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LadyConstanze -> RE: Insane stalker! (9/30/2010 9:58:38 AM)
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Having been stalked IRL for a few years, I can imagine how unnerving it is, in the end I even moved to another country (there were a few reasons for it but the stalker was one of them), I was freaking out, due to my job I was often not at home, the guy ordered about every magazine and paper, washing machines, TVs, what not, so when I got home after a week or sometimes 2 or 3 away, I had the pleasure of trying to sort the mess, telling the companies that I didn't order it, them doubting it asking me why I didn't tell them earlier, me telling them I was out of the country. The police at that time was less than helpful... Their advice was to send stuff back and to switch the computer off, oh and they wanted to know if he was a disgruntled boyfriend because no sane person would do that... Yeah duh, stalkers are not exactly "sane".
Honestly, it was an absolute mess, the guy was somebody from eBay, I had bought a little trinket from him for a friend and paid via bank transfer, so he had even my bank account (which made ordering in my name all that much easier), for about 6 years I had no clue who the guy was who spammed me with threats and ordered stuff for me, I changed the bank account (pain in the neck as I was freelancing and most of my clients had everything in their system, not to mention all the automatic payments I had set up, rent, electricity, blah blah, explaining to the tax why I changed accounts all of a sudden of course they thought something odd was going on and audited me, just what I needed, everything was in order but I could have done without that hassle), due to working as a journalist at that time, all he needed to do was google my name, some mags even had a masthead with pics, he did some rather wonderful photoshop work which he then sent to editors, family and neighbors - anybody surprised that my head ended up in porn pics? You can point out 100 times that it's NOT YOUR FREAKING BODY, by no means will I ever be over 6' tall and my tits aren't ginormous fake things the size of watermelons, but people will ask you "So what is really going on, he must have a reason to do this..."
The reason I found out who he was was simply that his spelling was really really off, and he used a phrase that was just grammatically wrong and I remembered that I read it somewhere before, then "Oh the guy I bought the earrings from..." Luckily I had his original emails (after the transaction he was a bit creepy and overly clingy, I mean if I buy something from an online seller, I don't really expect that person to be my best friend or treat me like his online girlfriend so I politely told him that I am too busy to have a pen friend), checked the IP, same as the threats and all, a good friend accessed one of the accounts (not exactly legal but I was at the end of my wits by that time, trouble sleeping, ulcer...) and the account was one that also offered personal storage space... Yeah, enlightening what I found, he had compiled quite a dossier, collected every picture of me that was floating about (ever since I won't even let friends tag me on pics), from then on it was fairly straight forward, hire private eye who will talk to him with another impressive big person and explain the error of his ways and that continuation of his harrassement could have painful consequences, cost me a small fortune but it was worth it in the end, just freaking knowing where all that shit came from even without knowing why anybody would do something like that was like a relief, before that it was all just shit happening left right and center without a clue as to what the source is.
It turned out that creep had googled me after the transaction, decided to be attracted and took my polite "Sorry, very busy" as a personal insult and figured I needed to be punished. Until this day I can't understand how anybody would dedicate 6 years of his life to make a stranger miserable for a perceived insult. I didn't reply, did nothing to encourage him (after all I had no clue who was doing all of this) and it didn't stop him, so I am highly suspicious about the advise to "just ignore stalkers and they'll give up".
Seriously, as long as it is only online, it's a small sacrifice to hide or delete your profile, make a new one, if you hide it I think you can even check your mails (ignore all mails from him, don't even delete, just leave them so he thinks the profile is dead) and make a new one and give all your friends the new address.
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