13 ms·

"I Will Ruin Him" – How it feels to be stalked

147 points by azakai 14y ago

DanBC 14y ago
> A deluge of e-mails poured into my inbox over the next few months. I deleted most without reading them. What's best practice here? Set up filters to route them into a special folder? You never have to read them, but you've kept them in case you need to go to the police and courts?
- iloveponies 14y ago
  More or less. The more evidence of all communication of theirs and yours, the more useful it is as either plaintiff or defendant in court.
- mwetzler 14y ago
  You have to check them periodically to make sure the situation isn't escalating. For example, if they start threatening physical violence against you, you now have something to use to take legal action. And it's good to know if someone is planning to show up on your doorstep. In my case, once the stalker started hitting my work email, my employer could step in and filter & review the messages for me (yeah, that was actually someone's job).
  - eru 14y ago
    > You have to check them periodically to make sure the situation isn't escalating. For example, if they start threatening physical violence against you, you now have something to use to take legal action. I guess for your own sanity you should get a trusted third-party (like a friend) to check those messages for you.
jpxxx 14y ago
The only workable solution I've found: maintain absolute transparency with everyone in your various networks, and never, ever, ever respond to the animal in any way. It literally takes years for them to break off from the hunt, and there is no protection from their predation as long as they can still smell your blood. Your attention fuels their hatred and their psychosis. Notifying their family or friends is counterproductive - they have been programmed to treat their predator as a victim and will attack you as well, multiplying the threat.
- dickbasedregex 14y ago
  I kept thinking if her emails were as batshit crazy as the author states, why not just post all of them online. Buy a domain and make a big public display of what a whackjob this person is. Allow her to publicly hang herself. I suspect, as suggested in the comments, some or all of this is possibly fabricated for book sales? Otherwise, many of his responses don't make much sense. I think most would very quickly, and correctly, attempt to sue for defamation.
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    Name and shame seems like a good tactic, but you must understand that the animal is incapable of feeling shame or remorse - they have no reputation to uphold. There is only predator and prey. Their world literally does not extend beyond you, their food source. You are their obsession, and your existence (and suffering!) gives them their daily meaning.
    - dickbasedregex 14y ago
      Well, the article mentioned her attempts at being a published author? I would argue that reputation and financial ruin might put a crimp in those plans. Obviously, I don't suggest this as a first response... maybe the dream of being an author was the one thing still anchoring her to reality? I would seek legal council on the best method of just making her go the hell away (harassment charges/restraining order). If she persisted to be a thorn in my side, or I had no legal recourse to the harassment, then yes, attempt to ruin her. What other choice do you have? Just allow her to chip away at you for all of eternity?
      - illuminate 14y ago
        "I would argue that reputation and financial ruin might put a crimp in those plans." Delusions have never stopped a sociopath before.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    It's not that easy. (http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/04/ff_koreanrapper/all/1 http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/04/ff_koreanrapper/all/1)
yarou 14y ago
I used to think being a professor was a boring and safe profession. Boy was I wrong! I hope his student can receive the appropriate mental counseling to live a more normal and fulfilling life.
- btilly 14y ago
  You never know what craziness is commonly found in the student population until it starts showing up in your office hours. Remember, if you deal with thousands of somewhat random people, you will have had to deal with dozens of seriously crazy people.
betelnut 14y ago
There was a similar story in Texas: https://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/former-u-of-texas-student-is-charged-with-stalking-professor https://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/former-u-of-texas-stud...
Gatsky 14y ago
I rememebr when I was about 13 years old my friends and I used ICQ to chat online. One of my friends had an acquaintance who thought it was amusing to 'hack' their chat client. It wasn't particularly complicated or malicious, but she would do it persistently every night and this made it impossible to chat. We knew who it was because they would quite openly brag about it. But we also knew who their dialup ISP was. So we faked an email written by the ISP telling this person to stop what they were doing or legal action would be taken etc. We just changed the 'from' address in the email from a throaway hotmail account. They could have easily worked out that the email was fake, but we figured they would be so mortified that they wouldn't get that far. We were right. The problem stopped immediately and never happened again. I can't help but think that this category of solution would be useful here, although there is a fine ethical line to tread...
- marvin 14y ago
  Also a legal line, since this is probably identity theft.
NoPiece 14y ago
I'm surprised the article didn't address the possibility that there was some mental illness involved. I assume the woman was in her early or mid 20's, an age where schizophrenia can manifest.
- azakai 14y ago
  My guess as well, and it's mentioned in the comments in the link. I suppose the author didn't want to speculate on her motives and so didn't mention this.
neltnerb 14y ago
This article was riveting. It's rare that I read such a long piece, but it's really well written. Particularly when it occurs that disturbingly, I have no better way to check the veracity of the words here than anyone else would of the words written by "Nasreen". Reminds me of Ghost in the Shell.
yock 14y ago
If such a story doesn't sell you on the ideas of rigor and corroboration, then there's probably no hope for you. Gripping, true or not, and a reminder that we often accept as truth far more than we should.
thomc 14y ago
It can be surprisingly hard to fight this. As the author notes, even if the ramblings of the stalker are so obviously crazy, it still requires people to evaluate whether you could have done said actions and whether it is a risk to associate with you regardless. My wife got dragged into a situation a while ago. She merely commented on a blog article about a man who had travelled to another country, got a woman pregnant, and then when the woman got sick and needed treatment, claimed it was a scam. In his mind it grew into a giant conspiracy. Anyone who didn't take his side was involved in this conspiracy, including the hospital, local business people, even the British Embassy was in on it apparently. And then my wife, for commenting on an article. I worked out that if you divided the hospital bill by the number of people he alleged were involved, they'd all make about $3 each. The local community rallied behind the woman who was disadvantaged and could barely afford the bill. They tracked her down, obtained proof from the hospital, took photos and posted them (with permission) thinking that would clear up the allegations. He started to look for evidence in every blog post, image, comment and forum posting. Where you look for a pattern, given enough data, you start to find them. He tweaked his conspiracy theory to fit the patterns he found, offering them up as evidence. My wife's name ended up on a "website of scammers" he created. He set up free websites on many services, created videos which he cross posted to every video sharing site (surprisingly effective), set up blogs dedicated to his ramblings. Eventually the community he was targeting with his hate had enough. Being computer literate they beat him at his own game, set up a domain that matched his real name, used masses of SEO and inbound links from networks of blogs they ran, and listed what he'd done on the website. Now whenever someone Googles his name or something related, they can see exactly what he's done. Since he worked as a freelance professional with schools, theatres and companies, this really was not good for him, and after that he seemed to vanish. I presume this was only effective because his own reputation could be used as leverage. If they have nothing to lose it would be a pretty bad situation, as the author has experienced. I have another anecdote about a friend who tried to raise money in his community for victims of a disaster, only to be character assassinated by a fake facebook account. He stopped raising money and cut himself off from the community which is a real loss.
btilly 14y ago
I've had peripheral contact with stalking on multiple occasions. I have two useful tips. The first one is that stalkers try to convince themselves that the object of their desire would love them back if they only had a chance. When they learn otherwise, desire can easily flip to hatred, then to attempts to destroy a life. Therefore if you are being stalked and can avoid letting the stalker know how you feel about it, do that. You can see that one in play in this case where she pursued him for years, without the nasty behavior, until she realized that he didn't love her. Then she turned vindictive. The second tip is that if you're going to stalk someone, don't stalk a psychiatrist. It is very, very hard for anyone other than a psychiatrist to get someone committed to an institution until after the stalker has committed a conventional crime. However if you're stalking a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist can, as a professional psychiatrist, evaluate you and decide to institutionalize you. And whatever institution you go to - which is generally associated with said psychiatrist - is likely to support the psychiatrist in that evaluation.
- arcatek 14y ago
  If you're stalked, is it possible to ask the opinion of psychiatrists before starting legal procedures in order to give more credit to your claims ?
  - btilly 14y ago
    No psychiatrist is going to institutionalize SOMEONE ELSE because of YOUR testimony. No legal procedures exist to put down a stalker until after an actual crime has been committed. Really, really, REALLY liking someone is not a crime.
    - thereticent 14y ago
      Almost true. In most cases of stalking, you're right, because there is no evidence of mental illness. To your point--no psychiatrist will institutionalize someone on your testimony, but a judge might. Depending on the state, a judge can send a person on a 72-hour court order to a psychiatric facility on the basis of an affidavit from a concerned party. If you can convince the judge, which in my state is apparently not difficult, the person wins a psychiatric admission.
jacquesm 14y ago
Unfortunately this article is not an exaggeration. We deal with stalkers on a regular basis, cam sites and stalking seem to go hand-in-hand. If you're ever in the position of being stalked please do the following: - never ever respond to the stalker - save each and every message - pre-emptively alert everybody in your surroundings that they might contact, explain everything and make sure they also never respond, and ask them to alert you if they are contacted. - formally alert law enforcement - forward each and every message received, posting made and so on to law enforcement (yes, that can be a nuisance, and yes it can be embarrassing but if you want them to sooner or later take action they have to be aware of how bad it really is). Over the years this has dealt with the large majority of cases. The few that are not amendable (for instance, because you don't know who the stalker is!) are far more serious and will need a lot more work to resolve. The most important thing to remember is that stalkers feed on your attention and your pain, the more feedback they get from you and your environment the longer it will go on. If this happens to you (it has happened to me...) then I wish you much good luck and I hope that it will end sooner rather than later. One tactic that we have deployed that is quite effective is to counter stalk the stalkers and to expose them publicly. Stalkers are usually not first time offenders and likely will stalk again in the future. It helps to have them easily googlable.
- damian2000 14y ago
  Would it be a good idea to 'bounce' the emails back - i.e. send a fake "message was undeliverable" email status to the sender. But still keep the messages. That way they think that no one is reading the email and may give up, or at least try to find another way to contact you.
  - mwetzler 14y ago
    It's worse because it's another form of attention, which riles them up. In my case, once I blocked a stalker on facebook, he started sending stuff to my work email.
  - axelfreeman 14y ago
    If the stalker writes from the same adress, you can make a filter for that and bounce this automatically back + save the message, without reading them.
maeon3 14y ago
This book has everything you need to know to deal with these sorts of situations: http://www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Gavin-Becker/dp/0440226198 http://www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Gavin-Becker/dp/0440226198
- tragomaskhalos 14y ago
  Fascinating book, in which Gavin De Becker (the author) reiterates the advice of commenters here, to deny the stalker any form of feedback whatsoever. It also highlights how, as in the Lasdun case, it can be a completely banal and initially harmless social transaction that can spiral out of control.
hexonexxon 14y ago
I battled with a mentally ill stalker for years in a petty online revenge game that started as a joke on an IRC channel and a gamer forum when I was 14yrs old, and ended up being decided by the courts as both of us eventually resorted to highly illegal activities to screw each other over. We went from crapflooding and email bombing each other to him constantly phoning and writing everybody I knew or worked for and my school in an attempt to screw me over through the years. Every girlfriend I had he tried to fake pics of me 'cheating' on her and spammed their social accounts and email/phone. In turn I stupidly escalated and baited him through side channel attacking his box, wiping his drive countless times, hacking his blog countless times, and destroying his credit score through fraud. This goes on for a few years each personal attack gaining in pwnstastic levels of revenge. He even had badly packaged illegal drugs sent to me from overseas hoping customs would intercept it and bust me but somehow they arrived safely and for weeks I wondered how I ended up with a bunch of drugs in the mail. I then countered by further driving his credit score into the grave to the point collection agencies were after him and his family, and was able to wipe all his sites faster than he could put them back up again. At one point during this insanity when I was 17, he started filing fake police reports to have me purposely picked up on a Friday to serve time all weekend before I could see a judge and have the bogus charges thrown out start of business day Monday. For revenge I did something incredibly stupid with the 911 system and he landed in the state pen for almost 3 months. When I was about to turn 18, after years of us going back and forth escalating our stupidity I came down with a sudden case of ethics, plead out to meddling with 911 so he would get released, plead out to fraud to reinstate his credit score, paid out compensation and received probation in family court forbidding me from touching a computer for 2 years. He also plead out to filing false police reports, fraud and harassment, was sentenced to time served, compensation and 4yrs probation in adult court. Both of us forbidden to touch a computer and go after each other. That was 8 years ago. It should have been over but he's still to this day trying to track me down from half way across the globe as both of us don't use real identities anywhere on the internet anymore and our real names turn up a black hole. Once in awhile I'll meet up with some old friends or employers when I come back to my old city for holidays and they'll tell me about how this sweaty-toothed madman keeps calling looking for me. I will also from time to time see various articles or comments written in my name which is him trying to lure me out of obscurity to resume our epic battle of the ages.
damian2000 14y ago
FYI here's a link to the upcoming book detailing his experience ... http://www.amazon.com/Give-Me-Everything-You-Have/dp/0374219079 http://www.amazon.com/Give-Me-Everything-You-Have/dp/0374219...
geoka9 14y ago
... And then she began again. James Lasdun is a writer who ... This essay is adapted from his new book, Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked, to be published next month by ... I can't help but feel that I've been had.
- DigitalJack 14y ago
  My feelings exactly.
- projectileboy 14y ago
  Essay != fiction. Magazines publish excerpts from books that are about to be published, or have recently been published. In addition, writers try to sell their work, whether it's fiction or non-fiction.
- klenwell 14y ago
  I have to admit I had the same feeling. In the book that inspired a movie based on a true story, Nareen is James Lasdun writing a memoir while stalking a student named Nareen.
- lambda 14y ago
  If you take a look at his Wikipedia page, you will find the kind of defacement he discusses in the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Lasdun&diff=191599529&oldid=191539044 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Lasdun&d... "He has no integrity. He sells students' fiction to half-assed writers for personal profit and political reasons and makes it obvious because he's a psychotic who hates women and loves money. He is a rapist and sadist." Now, while there's always the slim chance that he could have defaced his own page back in 2008 just to make it support a fake memoir about being stalked, it sounds a lot more likely that the stalking was real. This is a promotional excerpt from his book, designed to entice you to buy it. Yes, he leaves out the ending in order to get you to buy the book. That doesn't mean that the book is a work of fiction.
  - vitno 14y ago
    More edits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/71.138.91.76 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/71.138.91...
caf 14y ago
Basically, as Nasreen had discovered, you can pretend to be anyone you want when you forward an article, and she had decided to pretend to be my old program director. Does the general public really not realise that this is true of any email? Perhaps there's a need for some kind of campaign to remind the population at large that the From: address on an email is no more reliable than the sender address typed on the back of an envelope.
- monochromatic 14y ago
  I'd be surprised if most people know that. On the other hand, I do get spam from all manner of famous people who don't really seem like the type to be selling v1agra online... seems like people might connect the dots.
  - pyre 14y ago
    The double-edged sword of the effective spam filters on Gmail/Hotmail/YahooMail is that people don't see these too often anymore?
- lambda 14y ago
  Yeah, the general public really does not realize this. Or, even if they do, it's frequently not the first thing that they think of when getting an email from someone they know. You generally assume that the person is who you think it is, even if you know, intellectually, that there's a possibility someone could be impersonating them. Do you stop and think, for every email that you read, "hmm, maybe someone could have forged this"? No, you generally read it as if the person in the "from" address were writing it. Now, you might wind up being skeptical if it sounds ludicrously different from how someone normally sounds. But when it's someone you only know tangentially in a professional setting, and the stalker tones it down a bit and doesn't sound too outrageous, the stalker might be able to slip plenty of stuff by without you realizing; or even if you do realize it's not them, it may cloud your perceptions. Even when people can consciously identify a lie, it can change their perceptions later.
sakopov 14y ago
How does this relate to startups, software dev or anything remotely related to what HN stands for?
- chas 14y ago
  From the guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." It appears many people in this thread find this interesting (particularly in the ways technology interacts with stalking) so it is on topic.
  - anonymouz 14y ago
    Then again: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. I find this article to be in the "crime without any interesting new perspective" category, since the phenomenon of Internet stalking is old news by now, even for mainstream media. Then again, lots of politics and crime stories seem to be making their way to the front page nowadays and there's no way to vote against them except to flag. So maybe I should just hope we at least stay clear of sports articles, or switch news sources ;).
    - chas 14y ago
      I was thinking about that as I was posting that, but I thought this was generating an in-depth discussion beyond "crime without a new perspective" so it was okay with me.
- lambda 14y ago
  It touches on issues of anonymity and reputation on on the internet, as well as highlighting how non-obvious the flaws are in our identity systems to people who are non-technical. I think it's reasonably on topic.
- sophacles 14y ago
acak 14y ago
What resonated with me was the sinking feeling you get when you're defending yourself to a third party, thinking or knowing that the stalker has already put in place some counter-evidence to your rebuttal. It's important to develop a strong emotional instinct of conviction based on your own beliefs rather than the natural method of holding convictions viz. based on what is popular knowledge at that time.
cantankerous 14y ago
I think somebody should get James Lasdun on the horn and tell him to start using GPG on all of his emails....just sayin'.
chris_wot 14y ago
I recall when I was in Wikipedia that perverted-justice.org (or PeeJ for short) accused me of supporting paedophiles, and a whole bunch more. Luckily, I had been against the "Childlove Movement" article and wanted it changed significantly, and when they saw that they published an apology. Stalking can ruin reputations - it was a hell of a scary thing.
pja 14y ago
If anyone here is concerned that someone in their life might be a danger to them, I would encourage them to read 'The Gift of Fear' by Gavin de Becker: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0440226198 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0440226198
bane 14y ago
A coworker of mine met a guy from a dating site, had a lousy date at a TGIF/Applebees/etc's, decided not to pursue and ended up with a serious stalker issue. - Hundreds of texts over the next few weeks - She didn't provide her address to him, yet he ended up tracking her down over the next few weeks - He would drive 60 miles or so every morning before driving another 40 miles to start his 6am shift so that he could tape or nail a 10 or 20 page hand written letter to her door frame - She would routinely leave work to find him asleep in his car in front of her house - In a fit of rage over being ignored, he drove into and smashed down her garage door causing thousands of dollars of damage to her home - Several arrests later, his behavior hadn't changed She finally had to get a restraining order and have him arrested for violating it, the police contacted his place of employment and he was fired (he held a position with serious privacy and security restrictions, which is probably how he tracked her down) and to this day, a couple years later, she still has to look out her window before heading out to work to see if he's there. All of this over a single 90 minute meeting over food to discuss shared interests.

147 points by azakai 14y ago

DanBC 14y ago

> A deluge of e-mails poured into my inbox over the next few months. I deleted most without reading them. What's best practice here? Set up filters to route them into a special folder? You never have to read them, but you've kept them in case you need to go to the police and courts?

iloveponies 14y ago
More or less. The more evidence of all communication of theirs and yours, the more useful it is as either plaintiff or defendant in court.
mwetzler 14y ago
You have to check them periodically to make sure the situation isn't escalating. For example, if they start threatening physical violence against you, you now have something to use to take legal action. And it's good to know if someone is planning to show up on your doorstep. In my case, once the stalker started hitting my work email, my employer could step in and filter & review the messages for me (yeah, that was actually someone's job).
- eru 14y ago
  > You have to check them periodically to make sure the situation isn't escalating. For example, if they start threatening physical violence against you, you now have something to use to take legal action. I guess for your own sanity you should get a trusted third-party (like a friend) to check those messages for you.

jpxxx 14y ago

The only workable solution I've found: maintain absolute transparency with everyone in your various networks, and never, ever, ever respond to the animal in any way. It literally takes years for them to break off from the hunt, and there is no protection from their predation as long as they can still smell your blood. Your attention fuels their hatred and their psychosis. Notifying their family or friends is counterproductive - they have been programmed to treat their predator as a victim and will attack you as well, multiplying the threat.

dickbasedregex 14y ago
I kept thinking if her emails were as batshit crazy as the author states, why not just post all of them online. Buy a domain and make a big public display of what a whackjob this person is. Allow her to publicly hang herself. I suspect, as suggested in the comments, some or all of this is possibly fabricated for book sales? Otherwise, many of his responses don't make much sense. I think most would very quickly, and correctly, attempt to sue for defamation.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Name and shame seems like a good tactic, but you must understand that the animal is incapable of feeling shame or remorse - they have no reputation to uphold. There is only predator and prey. Their world literally does not extend beyond you, their food source. You are their obsession, and your existence (and suffering!) gives them their daily meaning.
  - dickbasedregex 14y ago
    Well, the article mentioned her attempts at being a published author? I would argue that reputation and financial ruin might put a crimp in those plans. Obviously, I don't suggest this as a first response... maybe the dream of being an author was the one thing still anchoring her to reality? I would seek legal council on the best method of just making her go the hell away (harassment charges/restraining order). If she persisted to be a thorn in my side, or I had no legal recourse to the harassment, then yes, attempt to ruin her. What other choice do you have? Just allow her to chip away at you for all of eternity?
    - illuminate 14y ago
      "I would argue that reputation and financial ruin might put a crimp in those plans." Delusions have never stopped a sociopath before.
- DanBC 14y ago
  It's not that easy. (http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/04/ff_koreanrapper/all/1 http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/04/ff_koreanrapper/all/1)

yarou 14y ago

I used to think being a professor was a boring and safe profession. Boy was I wrong! I hope his student can receive the appropriate mental counseling to live a more normal and fulfilling life.

btilly 14y ago
You never know what craziness is commonly found in the student population until it starts showing up in your office hours. Remember, if you deal with thousands of somewhat random people, you will have had to deal with dozens of seriously crazy people.

betelnut 14y ago

There was a similar story in Texas: https://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/former-u-of-texas-student-is-charged-with-stalking-professor https://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/former-u-of-texas-stud...

Gatsky 14y ago

I rememebr when I was about 13 years old my friends and I used ICQ to chat online. One of my friends had an acquaintance who thought it was amusing to 'hack' their chat client. It wasn't particularly complicated or malicious, but she would do it persistently every night and this made it impossible to chat. We knew who it was because they would quite openly brag about it. But we also knew who their dialup ISP was. So we faked an email written by the ISP telling this person to stop what they were doing or legal action would be taken etc. We just changed the 'from' address in the email from a throaway hotmail account. They could have easily worked out that the email was fake, but we figured they would be so mortified that they wouldn't get that far. We were right. The problem stopped immediately and never happened again. I can't help but think that this category of solution would be useful here, although there is a fine ethical line to tread...

marvin 14y ago
Also a legal line, since this is probably identity theft.

NoPiece 14y ago

I'm surprised the article didn't address the possibility that there was some mental illness involved. I assume the woman was in her early or mid 20's, an age where schizophrenia can manifest.

azakai 14y ago
My guess as well, and it's mentioned in the comments in the link. I suppose the author didn't want to speculate on her motives and so didn't mention this.

neltnerb 14y ago

This article was riveting. It's rare that I read such a long piece, but it's really well written. Particularly when it occurs that disturbingly, I have no better way to check the veracity of the words here than anyone else would of the words written by "Nasreen". Reminds me of Ghost in the Shell.

yock 14y ago

If such a story doesn't sell you on the ideas of rigor and corroboration, then there's probably no hope for you. Gripping, true or not, and a reminder that we often accept as truth far more than we should.

thomc 14y ago

It can be surprisingly hard to fight this. As the author notes, even if the ramblings of the stalker are so obviously crazy, it still requires people to evaluate whether you could have done said actions and whether it is a risk to associate with you regardless. My wife got dragged into a situation a while ago. She merely commented on a blog article about a man who had travelled to another country, got a woman pregnant, and then when the woman got sick and needed treatment, claimed it was a scam. In his mind it grew into a giant conspiracy. Anyone who didn't take his side was involved in this conspiracy, including the hospital, local business people, even the British Embassy was in on it apparently. And then my wife, for commenting on an article. I worked out that if you divided the hospital bill by the number of people he alleged were involved, they'd all make about $3 each. The local community rallied behind the woman who was disadvantaged and could barely afford the bill. They tracked her down, obtained proof from the hospital, took photos and posted them (with permission) thinking that would clear up the allegations. He started to look for evidence in every blog post, image, comment and forum posting. Where you look for a pattern, given enough data, you start to find them. He tweaked his conspiracy theory to fit the patterns he found, offering them up as evidence. My wife's name ended up on a "website of scammers" he created. He set up free websites on many services, created videos which he cross posted to every video sharing site (surprisingly effective), set up blogs dedicated to his ramblings. Eventually the community he was targeting with his hate had enough. Being computer literate they beat him at his own game, set up a domain that matched his real name, used masses of SEO and inbound links from networks of blogs they ran, and listed what he'd done on the website. Now whenever someone Googles his name or something related, they can see exactly what he's done. Since he worked as a freelance professional with schools, theatres and companies, this really was not good for him, and after that he seemed to vanish. I presume this was only effective because his own reputation could be used as leverage. If they have nothing to lose it would be a pretty bad situation, as the author has experienced. I have another anecdote about a friend who tried to raise money in his community for victims of a disaster, only to be character assassinated by a fake facebook account. He stopped raising money and cut himself off from the community which is a real loss.

btilly 14y ago

I've had peripheral contact with stalking on multiple occasions. I have two useful tips. The first one is that stalkers try to convince themselves that the object of their desire would love them back if they only had a chance. When they learn otherwise, desire can easily flip to hatred, then to attempts to destroy a life. Therefore if you are being stalked and can avoid letting the stalker know how you feel about it, do that. You can see that one in play in this case where she pursued him for years, without the nasty behavior, until she realized that he didn't love her. Then she turned vindictive. The second tip is that if you're going to stalk someone, don't stalk a psychiatrist. It is very, very hard for anyone other than a psychiatrist to get someone committed to an institution until after the stalker has committed a conventional crime. However if you're stalking a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist can, as a professional psychiatrist, evaluate you and decide to institutionalize you. And whatever institution you go to - which is generally associated with said psychiatrist - is likely to support the psychiatrist in that evaluation.

arcatek 14y ago
If you're stalked, is it possible to ask the opinion of psychiatrists before starting legal procedures in order to give more credit to your claims ?
- btilly 14y ago
  No psychiatrist is going to institutionalize SOMEONE ELSE because of YOUR testimony. No legal procedures exist to put down a stalker until after an actual crime has been committed. Really, really, REALLY liking someone is not a crime.
  - thereticent 14y ago
    Almost true. In most cases of stalking, you're right, because there is no evidence of mental illness. To your point--no psychiatrist will institutionalize someone on your testimony, but a judge might. Depending on the state, a judge can send a person on a 72-hour court order to a psychiatric facility on the basis of an affidavit from a concerned party. If you can convince the judge, which in my state is apparently not difficult, the person wins a psychiatric admission.

jacquesm 14y ago

Unfortunately this article is not an exaggeration. We deal with stalkers on a regular basis, cam sites and stalking seem to go hand-in-hand. If you're ever in the position of being stalked please do the following: - never ever respond to the stalker - save each and every message - pre-emptively alert everybody in your surroundings that they might contact, explain everything and make sure they also never respond, and ask them to alert you if they are contacted. - formally alert law enforcement - forward each and every message received, posting made and so on to law enforcement (yes, that can be a nuisance, and yes it can be embarrassing but if you want them to sooner or later take action they have to be aware of how bad it really is). Over the years this has dealt with the large majority of cases. The few that are not amendable (for instance, because you don't know who the stalker is!) are far more serious and will need a lot more work to resolve. The most important thing to remember is that stalkers feed on your attention and your pain, the more feedback they get from you and your environment the longer it will go on. If this happens to you (it has happened to me...) then I wish you much good luck and I hope that it will end sooner rather than later. One tactic that we have deployed that is quite effective is to counter stalk the stalkers and to expose them publicly. Stalkers are usually not first time offenders and likely will stalk again in the future. It helps to have them easily googlable.

damian2000 14y ago
Would it be a good idea to 'bounce' the emails back - i.e. send a fake "message was undeliverable" email status to the sender. But still keep the messages. That way they think that no one is reading the email and may give up, or at least try to find another way to contact you.
- mwetzler 14y ago
  It's worse because it's another form of attention, which riles them up. In my case, once I blocked a stalker on facebook, he started sending stuff to my work email.
- axelfreeman 14y ago
  If the stalker writes from the same adress, you can make a filter for that and bounce this automatically back + save the message, without reading them.

maeon3 14y ago

This book has everything you need to know to deal with these sorts of situations: http://www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Gavin-Becker/dp/0440226198 http://www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Gavin-Becker/dp/0440226198

tragomaskhalos 14y ago
Fascinating book, in which Gavin De Becker (the author) reiterates the advice of commenters here, to deny the stalker any form of feedback whatsoever. It also highlights how, as in the Lasdun case, it can be a completely banal and initially harmless social transaction that can spiral out of control.

hexonexxon 14y ago

I battled with a mentally ill stalker for years in a petty online revenge game that started as a joke on an IRC channel and a gamer forum when I was 14yrs old, and ended up being decided by the courts as both of us eventually resorted to highly illegal activities to screw each other over. We went from crapflooding and email bombing each other to him constantly phoning and writing everybody I knew or worked for and my school in an attempt to screw me over through the years. Every girlfriend I had he tried to fake pics of me 'cheating' on her and spammed their social accounts and email/phone. In turn I stupidly escalated and baited him through side channel attacking his box, wiping his drive countless times, hacking his blog countless times, and destroying his credit score through fraud. This goes on for a few years each personal attack gaining in pwnstastic levels of revenge. He even had badly packaged illegal drugs sent to me from overseas hoping customs would intercept it and bust me but somehow they arrived safely and for weeks I wondered how I ended up with a bunch of drugs in the mail. I then countered by further driving his credit score into the grave to the point collection agencies were after him and his family, and was able to wipe all his sites faster than he could put them back up again. At one point during this insanity when I was 17, he started filing fake police reports to have me purposely picked up on a Friday to serve time all weekend before I could see a judge and have the bogus charges thrown out start of business day Monday. For revenge I did something incredibly stupid with the 911 system and he landed in the state pen for almost 3 months. When I was about to turn 18, after years of us going back and forth escalating our stupidity I came down with a sudden case of ethics, plead out to meddling with 911 so he would get released, plead out to fraud to reinstate his credit score, paid out compensation and received probation in family court forbidding me from touching a computer for 2 years. He also plead out to filing false police reports, fraud and harassment, was sentenced to time served, compensation and 4yrs probation in adult court. Both of us forbidden to touch a computer and go after each other. That was 8 years ago. It should have been over but he's still to this day trying to track me down from half way across the globe as both of us don't use real identities anywhere on the internet anymore and our real names turn up a black hole. Once in awhile I'll meet up with some old friends or employers when I come back to my old city for holidays and they'll tell me about how this sweaty-toothed madman keeps calling looking for me. I will also from time to time see various articles or comments written in my name which is him trying to lure me out of obscurity to resume our epic battle of the ages.

damian2000 14y ago

FYI here's a link to the upcoming book detailing his experience ... http://www.amazon.com/Give-Me-Everything-You-Have/dp/0374219079 http://www.amazon.com/Give-Me-Everything-You-Have/dp/0374219...

geoka9 14y ago

... And then she began again. James Lasdun is a writer who ... This essay is adapted from his new book, Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked, to be published next month by ... I can't help but feel that I've been had.

DigitalJack 14y ago
My feelings exactly.
projectileboy 14y ago
Essay != fiction. Magazines publish excerpts from books that are about to be published, or have recently been published. In addition, writers try to sell their work, whether it's fiction or non-fiction.
klenwell 14y ago
I have to admit I had the same feeling. In the book that inspired a movie based on a true story, Nareen is James Lasdun writing a memoir while stalking a student named Nareen.
lambda 14y ago
If you take a look at his Wikipedia page, you will find the kind of defacement he discusses in the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Lasdun&diff=191599529&oldid=191539044 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Lasdun&d... "He has no integrity. He sells students' fiction to half-assed writers for personal profit and political reasons and makes it obvious because he's a psychotic who hates women and loves money. He is a rapist and sadist." Now, while there's always the slim chance that he could have defaced his own page back in 2008 just to make it support a fake memoir about being stalked, it sounds a lot more likely that the stalking was real. This is a promotional excerpt from his book, designed to entice you to buy it. Yes, he leaves out the ending in order to get you to buy the book. That doesn't mean that the book is a work of fiction.
- vitno 14y ago
  More edits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/71.138.91.76 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/71.138.91...

caf 14y ago

Basically, as Nasreen had discovered, you can pretend to be anyone you want when you forward an article, and she had decided to pretend to be my old program director. Does the general public really not realise that this is true of any email? Perhaps there's a need for some kind of campaign to remind the population at large that the From: address on an email is no more reliable than the sender address typed on the back of an envelope.

monochromatic 14y ago
I'd be surprised if most people know that. On the other hand, I do get spam from all manner of famous people who don't really seem like the type to be selling v1agra online... seems like people might connect the dots.
- pyre 14y ago
  The double-edged sword of the effective spam filters on Gmail/Hotmail/YahooMail is that people don't see these too often anymore?
lambda 14y ago
Yeah, the general public really does not realize this. Or, even if they do, it's frequently not the first thing that they think of when getting an email from someone they know. You generally assume that the person is who you think it is, even if you know, intellectually, that there's a possibility someone could be impersonating them. Do you stop and think, for every email that you read, "hmm, maybe someone could have forged this"? No, you generally read it as if the person in the "from" address were writing it. Now, you might wind up being skeptical if it sounds ludicrously different from how someone normally sounds. But when it's someone you only know tangentially in a professional setting, and the stalker tones it down a bit and doesn't sound too outrageous, the stalker might be able to slip plenty of stuff by without you realizing; or even if you do realize it's not them, it may cloud your perceptions. Even when people can consciously identify a lie, it can change their perceptions later.

sakopov 14y ago

How does this relate to startups, software dev or anything remotely related to what HN stands for?

chas 14y ago
From the guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." It appears many people in this thread find this interesting (particularly in the ways technology interacts with stalking) so it is on topic.
- anonymouz 14y ago
  Then again: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. I find this article to be in the "crime without any interesting new perspective" category, since the phenomenon of Internet stalking is old news by now, even for mainstream media. Then again, lots of politics and crime stories seem to be making their way to the front page nowadays and there's no way to vote against them except to flag. So maybe I should just hope we at least stay clear of sports articles, or switch news sources ;).
  - chas 14y ago
    I was thinking about that as I was posting that, but I thought this was generating an in-depth discussion beyond "crime without a new perspective" so it was okay with me.
lambda 14y ago
It touches on issues of anonymity and reputation on on the internet, as well as highlighting how non-obvious the flaws are in our identity systems to people who are non-technical. I think it's reasonably on topic.
sophacles 14y ago

acak 14y ago

What resonated with me was the sinking feeling you get when you're defending yourself to a third party, thinking or knowing that the stalker has already put in place some counter-evidence to your rebuttal. It's important to develop a strong emotional instinct of conviction based on your own beliefs rather than the natural method of holding convictions viz. based on what is popular knowledge at that time.

cantankerous 14y ago

I think somebody should get James Lasdun on the horn and tell him to start using GPG on all of his emails....just sayin'.

chris_wot 14y ago

I recall when I was in Wikipedia that perverted-justice.org (or PeeJ for short) accused me of supporting paedophiles, and a whole bunch more. Luckily, I had been against the "Childlove Movement" article and wanted it changed significantly, and when they saw that they published an apology. Stalking can ruin reputations - it was a hell of a scary thing.

pja 14y ago

If anyone here is concerned that someone in their life might be a danger to them, I would encourage them to read 'The Gift of Fear' by Gavin de Becker: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0440226198 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0440226198

bane 14y ago

A coworker of mine met a guy from a dating site, had a lousy date at a TGIF/Applebees/etc's, decided not to pursue and ended up with a serious stalker issue. - Hundreds of texts over the next few weeks - She didn't provide her address to him, yet he ended up tracking her down over the next few weeks - He would drive 60 miles or so every morning before driving another 40 miles to start his 6am shift so that he could tape or nail a 10 or 20 page hand written letter to her door frame - She would routinely leave work to find him asleep in his car in front of her house - In a fit of rage over being ignored, he drove into and smashed down her garage door causing thousands of dollars of damage to her home - Several arrests later, his behavior hadn't changed She finally had to get a restraining order and have him arrested for violating it, the police contacted his place of employment and he was fired (he held a position with serious privacy and security restrictions, which is probably how he tracked her down) and to this day, a couple years later, she still has to look out her window before heading out to work to see if he's there. All of this over a single 90 minute meeting over food to discuss shared interests.