her parents basement. I'm a software professional, a mother, a grandmother, and my son is in the military. The only blessing here is that I took back my maiden name, so she is unlikely to have any luck tracking him. The potential of her damaging his clearance level makes me want to be sick.
Thanks.
In May or June (I'm not sure which, because my granddaughter was born around then and I naturally had better things to do than worry about internet crazies), an acquaintance wrote to me and informed me that Party A was posting and ranting in her blog about how I was allegedly plagiarizing her posts and stalking her online. Frankly, I blew it off because it was so unlikely and nuts, and just thanked God I hadn't had much contact with her.
Sadly, this was not the right way to handle it.
She has never attempted to send me any email with the vilification and slander, and she has not phoned me, but in a bizarre twist, she's apparently pre-emptively stalking me.
I had already changed account names for privacy, and unless the post was innocuous and void of personal details that could be used to further invade my privacy, the privacy of my son and his wife and kids, or my daughter's privacy, I posted exclusively with a filter of about thirty people I am acquainted with in both real life and online. At the end of July, while I was recuperating from surgery and thus had more online time, she had a nuclear meltdown, and when I did, idiotically, respond via a post of my own that said I had no idea where she was getting this paranoid delusion, but it was not true, things got worse. I left the Live Journal account open to comment to the people who are real life friends, and eventually set up a blog on VOX, mostly because they have a marvelous photo option and hey, new grandmother here.
She has an account on Vox.
She took screen prints of my journal and posted them, and I dealt with that by filing a formal copyright violation. LJ insisted she take it down. For a blessed four days, there was no further harassment, and she even deleted her Live Journal account, I'm told.
My livejournal account name, and yes, I am an idiot and a moron, was my given name concatenated with my surname because it was unusual enough I figured no one would ever know it was my given and surnames concatenated. She's used it many many times to list how I'm alleged to have stalked and plagiarized and how batshit crazy I am.
I could care less, frankly, about whether or not anyone online believes this crap. The Blog audience? No big.
What is creeping me out totally is that she is stalking me in whatever forum I go to. I have completely withdrawn now to the point I'm only doing research on genealogy with original images available because I'm honestly afraid that posting anything anywhere, genealogy forums, blogs, whatever, is going to end up with her slandering me there. The genealogy forums? A big deal. That's my real name and she's going to easily figure out that it is my real name because, yes, I was a complete moron.
To make matters more complicated, she's physically located in the UK. (Ah, the internet, bringing you sociopaths from the global community!)
I filed a TOS complaint with LJ based on their posted Terms of Service.
"Terms of Service state as follows:
MEMBER CONDUCT
You understand that all Content, including without limitation, all information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content originated. LiveJournal does not control Content posted via the Service and, as such, does not guarantee the validity of such Content. You also understand that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent, or objectionable. Should Content be found or reported to be in violation with, but not limited to, the following terms, it will be LiveJournal's sole discretion as to what action should be taken.
You agree to NOT use the Service to:
Upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive to another's privacy (up to, but not excluding any address, email, phone number, or any other contact information without the written consent of the owner of such information), hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;"
The response by the abuse team on Live Journal was this:
"Dear LiveJournal user shearebliss,
Thank you for your report. We have investigated the links you have provided, and have found that they are not in violation of LiveJournal's Terms of Service.
In order for a violation to exist, there must be content present which is invasive to your privacy -- such as an address or phone number -- or encourage others to harass you through other means. The links you have provided do not contain any such material, and as such the contents are considered permissible under the Terms of Service and the ideal of free speech. While a full name is considered invasive to an individual's privacy in most cases, choosing your full name as your LiveJournal username gives others implicit permission to refer to you using your full name.
The FAQ located at http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=108&view=full contains further information on what steps you can take to minimize your contact with this user.
Users are entitled to dislike you. They are even entitled to post about this dislike so long as it does not cross into the boundaries of inciting harassment against you or invading your privacy as described above. We respectfully suggest that if the user's posts disturb you that you simply cease reading them.
Regards,
Helen
LiveJournal Abuse Team"
So that's that. What other recourse do I have and is there any? It's gotten so that my 22 year old daughter won't go on line anywhere this fool may be because it upsets her to see me vilified. (Which, I suppose I should be grateful for in a way, some 22 year olds would cheer to see their parent vilified, but still.)
Obviously, the real life friends can keep in contact with me other ways, and those who aren't don't need to, and Party A is clearly intelligent enough not to send me harassing email or exhort her circle to do so, but I have to admit, it is the outside of enough to be accused of stalking someone who is stalking me, and accused of plagiarizing someone who isn't good enough a writer to bother plagiarizing. Okay, that last was elitist, but really. Any advice would be helpful, because if I really do not have any recourse, and if LJ's abuse idiot was correct, then the clear answer is simply to vanish from online and make very sure that I have something to spoof my ip and change user names everywhere in the genealogical community to keep her from continuing. However, if there is something I can do, please, please offer me some idea of what it might be.
I'm not some socially retarded 24 year old living in her parents basement. I'm a software professional, a mother, a grandmother, and my son is in the military. The only blessing here is that I took back my maiden name, so she is unlikely to have any luck tracking him. The potential of her damaging his clearance level makes me want to be sick.
Thanks.
