Need Help!! I'm Petrified

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2006
Need Help!! I'm Petrified
6
Wed, 12-27-2006 - 8:42am

Hi all,

I really need your help. This is regarding the person I met from the other state. I wont go into specifics, but all i'm going to say is things took a very different turn and something very bad happened last night. This person has made it obvious that they have certain connections and that they have been seeing exactly what i've been doing online, how many times I visit sites, what sites, when, etc etc. This made me petrified. We had a bit of a falling out over me accusing him of lying about something, then I was proven wrong and after I sent him some messages and an email, he said he would call me possibly that night. My intention was to leave him alone. I even deleted his number from my phone and deleted all messages and everything to make sure I didnt call him anymore. Then at 1am I started getting texts from a strange #. Basically what happened is the guy sent my messages to a friend of his and asked him to send me a message with a very cruel (supposed to be funny) recording on it making reference to a "rejection hotline". The hotline came from a # from his state, so I knew it had something to do with him. Keep in mind, this is waking me up at 1am and scaring me to death thinking i'm getting in trouble. Then I received a message FROM my phone # TO my phone # (and also i'm guessing to this friend of his) asking "when did you send her the text". I then saw what was going on, and that he had this done to me. I couldnt fall asleep until 5:30am and I had to be at work at 7:30, and I am still thinking about this. I am scared because now I see that this guy has the power to see all this stuff i've been doing all along, and god knows what else he knows. I will just say that he has very powerful connections that mustve gotten him this info (it was all true). Now I have this horrible feeling that i'm being watched, not to mention the cruel joke that was played on me. I dont know what to do.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-08-2006
Wed, 12-27-2006 - 9:19am
And before you say to report it to his ISP or the police, I seriously doubt that would do one bit of good because he is VERY smart with this stuff because of his career. He made certain it was well planned so that it cannot be connected to him in any way. It is not coming from his ISP. It is coming from some strange mail provider that I never heard of, and they used a phone number that is not affiliated with them in any way. They did a good job of making it so that it cannot be traced back to him. In fact, they made it look as though ONE OF THEM WAS SENT FROM ME TO ME!!! That is what I cant believe. Plus, he did not threaten me in any way. He just sent me a cruel joke in a text message.
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-21-2004
Wed, 12-27-2006 - 9:36am

Change your phone numbers and have your IP address changed - if you call the companies that provide these services to you and explain what happened, they should have some sort of protocol to follow to help you.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-06-2006
Wed, 12-27-2006 - 9:59am

Hi,

I'm not familiar with the background of all this, but you sound really upset and I wanted to send you a hug and some reassurance.

What he is doing with phones and e-mail addresses is clever hacking, but it is not something that can't be traced back to him IF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT PEOPLE WANT TO BOTHER. The problem is that it is usually easier to just let it go.

As far as his tracking down what you were doing, if he had access to your computer in some way, it is fairly easy to figure out where you have been. Another way is simply to google. (Just googling by your user id, AIM name, Yahoo ID, etc. can sometimes get all sorts of stuff about you online.) SO he may not have more access to info about you than most people, he just knew how to use it.

To feel a little safer, you might do some or all of the following:

1. Change your phone number.
2. Shut down all your OLD profiles for a while. In a few weeks, you can re-open your profiles with (a) different user names and (b) a different "main" picture.
3. Change all your online accounts and user names. Delete your yahoo, gmail, hotmail, AIM etc. accounts. If you can't delete an account, just let it lie dormant and open new accounts. When you open a new account, do not use any of your old e-mail addresses as backup.
4. Start keeping records of your contacts with this guy, e-mails received connected to him, etc. Eventually, you may have a police case. But hopefully, he'll just lose interest in harrassing you soon.

Good luck,

Elsa

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2008
Wed, 12-27-2006 - 10:33am

Sorry you have to deal with this.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-15-2005
Wed, 12-27-2006 - 3:36pm

Calm down...relax. The dude is how many hundreds of miles from you? (This is the same guy whose phone/email you blew up when he didn't call, right?)

Sounds like he's just trying to get a rise out of you...and it's working.

But if you really feel unsafe, get a report on file with the police and inform his employer he's abusing access to whatever it is you think he's got.


iVillage Member
Registered: 05-31-2005
Wed, 12-27-2006 - 9:26pm
You've gotten excellent advice, I'd just like to add one last thing... it is possible for a person to send you a text and make it look like it's from your phone by them typing it in online. All the major cell phone providers allow for this... Hope this puts your mind at a little bit of ease.