Definitely not mild, this is seriously infuriating
Consider Turning off read receipts so they will not know you saw the message. Control the data flow.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-read-receipts-on-or-off-iph5e713a045/ios
(I’m assuming they know you block them by the “read” in the chat program, if you reply to them, that’s different, and consider stopping that. Don’t give them any attention)
Get twenty phone numbers. Whenever you meet someone you know, tell them you changed your number because of this stalker and to give you their phone so you can give them the new number. Give each person a different number every time, until you reach twenty. Make a note of who got each number. Wait a week. If you weren’t contacted yet, do the same thing with 20 other people.
When you ARE contacted again, you’ll at least have a list of people who knew the number, if not the exact person. Then you put on a hoodie in a color you don’t usually wear, take a baseball bat to their head from behind, get rid of hoodie and baseball bat in a dumpster on the other side of town and enjoy the rest of your life.
Voip numbers you mean? Otherwise in the US it can be found thanks to data brokers
That went from lawful to chaotic evil real quick.
I’d argue it’s nowhere near chaotic evil, maybe true neutral (disregard law or morality as long as it benefits you), with arguments to be made for chaotic good (disobey the law to get rid of evil).
Hopefully doesn’t really need said but hitting someone in the head with a bat could result in charges all the way up to murder, so you probably don’t want to do that.
Hopefully also doesn’t need saying, but this is why you get rid of the bat in a dumpster across town.
What?! Oh god. Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck. I got to go.
This is not mildly infuriating, super infuriating. I am sorry that nothing came of the Reports.
I would agree. The best thing to do is as others have said. Disable read receipts and let them continue to get new numbers and wonder if they’re even getting through, document each one and the messages received but don’t respond. Keep the reports to police up to date with latest info. Even if they do nothing, it’s good to have a paper trail.
We’re all so lonely, won’t you give us someone to talk to? Post the unedited screenshot so we can all make a friend
Actually that would be really funny. Imagine they just get a ton of people contacting them to tell them to leave this person alone.
It’s better than signing them up for spam. We could add that personal touch
Haha and then they freak out and hurt or kill OP lmao that’d be hilarious and epic guys.
We did it, Lemmy!
/s
According to Crime Junkies Podcast, persistent stalking usually lead to violence or worse. Not to scare you but just expressing the gravity of the situation, as you already know. If police aren’t doing their job after multiple police reports, take it to your local news media and blast the police on their social media. This is force them to investigate, even if they’re pissed at you.
Plagiarizing and review-purchasing garbage podcast
what?!
Yeaaah they bought reviews to get popular and straight-up plagiarized a bunch of stuff from other podcasts and stories. There’s a podcast called “Let’s Taco ‘bout True Crime” with an episode called “Let’s taco ‘bout the crime junkie plagiarism scandal” that goes into it. Or just search “Crime Junkie Plagiarism” to find some great articles and threads. Maybe they cite sources instead of verbatim copying others’ work now, but I can’t stand to listen.
oh oh. I thought you were saying the comment was plagerizing true crime and I was like the stalking leading to violence thing has been around and is basically common knowledge. So that was my misunderstanding. it was all about the podcast and not about the comment or commentator.
Ooooo no worries!
The source may be bad, but their point is still true.
Bro cops never do shit in cases like these. Get a gun and be careful out there.
Caller: “I have a psycho stalker who keeps messaging me and I’m worried they’re going to do something violent to me”
Cops: “Call us after they harm you”
Caller: “I work for Blue Cross Blue Shield and a caller just said Deny Defend Depose”
“You’re a terrorist, you’re a terrorist, everyone is a terrorist!”
CPAC 2022: “We’re all domestic terrorists”
This is beyond mildly infuriating. I’ve been stalked and it was a bit traumatic, even though I don’t fit the profile of an easy target. I wish you had some clue who they are or some way to fight back.
Go to the police. File a report.
They’ll probably bs you saying they can’t do anything and to come back when something happens. and try to weasel out of a report.
But they’re legally obligated to take a report. start documenting this everytime it happens and get the courts involved. Cops are lazy. They have ways of tracking this down, but won’t unless they absolutely have to. Squeaky wheels get the grease because they’re annoying as fuck.
This- I assume it’s a dude- Is not safe and he can’t take a hint.
If the police continue to not do their job, hire an attorney (if you can afford one) to go with you. The attorney doesn’t even need to do anything except be a witness.
They tell you there’s nothing they can do because they don’t want to be bothered. And they don’t want their stats to go up.
Having an attorney present bumps it up to “being fucked by court duty is worse than doing some paperwork”. Likely nothing they can do but having the paper trail of a stalking report will help YOU should the stalker escalate.
You know, that’s a good point.
I just checked. Victims are also entitled to speak to a public defender- or anyone interacting with the court or the justice system- including cops. (a private lawyer will be way more effective, PD’s are… stretched thin and overworked. yet another thing that needs to be changed.)
Lawyers will also do free consults, so it’s worth it to at least call around to a couple of places and see how much it will cost. My partner had to do this once and one of the lawyers ended up giving us pro bono legal advice and making a call to the police just because he thought the whole situation was stupid. He was like, “I’ll call them and figure out what their plan is and then we can figure out if you even need to hire a lawyer.” (His advice after talking to the cops was that we probably didn’t need to hire him, but that there were a couple of things he could do if we still wanted to.) So that was a nice and unexpected resolution that wouldn’t have happened had we not tried to hire someone.
Tell the police he threatened a CEO and they’ll send the FBI after him before lunch!
Just a word of warning… don’t lie to cops…
That’s actually a crime and they love dinging people for whatever they can.
in any case, it’s not untraceable. it’s probably pretty easily traced. but it’s a matter of filling out some paperwork to get started and cops hate paperwork. (I hate this I hope OP stays safe.)
I know. I wasn’t being serious. Just trying to highlight the absurdity that this person is ignored when a CEO would get instant reaction. I hope the OP is ok too.
I think another posters idea to turn off read receipts was a good idea. Then the stalker won’t know if the message got through.
I wonder why somebody thought it was a good idea to make cell phones nark by default. read receipts was a dumb idea crafted by some middle manager from hell.
another option is to block unknown contacts from sending messages. IOS, the android/google messages and most messaging apps have a way to filter messages and just block anyone not in your contact list.
Is that an apple thing? My phone doesn’t do read receipts
You get read receipt For iMessage, not for regular SMS.
its apple to apple or android to android, I think.
I know IOS does it, though.
iMessage and android RCS clients do it, but normal sms on android does not. Then basically every other chat app has it too.
but indeed, if OP was a CEO, the FBI would take immediate action about it
Then I suggest OP hurry and become a CEO with a 7 figure income asap!
/J
They did file multiple reports with the police, who did nothing.
This has been my experience with the police too, any time I’ve needed help or something has happened that needed investigating, they couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger. The closest they ever came to being helpful was when I did their job for them and handed them all the proof, no charges but they talked the idiot who damaged my place into paying money for parts so I could fix what they did. The system is fucking garbage unless you are rich.
Then do the next steps, complain to the court directly, inform politicans and the press. Police not doing their job should be seen as a big issue.
Then the police start targeting you for being a pain in their ass. I see you are not familiar with this dance, you must be very lucky! Be grateful for your good fortune I guess but trying to hold a cop accountable can be a very dangerous game with terrible outcomes.
trying to hold a cop accountable can be a very dangerous game with terrible outcomes.
QFT
that said if you are a woman and know a corrections officer often times they are willing to trade violence for sexual favors.
Then fucking get out of that dictatorial hell and complain from a safe country
Sure, let me just grab my big bags of money to buy my way out and fund a lengthy, complicated immigration process on top of all the daily bullshit we have to endure every day. It’s not so easily done as so many people seem to think it is.
Yet millions of people from the arabics and Africa who don’t have an relativ easy way to get a work permit in the western world managed to do it anyway.
Btw reminder that your have the right to claim german citizenship if a ancestor lost it during the holocaust.
I hope you say the same thing to every citizen in every repressive regime around the world.
I absolutely would
like I said. the squeaky wheel gets the grease because it’s annoying as fuck. Keep doing it. Keep documenting it. Keep filing civilian complaints naming the officer explaining how difficult it was just to get them to do the report and they won’t do anything else.
it sucks. It’s awful. it certainly shouldn’t be this way.
Makes me wonder what the hell I pay taxes for…
It does, doesn’t it.
For more fighter jets, obviously.
To maintain the status quo.
The system was designed to protect the upper upper class from the rest of us. Everything else is a ruse to get us to sign on. Know the law, know your (lack of) rights.
I think less than five people know my real phone number. I have been using the same “Google Voice” number to forward to my phone since the service was called Grand Central (pre-Google buy out). It filters out calls and texts from disposable VOIP numbers by default. They go straight to SPAM. You can port your main number to Google Voice and forward it back to your current phone. You can also text and call from your new phone through Google Voice so the people on the other line still see your original number and only you know it has been ported.
Okay this is probably bad advice, feel free to ignore:
Why not pretend you are interested and pretend you want to meet up
Then get a bunch of trusted friends to go and “confont” this person (with baseball bats).
okay yea this could go very wrong, but it is an option
But real advice, carry pepper spray, and if you are in a country that permits firearms, get a gun to carry with you (if you are comfortable with handling firearms, that is).
As for the messages, you can block anything not in your contacts.
Filter messages from unknown senders
With iMessage, you can prevent unknown senders from texting you directly. Their messages are filtered to another folder, and you don’t get notified about them.
Go to Settings > Apps > Messages.
Scroll down to Message Filtering, then turn on Filter Unknown Senders.
If this setting is on and you’re missing a message, check to see if it was filtered to Unknown Senders. Tap Filters in the top-left corner of the conversation list, then tap Unknown Senders.
Note: You canʼt open any links sent by an unknown sender until you make them a known sender—by adding them to your contacts or replying to the message.
From Apple website: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/block-filter-and-report-messages-iph203ab0be4/ios
For phone calls (in case the person tries to call):
Send unknown and spam callers to voicemail
Go to Settings > Apps > Phone, then tap any of the following:
Silence Unknown Callers: You get notifications for calls from people in your contacts, recent outgoing calls, and Siri Suggestions.
Call Blocking & Identification: Turn on Silence Junk Callers (available with certain carriers) to silence calls identified by your carrier as potential spam or fraud.
From Apple website: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/block-or-avoid-unwanted-calls-iphe4b3f7823/ios
I keep seeing this “buy a gun” advice. Do you have any evidence that a gun will actually help? Your likelihood of dying to a gun and specifically that gun skyrocket, and there is little in the way of evidence for it being effective self defense (that I have found):
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/slightly-blighty/201601/does-owning-gun-protect-youI can understand wanting to feel protected and safe, but introducing an efficient killing device into the situation may not be the safest choice.
WTF?
Contact your carrier and tell them you are being harassed. They probably can tell you who it is and take action. If they can’t go to the police and tell them you are being harassed. You really should not tolerate this. It will only get worse and it is a burden on your health.
Don’t stop until you have results.
And this is why I enjoy being an average-looking nobody. So creepy!
I am so sorry you’re dealing with this. I don’t know if you’re comfortable doing it, but I would post the number. Each time they text from a new number, post it. Hell, make a new Lemmy community just for posting their number each time. on top of that, turn off read receipts. Between no contact from you and unceasing contact from others, they may eventually determine it’s not worth the effort.
Omg that’s fucking scary. Sleep with a knife under your pillow wtf. Police are useless sometimes. Sorry this is happening.
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Why are you Ok with this? I would walk into the police station and say you want this to end. It is surprisingly easy to get a restraining order.
Restraining order against whom? An unknown person using throwaway phone numbers?
You would first need to get there identity from the phone company.
This person texts admitting to stalking you, thensends texts admitting to bribing the police? Did you call the station with your tracking number to confirm this? Or take your copy of the report to another station if you did confirm it was buried? Those details will help round out your creative writing exercise here.
have you shown this to real life friends and family? people need to know to keep an eye on you and if you know who this person is, them as well. – oh also if its a local station and you talked to a person come back and show the response. likely they are full of shit and I will tell you that there are actually plenty of cops who want to protect and serve despite internet overall feelings on cops. I was stopping by once a week with videos of the gangbangers in a bad neighborhood and you could see the cops were not happy this shit was happening. Eventually the gangbangers learned that if they could see my house it could see them and they did not hang out in visual distance of it.
How long have they been messaging you? Are there other cases where they’ve indicated knowledge of “real life” events?
To me it seems more likely they’ve compromised your email or texts than that they got lucky and observed you going to the police station. If you mentioned in a digital communication to anyone that you were going to file a report, and the stalker compromised something digitally, then they would know.
For the stalker to actually observe you going to the police they would have to be pretty dedicated to watching your home, which is both risky (that they could be seen) and labor intensive.
If you drove there, it’s conceivable that they put a tracker on your vehicle.
Probably doesn’t need saying but I think it’s extremely unlikely they have sway over the police or made a report disappear. It’s easy enough for nothing to happen in the normal course of business.
Lastly, do you live with someone or have a close relationship with someone that you don’t get along with? If you’re experiencing “real life” interactions with this stalker seems more likely it’s someone you know rather than a complete stranger.
Vehicle trackers are cheap and common enough. OP should definitely check for that.
Jesus christ. I’m wondering I the stalker is a cop 🤔
Have you have an interaction with a cop recently (before the stalking started)?
That’s sadly not uncommon.
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Bruh, that is so fucked up.
I’m not sure if there’a any way to get out of this.
What does the press in your country look like?
Maybe talk to journalist?
I wonder if any of the devices (assuming you still have them) might be a route to identifying where and when they were purchased.
The phone’s IMEI number for example, is unique to that specific device - so in theory there ought to be a way to find out exactly who sold it, where, when and ideally to whom.
Not that this is something for you to do yourself, but it could be a line of enquiry for police or (as I suggested in a previous comment) a lawyer.
You should send the cops ever-increasing stalker messages. See what their reaction is. /s
