What is the worst thing done to you on a forum?...

[Oscar]

Mine Is this:



When I joined a forum 2 years ago, I be-friended a long standing member there. I did notice that no-one else posted with that person but did not think much of It at the time.



I eventually fell foul of this member and cyber bully as many many others had because I asked for a little space due to my husband being so ill. I just could not keep up with the messages and E Mails I was bambarded with on a daily basis. There was no news In all thes messages just hate filled bile about other members.



Since then, this member who has never met me and actually lives In another country to me, has messaged members on my regular forum that my husband Is not terminally ill but Infact I have made It all up to get sympathy and make friends...



How sick can one saddo get?

 

[Jazzy]

I would say that the worst thing that EVER happened to me was to become a victim of a cyber stalker. Didn't know the true meaning of that until it happened to me. The cyber stalker pretends to be your friend and in the beginning is what seems like a very nice person. Then you start to notice changes taking place. They start to want your full attention at all times. They want you to hate the people they hate. They then start sending emails asking where you are and what you're doing. If you ignore even one of the emails sent, they send others asking you didn't you get any of my emails today? It then esculates into emails that contain copied and pasted private emails from other members that have said nasty and vile things about you. Then they start to tell you lies and tell you who to reply to and who not to. They follow you from forum to forum. You get to the point that you are truly afraid to make them mad. You play along and keep them as friends because, IMO, it's better to know where your cyber stalker is at all times. Then there comes the breaking point where you can no longer take it. When you confront them, they go berserk and that's when the real trouble begins. They contact all of your friends and start sending them false emails that you've said about them. The only way to end it is to know your true friends would never believe a word they have to say. I personally have had to block and change my email address. My life has been pure hell for years and I'm taking back MY life.



In ending, I would have to say that I hope you are very careful who you give your email address to. Also do NOT give out any personal information to someone you really don't know.

 

[The Dragon Master]

Both of those stories sound extremely scary and I hope this never happens to me.

 

[Oscar]

I would say that the worst thing that EVER happened to me was to become a victim of a cyber stalker. Didn't know the true meaning of that until it happened to me. The cyber stalker pretends to be your friend and in the beginning is what seems like a very nice person. Then you start to notice changes taking place. They start to want your full attention at all times. They want you to hate the people they hate. They then start sending emails asking where you are and what you're doing. If you ignore even one of the emails sent, they send others asking you didn't you get any of my emails today? It then esculates into emails that contain copied and pasted private emails from other members that have said nasty and vile things about you. Then they start to tell you lies and tell you who to reply to and who not to. They follow you from forum to forum. You get to the point that you are truly afraid to make them mad. You play along and keep them as friends because, IMO, it's better to know where your cyber stalker is at all times. Then there comes the breaking point where you can no longer take it. When you confront them, they go berserk and that's when the real trouble begins. They contact all of your friends and start sending them false emails that you've said about them. The only way to end it is to know your true friends would never believe a word they have to say. I personally have had to block and change my email address. My life has been pure hell for years and I'm taking back MY life.



In ending, I would have to say that I hope you are very careful who you give your email address to. Also do NOT give out any personal information to someone you really don't know.

24 hours later you notice hem following another member who Is not so wise to them all over the board. Within 3 days, they have written on that members thread ' I am waiting for you to answer my E Mail' and then you know they have their next victem.

The following day you see they have posted on that members thread again and this time It says... 'You haven't been on Facebook... where are you'?... You wonder If you should warn this member or let them find out the hard way.

Then the member E Mails you asking how to get rid of them.........

 

[Jazzy]

[quote name='Jazzy']I would say that the worst thing that EVER happened to me was to become a victim of a cyber stalker. Didn't know the true meaning of that until it happened to me. The cyber stalker pretends to be your friend and in the beginning is what seems like a very nice person. Then you start to notice changes taking place. They start to want your full attention at all times. They want you to hate the people they hate. They then start sending emails asking where you are and what you're doing. If you ignore even one of the emails sent, they send others asking you didn't you get any of my emails today? It then esculates into emails that contain copied and pasted private emails from other members that have said nasty and vile things about you. Then they start to tell you lies and tell you who to reply to and who not to. They follow you from forum to forum. You get to the point that you are truly afraid to make them mad. You play along and keep them as friends because, IMO, it's better to know where your cyber stalker is at all times. Then there comes the breaking point where you can no longer take it. When you confront them, they go berserk and that's when the real trouble begins. They contact all of your friends and start sending them false emails that you've said about them. The only way to end it is to know your true friends would never believe a word they have to say. I personally have had to block and change my email address. My life has been pure hell for years and I'm taking back MY life.



In ending, I would have to say that I hope you are very careful who you give your email address to. Also do NOT give out any personal information to someone you really don't know.

24 hours later you notice hem following another member who Is not so wise to them all over the board. Within 3 days, they have written on that members thread ' I am waiting for you to answer my E Mail' and then you know they have their next victem.

The following day you see they have posted on that members thread again and this time It says... 'You haven't been on Facebook... where are you'?... You wonder If you should warn this member or let them find out the hard way.

Then the member E Mails you asking how to get rid of them.........

[/quote]



The only advice I can give is to warn others. If they listen fine and if they don't, they are just another knotch in the cyber stalkers belt. The only way out is to stand up to them -or- report them. Cyber stalkers are not anyones friend they are SICK!

 

[beowulf]

one reason i am careful who gets my personal email addy or FB addy



i have witnessed cyber bullying and harrassment many times.........best advice is always report them mods/admin...........mostly they are already aware of the bullys ways and if they are worth the name of mod, they will ban them





worst thing to happen to me was an american mod took a serious dislike to my sig and went off on one at me.........thing is my partner is also a mod and we both 'know' the admin better than the offending mod knew...he couldnt grasp that i knew the admin on first name terms and that we chat on msn

....the mod does have a rep for being hotheaded and so got a bollocking off the admin





the really weird thing is we now get on well...............he went thro some shit last year (both mother and mother in law died within a month of each other although i didnt know that til later).....i sensed something was wrong cos of the way he was posting and dropped him a pm.....poor guy openned up to me, ended up chatting by pm for a while....he was seriously stressed out....took my advice



i also had a guy (american again

...spotting a trend here) who didnt get on with a lot of people........one of those people who is never ever wrong about anything............cast your mind back a few years to the follow up of when an American jet killed some British soldiers in a blue on blue in iraq and the Americans wouldnt give up info like the cockpit recording (they said they didnt have them, then they did, but they wernt giving them cos it was non of the uk's business, then when they did it proved the pilot was wrong).....this guy basically blamed the uk cos we 'speak funny'

...and we didnt do any thing right and should keep out of the Americans way...etc etc etc...basically slagged off the uk military............it hit a nerve with me and someone else...........almost ended up with the 3 of us getting banned, thread locked

.........after that the guy was always out to try and discredite me any way he could......kind of pissed me off although it was fun at times cos everyone else would turn on him and defend me

..........eventually he was banned after another run in doing something bad..............................he went off to another forum where me and a few others tracked him down and had some fun

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

My old forum got hacked. Someone figured out my password or something and got control of my account.. They proceeded to ban all the staff, delete the forums / posts, send out a mass email advertising their site, redirect my forum to their forum when people went to it... Luckily I do backups regularly so I just set up the forum again and it was all back to normal the next day.

 

[Cranos]

Nothing bad has ever happened to me.

I've never even been warned...

 

[Ashley]

My old forum got hacked. Someone figured out my password or something and got control of my account.. They proceeded to ban all the staff, delete the forums / posts, send out a mass email advertising their site, redirect my forum to their forum when people went to it... Luckily I do backups regularly so I just set up the forum again and it was all back to normal the next day.

To this day, I still remember your incident, Nebulous. I remember coming on to FA one day, I can't remember if I was going to bump up my advert topic, request a package, or what I was gonna do, but I came on and saw that the board was shut down, and I'm like, what the heck? and then the board was back up the next day. Don't remember what you're announcement (if you posted one) said that time either though.

 

[GivingUpPop]

Accidently had something inaproprate in a cut and paste. Didn't catch the cursing in a rather funny joke of a religious nature. And I posted it in some christian forums and it wasn't appricated.



Also posted some porn accidently because I went dot com instead of dot org. Luckly I caught and edited right away.

 

[Ashley]

The worst experience for me wwas when Chatting Time was on advanced hosting the first time around. We ended up getting hacked twice. Not a fun experience and it took quite some time to get everything patched up and back together again. We did have a backup, although it still took a while.

 

[Cinnamon]

Good grief, we're not safe anywhere. My worst experience most closely resembles Jazzy's story although I never befriended my stalker. She was an online friend of one of my (in real life) best friends. When she found out he had other friends (oh shock) she couldn't handle it and proceeded to stalk his friends, myself included. She eventually limited her stalking to a few of us. A real psycho, that one. My friend wanted to end his online friendship with the psycho and she wouldn't have any of that. Being rejected, she proceeded to post his real name and place of employment, etc., on the internet to get his attention as she said. Then she started posting that she couldn't wait until he died. Just a nut. The worst part of this is that the stalker is a married woman with young children who seeks out men day and night. She was fired from a long time job because of her internet activity at work. The last I heard, she's trolling the internet with sob stories of how lonely she is and that she doesn't understand why she has no friends. FFS. Beware! Beware!

 

[McConnaughay]

Whenever I was nine, I started a website called Hardcore Tornado Wrestling Creation and was quickly garnering members almost astonishingly however, one of those days I was advertising on another wrestling website and somebody offered to merge with me and I quickly declined for that isn't something I could see success being brought it which resulted into a fight. Months later, he registered on my website with a slightly altered user name posing as a regular member, he made me a banner utilizing components from the original banner and I decided to use it. I eventually caught on to who he was an banned him and he would quickly rejoin, as I didn't know how to IP ban, and threatened me with a lawsuit it was actually well formulating and honestly looked legitimate however, as again I was nine years old and I would have believed anything anyway, and he said the only way that he'll not sue me was if I unbanned him. Which I obliged to immediately, but later he created his own website entitled Hardcore Tornado Wrestling Creation, at which was precisely emulating mine and whenever I asked him to close it down, he'd casually say that he'd tell his members that the site weren't affiliated. He and his buddies would eventually continuously spam my forum with little to no remorse thus provoking myself to leave forums for a couple of months upon returning to get rid of him and move fourth with things, however, even after almost six years he still messages me from time to time, with a casual, Go kill yourself or something motivating.

 

[Cinnamon]

Geeez, Wes, I think you caught yourself a stalker.

It's pathetic. Do stalkers even shower, eat, change their underwear? What a pitiful group.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

My old forum got hacked. Someone figured out my password or something and got control of my account.. They proceeded to ban all the staff, delete the forums / posts, send out a mass email advertising their site, redirect my forum to their forum when people went to it... Luckily I do backups regularly so I just set up the forum again and it was all back to normal the next day.

Well that happened again recently. This time it wasnt a hack on my account, it was a due to security holes in the software itself. Which is why I had to ditch that software. I was already thinking about it for a while but that was the straw that broke the camels back.

 

[Ashley]

Well that happened again recently. This time it wasnt a hack on my account, it was a due to security holes in the software itself. Which is why I had to ditch that software. I was already thinking about it for a while but that was the straw that broke the camels back.

So was it a case of everybody being banned, like last time? I just remember coming on and getting an error message this time around.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

So was it a case of everybody being banned, like last time? I just remember coming on and getting an error message this time around.

For someone to ban someone, they'd have to have control over a staff member's account.

 

[Wolfy]

Nothing bad has ever happened to me. At least nothing like what other members here have experienced.

 

[Cinnamon]

Good for you, wolfy! Hope it stays that way for you.



~~~~~~~~



Perhaps this post doesn't belong on this thread because it certainly wasn't anything bad, just odd.



I had something strange happen to me on a board I joined about 2 months ago. When I first arrived, it appeared the board was a busy and fun spot. Didn't turn out that way -- not busy, not fun. lol (ooops, I didn't check it out well enough before jumping in.) There were more mod's posting than anyone else and most of them were of the 'angry' sort. lol But, like most boards, there were some genuine and nice people there too.



So, back to the beginning of my short stay there, immediately upon joining I got a friend request from someone. Nice enough. Then I got a bunch of public 'visitor messages' and lots of PM's from the same lady. I was still thinking - nice enough. The PM's had lots of questions, some of which I answered, the generic ones. I then received 4 gifts from her and I was still thinking, nice, friendly. Well, my inbox got full of messages from her and I couldn't reply to anyone else without deleting my inbox. I couldn't keep up with all the daily PMs from the same lady and started replying just to one or two a day. I still didn't think it was strange, just thought she was a very friendly poster who reallllly welcomed newcomers. However - here comes the strange part.



One day, overnight, for reasons unknown to me, this lady unfriended me and deleted all her visitor messages to me. I guess the board didn't allow her to take her gifts back, lol, and they stayed. I never asked her why and she never told me. Never talked again.



Serious case of easy come, easy go ... but a mystery. lol

 

[Reap3r]

I was in the middle of a rivalry between my forum and a forum I used to post on. The forum I used to post on had a sudden change in staff where the head admin was banned and a new head admin was chosen. It was a complete screw job especially because the old admin was the one who got the site its success in the first place and the new one hadn't been on the site in over 2 years. Anyway I took advantage of this, I brought the old admin over to my site along with his followers. My small website had now become a decent sized community. Everything was going great. My rival forum was failing and we were doing better then ever. One night as all the staff members on my site were busy watching a UFC PPV one of our Super Mods turned on us. He banned every member on the forum except for the Admins since we obviously had more power then him, then deleted every post we had ever made. Now the sad thing is that this person was actually a friend of mine for quite some time and did this all because he was promised he would get a Admin position on the other site. When I came back and saw what had happened I just gave up on forums because there was just too much drama involved. All the members I had gained went back to their old forum and I was stuck with a few loyal ones who wouldn't go anywhere unless it was my forum. I started a new forum after a few months but never garnered as much success as I had before.