

"I Will Ruin Him" – How it feels to be stalked - azakai
http://chronicle.com/article/I-Will-Ruin-Him/136693/

======
hexonexxon
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.

~~~
sgdesign
This sounds like it would make a great book or movie.

It's scary to know you can send someone to jail for 3 month, but at the same
time knowing how you did it would be quite interesting.

~~~
hexonexxon
Wouldn't make a good movie. Lol IRC troll warzzZ

Because he was never able to defend his xp winbox against me getting inside
his home lan by constantly falling for obvious side channel attacks (I'd
pretend to be a girl interested in him, link him to my fake personal blog
which was actually full of IE exploits back when they went unpatched for
months) I had a lot of time to poke around his home lan and eventually I
discovered he was stealing his neighbours wifi for some of the harassment
against me so it wouldn't trace back to him.

This neighbour had a VNC port open, which at the time was exploitable so I
started it up and enabled my xp backdoor on that system too as another attack
vector. The original plan was to start doing some MITM attacks I was just
learning about he wouldn't notice while thinking he was untraceable through
stolen wifi, but then I got stupid and impatient. Note: I was no master
hacker, the exploits I had were merely downloaded off shady forums like
shadowcrew. I was an idiot with just enough knowledge to be dangerous at the
time.

When he changed ISPs under a new name so I couldn't track him I just logged
into his neighbours network where I left the door open and waited for him to
connect to the stolen wifi. Re-owned his fresh system with a new permanent
backdoor, set up a whole toolbox of spyware, and proceeded to do a bunch of
illegal shit under his name like using his card which I had gleaned from a
keylogger to buy illegal sex tourist vacations from very obvious fake FBI
sting sites so somebody would start monitoring him (i have no idea if they
did, I assume they did). Interesting note, when I stole his card, he was using
it on his fresh install he thought was secure to pay for a data report on me
from one of those information clearing house sites.

The emergency system attack was just using the same VNC exploit. Somebody on
shadowcrew discovered they were using it and was daring other hackers to break
in which pretty much guaranteed an instant bust if you were stupid enough to
do so. This was E911 with admins using printout logs and checking them daily
not a restaurant to fleece credit card numbers from where nobody will notice
you for a year or so. We all made our own temporary vpns and used disposable
sim card dongles and wireless hacking but still you'd be playing with fire
screwing with E911.

Naturally this was perfect for what I needed and when I assumed the feds had
started watching this guy I accepted the 911 bounty, logged into his system,
connected through his neighbors wifi leaving a huge trail of identifying
cookie crumbs to follow back to him like opening up his hotmail and yahoo
accounts which would've all been logged when they looked at his neighbour for
the breach, and proceeded to absolutely trash around their network trying to
get somebody to notice and yanked some database tables.

Then I left a nice package of evidence for the cops to find in his system that
was poorly hidden, cleaned all traces of me being on his neighbours system,
cleaned all traces of me being in his network, and for good measure went
online using his browser to attempt to sell the info on every carding forum
there was to attract even more authority attention.

When I heard on the same game channel where the troll battle began that the
reason he disappeared for almost 3 months was because he was in jail, I
gloated my victory like a fool to my hacker friends on IRC who told me from
their own experience he was probably looking at being transferred to federal
and doing serious time in the double digits, which I could not let happen in
all good conscience, even if I absolutely hated this guy so turned myself in
figuring since I was underage I could probably slide on my stupidity by
transparently admitting to everything and hoping for the best. Thankfully I
received the Cosmo of UGnazi crew sentence and not the Kevin Mitnic solitary
confinement revenge sentence.

Now when I google my name I just see the crazy baiter troll battleship
nonsense he's written over the decade in my name with obvious references he
knows I would understand to let me know it's him and to pick up where we left
off. There's a hundred posts the latest one was Sep 2012.

~~~
gknoy
Did you perchance enjoy playing Uplink?

Also, kudos for clearing his name of the stuff you did on his behalf. That
shows some real strength of character, IMO.

------
jacquesm
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
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.

~~~
axelfreeman
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.

~~~
jacquesm
A bounce is a response. Don't bounce.

~~~
okamiueru
An automated response is entirely different. The the bad part about responding
personally is showing it affects you, however minutely. An automated response
that it was not received takes away that crucial motivation quite effectively.

~~~
jacquesm
An automated response is information. It says 'I won't see this'. It shows you
cared enough to set up an bouncer. Which in turn says that you were annoyed.
Which is a pay-off. So it will result in a redirection of effort, not in
reduced motivation.

~~~
okamiueru
I thought we were talking about in the long run. Setting up a bouncer is
something that would take you a few minutes at most. I'm by no means an expert
in this matter, so I can only pretend to be a stalker, and see how it would
make me feel. If I thought the person received my emails, which I'd be certain
of if I already knew the person, and already had conversed with the person
through the email, "no response" would to me mean "he is ignoring me, but
still receiving my messages". If I got a bounced back message I would think
"shit, he blocked me. I'd better send from a different email address". I'm not
sure which gets the most pay-off, I guess it depends on the stalker, but
redirection effort means they have to do some effort. If you collect evidence
of effort to stalk you, for little or no effort on your own, I'm sure that
doesn't hurt either in proving your case.

~~~
illuminate
"If I got a bounced back message I would think "shit, he blocked me. I'd
better send from a different email address". I'm not sure which gets the most
pay-off, I guess it depends on the stalker, but redirection effort means they
have to do some effort."

You're talking about someone who's extremely mentally ill and ungrounded in
reality. I'd be worried about them putting more effort in.

------
btilly
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.

~~~
mwetzler
I've experienced that flip. It's scary. I should have never rejected the
stalker.

I've been told, and believe, that the only course of action for the stalked is
to COMPLETELY IGNORE the stalker, until something threatening and legally
actionable happens.

Anything else you do, positive or negative, simply adds fuel to the fire.

It really sucks and makes you feel helpless, but the legal system simply
doesn't offer any refuge for stalking victims unless it passes a certain
threat threshold.

After about a year of ignoring him, my stalker got bored. But I still fear his
return. I got a single tweet from him about 6months ago that made me worry for
a bit, but it was just 1 single tweet and didn't continue.

~~~
rwmj
In the UK, stalking is now specifically a criminal offence (since late last
year):

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20482930>

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
That law does seem like it would be effective, but it also seems hugely broad.
Just reading it it seems like you can accuse anyone of "stalking" even after
contacting you a couple of times...

I'm not saying such laws aren't good, I'm just saying that the way that
particular one is written means that it couple potentially overly criminalise
a lot of situations.

~~~
rwmj
It wouldn't be the first time that something has been over-criminalized, but
you can read what the Home Office is saying about the new measures here:

[http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/corporate-
publications...](http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/corporate-publications-
strategy/home-office-circulars/circulars-2012/018-2012/)

Note that because this was introduced as a "patch" to a 1997 act, it's very
hard to understand what the law now actually says. If only they'd use version
control ...

------
thomc
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.

------
jpxxx
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.

~~~
gosu
A mentally ill person - even one who is criminally so - is still a person, and
not "the animal". Maybe you're just trying to hammer home the predator/hunt
thing, but it still sounds really wrong to me. Whatever bad thing happened to
you, don't let it corrupt your own sense of humanity.

~~~
cantankerous
It's easy to say that from the sidelines. I think it's a small price to pay
for maintaining your sanity while its under siege by a mentally ill person. So
long as you're not harming anybody, who cares how you frame your aggressor?

~~~
vacri
Framing them in an appropriate way is significant. Framing them as a mentally
ill person can help _you_ cope with what's going on, because it helps you
understand what's happening. And while it's not nice, humans deal much better
with things that they think they understand (cf: origins of religions)

Framing them as a cunning predator that can strike mysteriously and who knows
where the next attack vector is, well, that's just feeding the paranoia - and
playing into their hands.

Besides, if your goal is to react as encouraged above and remain as
dispassionate as possible, framing them as mentally ill helps put you in a
mood of pity (or even compassion), whereas framing them as an animal suggests
that they must have battle done to them.

EDIT: Not to mention just the basic humanity of seeing humans as people who
can have problems, instead of simply writing off people wholesale if they take
a wrong turn.

~~~
illuminate
"Framing them as a cunning predator that can strike mysteriously and who knows
where the next attack vector is, well, that's just feeding the paranoia - and
playing into their hands."

But it's true, in a way. You can't really assume much about the limits of a
person who's willing to take their own life down to assume control over yours.

------
geoka9
_... 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.

~~~
lambda
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&d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Lasdun&diff=191599529&oldid=191539044)

"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
More edits:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/71.138.91...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/71.138.91.76)

------
NoPiece
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
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.

------
caf
_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
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
The double-edged sword of the effective spam filters on
Gmail/Hotmail/YahooMail is that people don't see these too often anymore?

------
bane
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.

------
DanBC
> _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?

~~~
mwetzler
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
> 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.

------
Gatsky
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
Also a legal line, since this is probably identity theft.

------
neltnerb
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.

------
chris_wot
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.

------
acak
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.

------
damian2000
FYI here's a link to the upcoming book detailing his experience ...

[http://www.amazon.com/Give-Me-Everything-You-
Have/dp/0374219...](http://www.amazon.com/Give-Me-Everything-You-
Have/dp/0374219079)

------
yock
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.

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

------
yarou
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
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.

------
pja
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>

------
betelnut
There was a similar story in Texas:

[https://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/former-u-of-texas-
stud...](https://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/former-u-of-texas-student-is-
charged-with-stalking-professor)

------
maeon3
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>

~~~
tragomaskhalos
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.

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

~~~
chas
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
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
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.

