Hi there. I am hoping to get some advice on what I can do about this. I could write a book about what’s taken place so far. This started in November when I got a couple of anonymous emails. Definitely not routine, but I didn’t think much of it. I’m active in the online blog community (Xanga, Myspace, etc) and that is where the harassment started the next day (Xanga) I turned on the “lock” feature on my Xanga days before, which requires people to be signed in to read what I write. This anonymous person began creating a new account every time he/she viewed my site, just so he/she could be logged in and read what I wrote. I would estimate they’ve created over 100 accounts to date. The first few messages were just asking to turn off my “lock” and to guess who it was. From there, this person started posing as others (me and friends) trying to cause problems, made sarcastic? threats, claimed to have seen me at work, claimed I had looked tired, etc. They singled me out the first several months. Every now and then they’d create a new account and stay with it for a month at the longest, but they would try to act like a completely different person, but I knew better because of what my tracker told me. I am familiar with IP addresses, etc – so I can tell it’s the same person.


I work and have a life outside of this, but based on what this person has said and done, I’ve put a lot of effort into finding out who it is. I have printed logs from several of my friend’s sites (with their permission of course) I’ve done a lot of IP tracing, etc. During the school year, they were logging in with a UMKC connection between 10 AM and 12:30 PM and an SBC Connection at night. Given UMKC (a college in KC, Missouri) is a pretty direct clue, you’d think that would have made the job a lot easier. There is just one problem. I don’t know anyone who attends there! You can even search for students who go there on the homepage, and I’ve had no luck. It’s unbelievable and so irritating. Here is what I have done about this so far, and the results. Again, I apologize this is so long…


-Contacted their ISP – No Response. (3 times) Finally they said they warned the person. Coincidentally, my computer got ravaged the next day and I had to do a recovery. I’ve had my computer 5 years and I’ve never had to do a system recovery.

-Xanga – No response the first two times, then they finally responded and told me I would need a police report for them to even look at what I was saying.

-Phoned local police (Twice) – They told me to contact my local FBI, and gave me a #.

-Local FBI – They said it’s criminal, but not severe enough for them to take the case and to pursue things again with their ISP and the local police.

-UMKC – Without a police report, they can’t do anything. They are taking my information in case a report is filed and they need to investigate.

-FOX NEWS – Yes, Fox news called me (from California) wanting to do a story on Internet harassment, and they wanted to interview me. The person I talked to, who was the Sr. Producer of Fox in LA, California, gave me some good advice but I never heard anything back about the interview. It was a CA #, but coincidentally the next day the person harassing me deleted their account they had been using trying to pose as someone else for a couple weeks. Obviously this would not be the last I’d hear from them, however (this occurred in February).

I’ve since phoned the local police again, and they said I might be able to make a “general information” report. I failed to mention that I’ve even received a death threat recently, and had to file a report – and there is a possibly that the two situations are related, though I highly doubt it – it’s possible.


That’s where I was as this continued throughout the months. I dedicated many hours to trying to figure out who this is, who obviously knows me pretty well. They have been real good about keeping their identity secret (amazing I haven’t figured this out yet) and they generally just log on, read my page first, maybe a few friends (and have recently started doing the same thing to one of my friends) and that’s all. They started off leaving me feedback all the time, and now they are random on when they give feedback. A lot of times they will just create a new account and read everything, and never use the account again. This person doesn’t generally write any blogs with the random names they create, but if they do, it will be something like “I hate snow”, when the weather is generally sunny outside. They do this to try and conceal their identity. This person lives close to me, as I can tell by the IP. We even have the same ISP. This person has previously went to my site and taken a 10 question hard quiz about me. They received the second best score, getting 7 of 10 correct! They either have read so much of my blogs, they know a lot about me or they simply know me well. I’ve had several suspicious people come to my site since this began, including a 60 year old man who wanted to have dinner with me (I’m 24). A former friend is suspicious and I know he’s always wanted to read in the past what I write. I don’t know anyone who goes to UMKC, or where there is a connection to UMKC, but they obviously have some sort of connection there. Even during UMKC’s spring break, the logins from there stopped, and after it was over the logins began again.


There are several reasons I want to find out who this is. Number one is obviously safety. This person just is not going to stop. I work at a job where it’s my job to anger people (taxes). There are some people (mainly ex boyfriends of my current girlfriend it seems) who have a real problem with me and it could be them as well. I’m also curious. I don’t know who would want to do this to me for so long and be so against me they inconvenience themselves nearly every day to try and get on my Xanga site. In addition to the obvious reasons, I’m really focusing on figuring out who this is because since this has began, I’ve had over 7,000 episodes of viruses/malware/spyware on my system and also received a death threat. Though all of this could be coincidence, I don’t know if I should sit around and see as it all eventually unfolds.


So to sum it up, I have someone apparently wanting to play some serious mind games with me and it’s been going on too long now. I don’t seem to have much I can do at this point, and I feel stuck. I’m not out to seek revenge or continue in some big cyber war, because like most, I don’t want to or have the time – but what I would like to do is figure out who this is. I’ve thought about re-creating myself online, but unless my friends did as well, it would not do any good. I have even tracked this person on my Myspace, but it’s restricted to friends only. I have all the information from day one that I’ve tracked and I really don’t know what I can do. Can anyone offer any advice? What should I do?