When I first got my own domain and had up just my Sailor Mercury fansite I encountered a very creepy stalker-ish person. This person who called themself “Dave” would send me emails and messages to my guestbook talking to me as though I was the anime character Mizuno Ami, telling me that they knew all about ‘me’ and ‘my’ mother. At first the messages were amusing and I figured they were a joke, but as they went on he really started to get creepy. I wrote to him and pointed out, “You know this is a fansite. Ami really isn’t a real person,” and then I got an e-vite to my wedding to him, and a message saying that I should wear hot pants and take pictures of myself, and that he knew where I was so he would still see me even if I didn’t take the pictures.
Right before that I had written him the email explaining once again that I was not Mizuno Ami and she was not a real person I had also emailed my web-hosting company (drak.net) and asked them if they thought I should report this person or if there was some way I could stop them from getting in touch with me.
They had his IP address logged and we submitted his commentary to his ISP and my hosting provider blocked him from being able to message me. Luckily for me that was all it took for him to leave me alone; other people have not been so lucky with online harrassment and stalking.

There’s been the very public case of blogger Kathy Sierra (Why Death Threats are not Protected Speech) which a Washington Post article on cyberstalking. A fellow postie was interviewed for that article and also for a “Good Morning America” feature on the issue, given they having been stalked and slandered for five years.

There are several problems which arise with the issue of cyber-stalking. On the technological side screen shots of comments and messages can be digitally altered so proof is considered hard to come by. I know when I was sending proof to my host I had to forward emails with full headers and timestamps because screen shots were unacceptable.

However, the worst problem with online stalking comes because a lot of law enforcement agencies consider online threats to not be real. I was commenting to someone else this morning that I find it interesting that tons of information is being invested in protecting our youth from the online threat of pedophiles, but yet someone stalking a blogger is not considered to be as
threatening or dangerous.

There are many, many ways that people can find information out about you online, which if they had enough of an obsession they could use to track you down and do you harm, just as others attempt to lure young children. I feel that law enforcement agencies should know this because they use many of these same tools to track down people who have warrants against them.

At what point is the line going to be drawn?