My friend and her kickstarter campaign is getting doxed (promise, no links)

sweetme

So, a friend of mine is kickstarting a body positive documentary. Some person took her video treatment/promo and butchered it and put it on youtube. She got youtube to take it down for copyright infringement (or something of that like). The person who butchered said promo got mad and started harassing her on twitter, encouraging his 4k youtube followers to do the same). He/she then started harassing her by calling her home, her husbands workplace, her family, and having pizzas sent to her home. Then he/she posted her contact information (phone, address, husbands place of work, etc...) and the contact information of all of the people participating in the documentary. As if that wasn't enough, they started going after all of her kickstarter backers and doxing them as well. He/she is doing everything in their power to make sure that this documentary isn't made.

She has called the police and they can't really do anything about it. I'm just wondering if anyone has any ideas of what can be done. I've done a bit of google warrior-ing to see if I can figure out who this person is, but they've covered their tracks pretty well. All I've really been able to figure out is their Steam gamer tag. Oh yeah, btw, this person who is harassing my friend? He/she is a gamer. I feel so betrayed.

Several of my online friends and I have repeatedly reported this person to twitter and to the site that they posted the personal information of the doc creators and backers, but to no avail. The bully is still on twitter, still on youtube, still on pastebin.

I know that body positivity and fat acceptance can be very controversial topics, and I'm not here to convince anyone to support the cause. But I think we can all agree that the world needs less internet bullies. Any advice?


<I didn't know if it would be appropriate to post any twitter handles or anything, but please feel free to ask if you are interested>

The Ender

Unfortunately, if the police are unwilling / unable to help, there is not a lot you can do to stop the harasser. You can change your contact information, block them from communicating with you, etc, but if they already have things like your physical address, it's basically impossible to stop them from, say, sending pizza to your doorstep. This is why it's important to protect that kind of information.


I would not recommend trying to 'track down' this person and basically engage in counter-harassment. It's unlikely to be productive.


All you can realistically do is wait for them to become bored, take the experience as a lesson in how serious you need to be about keeping your personal information safe, and lobby for changes in how law enforcement treats online harassment.

Very sorry.

sweetme

real quick: I wasn't trying to track them down for me to confront personally, it was more to give to the girl being harassed in order to help her case with trying to get legal help.

bsjezz

cyberbullying is a difficult thing to deal with, mostly because there's little legisation around it yet and many social media outlets are slow to take up on anti-harrassment measures. all you can really do is block every individual attack that happens as close to the root as you can: ask the phone company to block the number. ask the pizza shop not to accept orders to her address. if the private information was posted to a forum, seek to have it removed.

more importantly, however, and sorry if this comes off as condscending because it's no doubt a serious issue: don't. feed. the. troll.. even the smallest public acknowledgement or response to this person's actions is validating, and adds fuel to the fire. it's obviously a very bored person with a dire need for some kind of attention. the first priority should absolutely be denying that attention.

Pure Din

1. Log everything.
2. She should try getting in touch with her state's attorney general office, they can give her more information about what laws might apply and legal resources that are available.

sweetme

Thanks for the responses guys