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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#1 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 5:50 AM Last edited by Thranduil Oropherion : 2nd Jul 2015 at 8:01 AM.
Default Online Stalker - Ever had one?
I am madly curious to know if anyone has had an online stalker and what you did to put them off the scent? Also, what do you do now to protect yourself from it happening again?

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Mad Poster
#2 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 6:57 AM Last edited by VerDeTerre : 10th Dec 2015 at 9:47 PM. Reason: It was late at night and I was so out of it.
That's so creepy! I can see how you would dismiss or try to minimize certain behavior and not fully recognize what it is or what's happening. The antidote to that is to look more carefully when something is bothering you and try to tease out its source. In this case, she did cross a line and before that, wasn't it the amount of communication and pushing of barriers before it was the right time to do that? I think people often think or tell themselves that they are imagining things that are happening to them.


*Edit* If indeed this story is true. Certain revelations cause me to question everything you say.

Addicted to The Sims since 2000.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#3 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 7:16 AM
Yes, it's human nature, I feel, to think the best of people until you realise that the gut feeling you have isn't actually wrong.
Theorist
#4 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 7:35 AM
Quote:
I shared some things about my life (1st big mistake)
and my real identity (2nd big mistake)
I get a friends request from her on FB, I accepted (3rd big mistake)

I think that 2nd mistake was your first mistake. You didn't know it would or could happen, but stage 5 clinger alert should have blared loudly when she found your facebook. I think you could use a bit more paranoia. Never had anything like that happen to me, but my gullible aunt let some SolarCity guy into her house and onto her Gmail account on her laptop and he changed her password reminder number to his cell phone number.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#5 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 7:42 AM Last edited by Thranduil Oropherion : 2nd Jul 2015 at 8:00 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by Shoosh Malooka
I think that 2nd mistake was your first mistake. You didn't know it would or could happen, but stage 5 clinger alert should have blared loudly when she found your facebook. I think you could use a bit more paranoia. Never had anything like that happen to me, but my gullible aunt let some SolarCity guy into her house and onto her Gmail account on her laptop and he changed her password reminder number to his cell phone number.


Looking at it that way, you're correct. Absolutely correct.

My best friend said I was asking for trouble when I started giving her attention via our talks and my listening to her woes - but where does doing what is in your nature to do end and where should guarding yourself start?
Mad Poster
#6 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 11:04 AM
I'm generally careful what I put out on the web, and I also have a very closed Facebook with only people I know as friends. I've only had a couple of minor episodes of 'stalkers', in that they were more like annoying forum followers than actual stalkers. They did their best to annoy me, though...

A few base rules, for the future:

Scholar
#7 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 11:08 AM
Yeah, I had this problem a few times in the pre-Facebook era and it was also through online games/forums. Though it never got to the point where they knew any personal information (I usually have good instincts about what people I can trust), it was still a headache when you'd go onto the forum or AIM and see a metric quackton of messages and PMs to you.

My solution was to become a conspiracy theorist and respond with these massive rants about monsanto, the illumanati, nafta superhighways and so forth. They listened for a while, but eventually, the allure of stalking a total headcase faded and they stopped communicating.

So I guess my solution is that you overwhelm whatever appeal you have to them with pure crazy. It's a form of table-turning that gives the power back to you.

Heaven's Peak, my CAW WIP
Instructor
#8 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 12:33 PM
It was one of the reason why I deactivated my Facebook a few months ago (even though I re-activated it yesterday).

Basically it was this middle school professor. He worked (I don't think he's there anymore) at the middle school I went to, which is also where my father teaches.
He tutored me in greek and latin when I was in high school and that was the only time I had anything to do with him until a few months ago.
He adds me as a friend out of nowhere, a request I don't accept. Then he starts messaging me asking me how I am doing and telling me I am cute. I don't answer, and a couple days later he's like "Is that your boyfriend in the pics? he's also cute, we should meet up" and all this kind of creepy shit so at this point I block him.

A week later, my cousin texts me saying this guy asked him for my number (which obviously my cousin didn't give)!!

Later, I also discovered that a couple years earlier this man had an affair with one of my best friends when he was under-age! I didn't know whether I should be mad at the man or at my friend for letting such a creep take advantage of him.

I kind of wanted to tell my father about this because this man used to work with him but I never got to. I know I should but the guy doesn't work there anymore, anyways. Plus, I'm afraid he would make too big of a deal out of this, when perhaps it's not such a serious matter.

THIS WORLD IS FUCKED UP

Me, me, me against them, me against enemies, me against friends, somehow they all seem to become one, a sea full of sharks and they all smell blood.
Scholar
#9 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 1:00 PM
I'm glad that i never have experienced something like that! That's fucking creepy! O_O
Good thing i'm not on Facebook or Twitter or what ever...
Theorist
#10 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 3:11 PM
I've never had a stalker that stalked me because they like me, I lack the looks and charisma for that.

I have had a stalker that harassed me because I banned him from my forum for picking fights with others. He would create new user IDs and send me harassing PMs, which only got worse as I or one of my moderators would delete all his new accounts.
He then started to harass me on other forums, sending me PMs there. Eventually, he got ahold of my email address and would send me harassing emails. Finally, he tracked me down in IM and would harass me there as well. This was in the early 2000s and went on for a span of maybe 5-years. Out of the blue a few years ago, he sent me a FB friend request, but I declined it. Fortunately, nothing happened after that, though I was concerned because anyone who would keep up a campaign of harassment for years seems rather unstable, and he is or was in the military and the idea of an unstable military guy seemed even more concerning.

To this day, both Facebook and LinkedIn send me friend suggestions and every other time, he is on it. Every time I see him on it, I get a little concerned he may be getting similar emails and will decide to start harassing me again.

Resident wet blanket.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 3:17 PM
I've had two. A maniacal ex-grilfriend, and some man I met on a fan-forum, whom started stalking every post I made, just to wait for a chance to make himself look foolish by trying to counteract my logic. I have no idea how the second came to fruition, but I'm certain it was relative to me posting something he found offensive.

Because the earth is standing still, and the truth becomes a lie
A choice profound is bittersweet, no one hears Cassandra Goth cry

The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#12 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 4:12 PM
I've been bothered a few times with persistent people but I don't think I'd describe it as stalking. They've taken the hint when I either say NO or just don't respond. I don't hide the fact that I'm a woman online and sometimes that can be an issue with certain types of men and boys but I'm middle aged and it makes me laugh in secret (if they realised just who they're talking to) rather than harrasses me.

I have strict rules about what I allow and don't in various places. I have a real FB page but as my students link to that and it's visible to my employer it's ultra bland. I use it to talk to students and to my nephews and a good friend in the States. I never really post anything personal there that isn't in a PM (or whatever the FB equivalent is). I have a 'secret' FB page for gaming (shouldn't say that out loud I suppose as you're not supposed to do that). I speak to people on there who I've known online for years but we're a fairly select group. I use my gamer username there (this one I have here too). The people on FB know who I am as it happens but as that information never really gets mentioned and my contacts are limited via that source anyway that's worked out fine with me. I use this username on most forums I visit. It's not my real name, obviously, and though I will talk about my life (my job for example), I never give out actual details. Works for me. I should think it's a fairly horrible experience to have someone be so persistent they become threatening though.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Guest
#13 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 5:10 PM
On the usenet I had a guy say he was going to hunt me down and kill me because I said that Star Trek physics wasn't real, warp drives weren't real. I explained how special relativity worked.

My landlord in Gradschool wanted to kill me because I was a physics major. He was on about how matter was evil and light was good, and I studied matter. I left that apartment but I had to fight to get my cleaning deposit back.

Also in Gradschool, a guy phone called up the physics department. As a TA, I had to take the call from the "public who supports us". Really, I think the department secretary didn't want to mess with him or hand him off to one of the proofs, and grad students? Who cares about grad students? Anyway, the caller said that God told him how to build a perpetual motion machine in a dream and that I am required, by God, to build his machine. I told him as politely as I could that he was describing the unbalanced wheel perpetual motion machine, and the physics is quite clear why it wouldn't work. Right. Death threats. Kinda creepy because he knew who I was and where I was at.

As a joke, my gay buddies took me to a gay bar without telling me as a joke.Okay, one of them was straight like me... I figured it out eventually after two guys asked me to dance with them. Met a lot of nice people, including the guard/bouncer hired for security. A week later she and two guys were murdered in the parking lot of that bar. They were beating two guys up and she came out to stop them. That was almost 40 years ago.

People have strong passions and beliefs, and you never know what those beliefs may be or if they will want to kill you for them. I tend to stay away from those folks who foam at the mouth with hate for someone else. All you can do is hope they get over it.
Mad Poster
#14 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 5:35 PM
I'm not sure but I have a weird story (Spoilering because it's quite long):


There's way more weird parts of the story, but I could spend all day talking about it all. There's so much to suggest it was my cousin and that he's just messing with everyone, but to this day he still really insists that it wasn't him. Plus the girl herself seems kind of stalkerish and weird too about how she added everyone in my family and such. Either way, I've become very careful about who I give out information to from then on and I've been very careful to make sure even with extensive googling knowledge you won't find much about me. I keep my usernames very generic, the types of things that when you sign up to a website you usually get 'that username is already taken' (I usually use stand names or arc names from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, so they are slightly consistent however), though I try not to get too paranoid about it. Some websites I will occasionally mention my real name, or like take a picture on the 'Face to the name' thread but I make sure not to give enough information away for someone to stalk me.

~Your friendly neighborhood ginge
#15 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 9:52 PM
This is why I try to avoid giving my real name to people on the internet. It can be (very) dangerous.

Life is paradoxically coincidental to the ironical tyranny applicable to the unparalleled definition of reverse entropy.

"A thunderstorm breaks the wall of darkness." - Lyrics to Storm

"Meh." - me
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#16 Old 2nd Jul 2015 at 11:16 PM
Thank you everyone for your responses, everyone one of you made such thought provoking contributions. It was certainly an eyeopener to read what others have experienced - it is a sad world where we have to hide who we are and proceed with much caution. It also saddens me to think that gestures of kindness, such as accepting people we don't know into the potential friend area of our minds, can be so twisted and taken as an invitation for more (as in the cases of both @pizza and myself).

Many offered great advice, for which I am grateful - the people of MTS can be awesome
Forum Resident
#17 Old 3rd Jul 2015 at 3:48 AM
While I didn't have stalkers, I had online penpals turn out to be attention seekers faking sicknesses and skills. One, actually.

I was in touch with a Russian who claimed she ran a little patisserie, was a good artist, had heart trouble, and had some problems with a deadbeat dad. Gave her a listening ear and all the stuff you do as a friend. She got hired for AdventureQuestWorlds as a game artist due to her art. A year later, another acquaintance of mine found something suspicious.


Avatar model: Shi Gaik Lan / Atroxia "Jade Orchid" Lion (Source: Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires).
The Four Stars (Table of Content)
Mekageddon, the Interactive Story. (Remake Discussion) (Dev Tumblr)
Instructor
#18 Old 3rd Jul 2015 at 4:23 AM
I'm glad I've never had a stalker! I've met some annoying people online, but nothing ever persisted for more than a week or so.

I'm generally pretty careful about what I share online...

Awhile ago I had a Skype contact from Australia with whom I would play Minecraft, but it was so difficult to ever play together due to the time zone difference, so we mostly just played message tag. It was so difficult to remove her from my contacts because she was really nice, but it got so tiresome being completely unable to have any real-time discussions.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#19 Old 3rd Jul 2015 at 5:29 AM Last edited by Thranduil Oropherion : 3rd Jul 2015 at 7:09 AM.
@TheOriginalFive the link here is that the woman I had problems with had alleged real life problems - I notice your Russian had a deadbeat father - the woman I am referring to had an alleged abusive boyfriend and the most fucked up childhood you can imagine - I wonder if 'pity' is something used to draw us in? Sadly, it drew me in. I was stupid to try and help. She saw my 'help' as my having feelings for her which I most certainly did not have.

I think the thing affected me the most about this woman is how she involved my partner and to be honest, one of her texts to my partner caused tears first and then doubt about our relationship in my partner's mind and I hate myself for that, because if I'd just ignored the woman it would never have made my partner cry. That's the bit I can never forgive.
Top Secret Researcher
#20 Old 3rd Jul 2015 at 6:53 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Thranduil Oropherion
@TheOriginalFive the link here is that the woman I had problems with had alleged real life problems - I notice your Russian had a deadbeat father - the woman I am referring to had an alleged abusive boyfriend and the most fucked up childhood you can imagine - I wonder if 'pity' is something used to draw us in?


I once met a guy online who complimented me incessantly, tried to arrange a meetup after one hour of talking, and claimed he was being raped by ghosts. He tried to talk to me several times after that, but I didn't pick up after the first conversation.

Do you think I dodged a bullet there?

My MTS writing group, The Story Board
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#21 Old 3rd Jul 2015 at 7:04 AM
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
I once met a guy online who complimented me incessantly, tried to arrange a meetup after one hour of talking, and claimed he was being raped by ghosts.


... .Bless him .....

Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
He tried to talk to me several times after that, but I didn't pick up after the first conversation. Do you think I dodged a bullet there?


#22 Old 3rd Jul 2015 at 7:44 PM
I've never had a stalker myself. Is it because I ramble sometimes? I dunno. I'm actually much shyer and quieter in real life, but mention cats and I'll tell you all about mine and show you pictures of each of them.

Life is paradoxically coincidental to the ironical tyranny applicable to the unparalleled definition of reverse entropy.

"A thunderstorm breaks the wall of darkness." - Lyrics to Storm

"Meh." - me
Field Researcher
#23 Old 3rd Jul 2015 at 8:34 PM
I've never had an internet stalker before and I guess I'm really lucky, because I've had quite a lot of internet friends in my teenage years (I guess that makes it last year and before that?) and they all knew my full name and some had me on my facebook.

Now that I'm talking about this, I just remembered that my best friend at the time and I knew exactly where each other lived (I'm talking about the actual house we lived on google maps). Damn, I'm really really lucky, and dumb.
Field Researcher
#24 Old 3rd Jul 2015 at 10:16 PM
I haven't had an internet stalker, and until a year and a half or two years ago, I didn't participate in forums, either (I don't have social media, so no problem there). I'm hoping I don't get a stalker... So far I've broken rules 1, 2, and 3 simmer22 mentioned (blushes).

1: NEVER give your real identity when you're using an anonymous forum, and be extremely careful elsewhere, too. (I did once we started e-mailing)
2: Don't give out your exact whereabouts. (I've given my city)
3: If you feel like sharing personal information, talk about it in a way that does not give away your identity. (just talked about my life and stuff, no different from forums, really)

To be fair, he has done all of these, too, but of course, you can't be 100% certain anyone online is telling you the truth, either. We've been talking for half a year, now. We're actually working together as critique partners and it hasn't progressed further than that, so I'm actually not worried. Let's just hope I'm right. Still, though, I should have been a bit smarter. I don't think it'll get weird, and if anything, I'm the one exhibiting clingy tendencies (I just get really in-depth with my critiques... I'm always thinking he's overwhelmed by them or something because my e-mails to him are long). So far, no weird things have popped up. I still have to remind myself to be careful, though.
Mad Poster
#25 Old 3rd Jul 2015 at 11:24 PM
I was a fucking idiot during my teens and I'm probably not much better now quite frankly. Still share my real name and picture, but I'm much more careful with my location and am quicker to use ignore/block functions. After telling someone to go fuck themselves, that is. When Myspace was all the rage, I made an account and added a bunch of strangers because I liked their pictures mainly. I also accepted friend requests from people I didn't know.

Well I got a PM randomly one day from a guy whose friend request I accepted but never spoke to, and he said that he was too shy to talk to me and had registered a second account simply to say that he really liked me. I don't know if it's because I was surprised by either how sudden it was or because of my own lack of self esteem, but when I read it I thought it was some sort of bullshit chain mail going around, so I responded to ask if that was the case. He told me that no, it was all genuine, and we got chatting properly, and he told me which account on my friends list was his.

One of my problems is it doesn't necessarily take me very long to consider someone a friend. A few pleasant conversations online and I'll consider you a friend, even if I don't actually know who you are as a person, and that's what happened with this guy. So because I thought of him as a friend and figured he saw me as one too, I ended up confiding in him. Nothing overly serious, but I did admit that my sister had died just a few years earlier.

I don't really remember exactly how things went to shit, but he really wanted to date me and eventually went full nutjob on my inexperienced ass. If he wasn't talking about his interests in being my boyfriend, he was saying about how he'd make a hate site about me, claiming that my family and I had molested my sister, gave me a fake url for what he claimed was said site. At one point he sent me a message saying that he had a question he wanted to ask me but was too scared to ask me outright, and that there was a picture clue on his secondary account, the one he first talked to me on, so I went to have a look.

His display picture was of a fucking engagement ring.

So after a moment of mentally imploding and calling my housemate over like FUCKING HELL IS HE ACTUALLY PROPOSING TO ME, I messaged him back because I am an absolute idiot. He clarified that he wasn't proposing to me right there and now, but that it was a possibility for the future. Nope nope nope nope nope nope. He also asked me to go over to Texas to spend a couple of weeks with him, where he promised that if I decided I didn't want to stay he would totally let me go home no protest. Yeah uh, I might've been a 17 year old dumbass but I still had some braincells. Even I could've figured that since he'd kicked such a fuss over me not wanting to fuck him when we're in two different countries, if I actually flew to the other side of the world for a two week holiday with him, I'd be lucky to make it back alive.

I blocked both of his accounts after that, and then he made another to message me with. Didn't reply, just immediately blocked. So he made another. And another. And another. Rinse and repeat for quite some time, and then he changed tactics and emailed me instead, apologising for everything, and saying that he'd been wrongfully diagnosed as bipolar, which just served to piss me off more that he was using mental illness as an excuse to be a complete prick. Blocked his email and he got the hint and left me the fuck alone. Haven't heard from him since!

TL;DR: BL00DIEDHELL was a teenage Myspace idiot and it done bit her right in the arse.

Quote: Originally posted by Graveyard Snowflake
I've never had a stalker myself. Is it because I ramble sometimes? I dunno. I'm actually much shyer and quieter in real life, but mention cats and I'll tell you all about mine and show you pictures of each of them.


Cats.
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