To be kind of freaked out by this?

[RevoltingPeasant]

Possibly being a drama queen, but...

About three years ago I went on a dating website. I exchanged emails with a guy and gave him my real name. We emailed for something like 2-3 weeks. We never met up or even planned to. I then met someone else (DP) and told him this, and we broke off contact.

Over the following 6-8 mos he'd occasionally get in touch. However, I was seriously involved with DP by then and told InternetGuy we were planning on moving in.

Then today I got an email out of the blue from InternetGuy. This is two years down the line. I work in a different job about 300 miles away from where I was before. You'd have to do some nifty googling to find me, or have contacted my old work and pretended to be a former work contact.

The email itself is just 'Hi, how are you etc'.... but AIBU to think it is kind of stalkerish and extreme?? Or is this normal internet behaviour?

sorry, two and a half years down the line. Can't add

Have you Googled yourself to find what info is out there on you? Perhaps he got your email address quite simply?

YANBU, really very odd. Don't think you need to be worried though. Are you going to reply?

Did he contact you on a new email address?

sorry x posted

Something, yes it's a new address, my new work address.

worra, you could find me through google but it'd have to be quite deliberate, i.e., you'd need to google my specialist field of work plus my name to get me.

I'm not worried in the sense that I think he's going to come bursting through the door (famous last words eh), but rather find this kind of unacceptable to contact someone through their work address like this....

Dunno whether to reply: WWYD?

I wouldn't respond in the hope that your silence conveys the message you don't want to have any contact with him, if you receive any more emails from him then a short email telling him that you are in still in a relationship and would prefer he doesn't contact you again.

You must have made quite an impression though.

where has he been the last two years, dont call him rumplestilskin do they..... just ignore him

I think it is creepy and yanbu. But I would not under any circumstances respond to the email.

If he gets no response - it could mean anything, you're not the same person, you have strong spam filters at work, what have you.

Give no information and encourage no communication - there is only one way to do that and its silence.

Do you have a receptionist? Tell them if anyone of that name calls, that you are not available.

I don't think it's really any creepier than looking you up on Facebook tbh, but I wouldn't respond to the email.

Seriously? after that amount of time, having never met in person, to find out where she works and then acting on it?

He is socially deluded, at the very LEAST.

I'm not saying it's not creepy, just not really any worse than FB, which I think can also be creepy but is somehow more socially acceptable.

Thanks all - I think Something's advice is good! and yeah, I mean I know I'm memorably witty and all that, but jeez...

Actually, though, I have just discovered something that has made me feel weirder about this: my work email address is not on the website of where I work because our IT people are chronically disorganised. I joined a few months back and they've never fully updated my profile page. It literally has my name and nothing else.

So that means either he rang up my old work, or my new work, or looked at the email address of other people in the dept at the very least to figure out the pattern. But this is not just easily available info.

Freak !!

Also his email has several of my old emails (from, like June 2008) cutnpasted at the bottom.

Is it possible he sent it to your old organisation, and their mailing system has automatically forwarded it?

Capt'n N, no, it doesn't do that. I know because when old students have looked me up (I work at a uni) they have to ask the office manager at my old dept.

[stumped]

Ignoring must be the best policy. He has no way of knowing if you have received the email surely? Just don't reply. If you have a block sender option, then use it so that his messages will be returned to him. Do not reply at all even just to say piss off. if he thinks you aren't reading it he may well give up. If you can't block him mark him as spam or something so it doesn't get into your inbox.