[californiajim]

Hello,

I am currently being harassed by a person I used to chat with online and via texting. We initially began by texting, "sexting", and just making small talk. We never developed a serious relationship by any rational means and after a while my messages got less frequent. I was not interested in anything serious but I genuinely liked their company though so we kept small chatting. Besides a few voice messages, we never even talked on the phone properly. This person first confronted me asking why I had not taken the relationship seriously. I told them we are not in a relationship for a number of reasons, I just wanted to chat and see what came of it. So we continued. Recently, this person asked when are you going to start a relationship with me and I told them I did not want to do that. I stopped replying and they created fake accounts to contact me and asked others to contact me as well. I told them that I am sorry if I may have given them false hope and that I am sorry for any other wrongdoings of mine. I told them we cannot be in a relationship and I do not wish to be contacted. I have since not replied to them.

Now the person is constantly harassing me saying mean, hurtful, and degrading things. I blocked them everywhere that I could and on facebook (they were not my friend but after these messages, I full on blocked them). This person immediately knew I blocked, which leads me to believe that they are stalking me constantly. Before uninstalling my application, I received 10-20 messages daily of this. I am sure they are still sending them but I am not reading them because I cannot bring myself to do it right now.

This is a very uneasy feeling. I am concerned this harassment will continue and that they will find new ways to harass me. I am digitally checking out for a while, simply monitoring some things to make sure all is okay but I am very concerned. Since this person lives in another country and we never met, the legal ramifications, I am assuming are slim. What is the best way for them to just stop harassing me and get them to leave me alone at this point?

Thank you all.

I've been stalked online. What I ended up doing was shutting down all of my accounts that he knew about. Really, that's all you can do.

In the future, never give your real name out to anyone you meet online. Create anonymous accounts that do not have your real name. This includes email, social media, etc. Maybe your name is generic, but mine is not. My last name is very rare and I could be found in a heartbeat if someone knew my last name. The only account that has my real name on it is Facebook, and I only add people as friends if they know me in real life.

Make new accounts, and carry your friends with you. Its a pain, but once you create these more anonymous accounts, you'll be safer from the stalker and you'll keep yourself safer from future online harassment.

As for legal ramifications? There are none. Or maybe there are some, but actually enforcing them is quite difficult. My online stalker wasn't in another country, just in another state. Fortunately changing my accounts was enough. (How could it not be enough? At that point he had no means by which to harass me.)

It really does suck when this kind of thing happens. People think I'm paranoid regarding my level of anonymity online, but this kind of thing is why I try to leave as little of an online foot print as possible, and stay as anonymous as possible.

[Molinit]

Get off all social media.

Change your phone # if you are receiving texts.

[californiajim]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for the recommendations. I think it is the best thing as well to get off all sorts of media. That will be the first step that I take and then I will see if it escalates thereafter. It is really just terribly concerning knowing that someone is so much looking at every move you make. I was lucky enough to keep my distance at the outset. But I suppose a facebook deactivation and a new phone number may be in order. I am a bit worried that this person will then take it to more extremes to search for me though. Perhaps messaging random people on Facebook attempting to find me. Any other advice or support would be greatly appreciated.

Really the situation is very awful and very concerning. I am really just trying to manage things day by day at this point.