I found out that I have been cyber-stalked and I don't know what to do

[duckingterrified]

Recently, it got revealed that my boyfriends ex (they only dated for like a month) had been stalking me online for the past year and a half.

It wasn't just that she was casually checking out my social media profiles, but full-on digging for every piece of information she could get on me, including following me on various forums and managing to find all of my throwaway accounts etc.

Truth is, I posted some really personal stuff about my insecurities and relationship worries and I was naive enough to think no one would see it. I never used any real names but somehow she managed to find tons of information on me.

The reason I found out was because she had been sharing this information with a supposed "friend" of mine, who then brought it all up as a way to cause drama and try and split me and my boyfriend up.

I feel exposed, humiliated and unsafe. I don't know what to do. I have obviously now blocked both of these women on all of my social media accounts etc. I don't think I can get the police involved because everything they found were on public forums.

So I'm posting here for advice because its the only place I might be safe for now and I really need some reassurance. I am even paranoid that somehow they will see this. But I also don't want to let them win by making me scared to ever post anything again.

It’s not a nice feeling, but she hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s wasted her time snooping & searching, but as you said, it was all in the public domain.
She hasn’t used bribery or blackmail or anything like that.
I think all you can do is what you’re already doing...block and rise above them!
Good luck.

Agree with pp, she hasn’t done anything illegal because you made the information available.
Unfortunately, you need to be a lot more guarded in what you share.

I was always told not to write anything -ever- that you wouldn’t like to see on the front page of the Daily Express.

Also, go through and change all user names and passwords, and check all account defaults. Delete any intimate photos. Check your phone security defaults as well and update your CyberSecurity protection on your home laptop.
Change the password on your home router.

Yeah I've learned a big lesson there and I'm going to keep off the forums when it comes to intimate stuff. I just got caught up in the fact that everyone seemed to be putting this stuff out there and thought I was in a safe space (or at least thought no one cared enough to start stalking me). How wrong was I?

I guess more than anything I'm just trying to overcome how depressed this has all made me, knowing that two women in my social circle had been doing this behind my back for so long and acting normal towards my face.

What a weirdo!
Definitely obsessive if she was only dating him a month. Batshit.
Delete everything and start again and go private.

I don’t want to unnecessarily worry you but that seems extreme in the sense of how short their relationship was and how long she’s been cyber stalking you.
I’ve not long watched the doc on the murder of Sadie Hartley, her murderer was her partners ex, the ex along with another woman stalked him and her and planned over a period of 18m how to carry out murdering her. It was pretty chilling just how pre meditated it was.

Is there any way she knows where you live? Or the other friend knows where you live?

I don't think she's capable of anything crazy like that but she has a personality disorder apparently, so yeah...

The other friend actually lives with me which is what makes it even harder, but luckily I've found a new place to live and will be moving out and not telling anyone where (expect my closest friends).

Lesson learnt....don't post anything that you don't want people to know, especially if it is linked to you and you can be identified. What kind of stuff did you post?

It wasn't linked to me at all, that's the worst part. I used anonymous usernames and didn't connect it to my email account so I have no idea how she found so much info on me. I've come to the conclusion she just sat there all day looking through every forum post and picking out ones she guessed to be mine ( I don't think she has a job). Mostly I just posted about my depression/anxiety/relationship worries, asking for advice.

So she's only guessed those posts were by you?

I assume she guessed yeah, but for the most part she guessed right. Basically, the friend confronted me with bout 30-40 links & screenshots and I only saw them briefly because frankly I was way to humiliated to look at what I'd written but a lot of them were definitely mine.

If your “friend” lived with you, presumably she had access to your router. Once she’s on there, with the right software it’s not difficult to obtain usernames and passwords.

Sorry, I know it’s miserable but if you are the kind of person who reuses passwords, you really need to change them all as soon as you move. Store accounts, social media, utilities, email.....

The women involved will probably get bored and leave you alone, but you can’t be sure, and there’s such a potential for mischief making.

Seems far more likely your flatmate accessed your laptop and history...

Yes, we both use the same router.

Really? So if you're sharing WiFi with someone they can access all of your accounts, passwords, browsing history etc even though I'm using my own personal computer? I wouldn't even know how to do that, but that could explain how she found everything. God, I thought that would be illegal!

So she could literally be seeing everything I'm doing even now?? How do I block access?

Do you have passcodes on all your phones/tablets/laptops? Would the friend that lives with you have been able to check your internet history to see which forums you had been posting on and your username? Could she have guessed your passwords?

As already mentioned, change all your passwords and set all social media to friends only, not public. Make sure your phone/tablet/laptop are password protected (with a new password that someone close to you can't guess) so that this "friend" you live with can't access any of them.

I do have passcodes on everything and she wouldn't have been able to access my computer/phone because no one knows the passcodes for them.

We share the WiFi in the house but I didn't realise she'd be able to see my browsing history from that??? Could she?

Your flat mate “friend” has definitely been snooping!

It really does sound too far fetched that someone who is not particularly close to you could manage to find you on forums where you’ve used anonymous user names and there are no links to your SM accounts.

Unless you’ve given away VERY identifying info which she has found by searching for specific keywords, it just sounds incredibly unlikely.

My money is on the housemate who is a shit stirrer.

Can’t fathom people’s thinking at all. Your “friend” confronted you? Wtf. Her behaviour has been really extreme and obsessive. I think you should be confronting her and telling her to stay the fuck out of your life. The other person at least had some reason for her behaviour, even though it’s not a good one. And she wasn’t pretending to be your friend.

If either of the two people involved have any tech knowhow and aren’t above downloading some snooping software, it is possible but hard to prove. And only one possibility. Do you ever write passwords down? Share a password to pay the electricity bill online. Anything like that ?

We do share one password for bills but its not the same one I was using on those forums. And even if she did know the correct password, she'd need to know all the usernames I was using (as like I said, my email address wasn't attached to these posts).

Suggest you Call the National Stalking Helpline for advice:
Telephone: 0808 802 0300
Monday to Friday, 9:30am to 4pm (except Wednesday 1pm to 4pm)

This isn’t stuff that’s easily linked to you and I would worry about how they did it/ potential to escalate.

There are a number of ways which come to mind and some of them may well be illegal, so could give you a handle:

1. the router logs, each router logs where it goes and what it does. The log level can be adjusted and may well include a lot of info. If you own the router accessing its logs may constitute a crime.

2. Looking in your laptop and browser history, either by using it in your absence or abusing occasions you have allowed its use

3. network sniffing. That is, having your laptop listen in to all communication on the network and picking out the interesting ones for further follow up. That may well be a crime too. Particularly if tools were used to crack and intercept encryption.

Of the above the easiest is of course abusing your trust with your computer, accessing the router logs is easy once understood once but doing sniffing is hard, tedious and requires expertise. Not professional expertise, but serious computer smarts.

You can mitigate:

Change the router admin access if you own it, make its password impossible to guess and set its logging to list attempts to access it. Voila! - You caught her red handed. Use in your browser something like Httpseverywhere to enforce encryption. Create a guest account on your computer and never give anyone access to your own profile.

I'm not massively techy but a quick google search about viewing internet history from a wifi router shows it is possible if you have the admin password for the router.

If you get A VPN (virtual private network) it will protect your browsing history.

Is there any chance someone could know/have access to your main email address and password, assuming you use this to register an account on the forums? Would you get an email confirming your usernames?

This has happened to me, to a lesser extent. A former housemate who I wasn't getting on with snooped on my laptop and used it to find out which forums I was posting on. At the time I was very active on one particular forum and she then obviously read all my posts, including some about her.

I didn't find out about it until after I'd moved out of that flat, when she popped up a couple of years later slagging me off on that forum and saying she'd read my history. It was really unsettling. She will have read loads of really personal things - I was going through a break up at the time and had been using the forum as a safe place to vent and get advice to avoid leaning on my friends too heavily. I'd posted about so many things. My family, my health. My friendships and insecurities. My sex life. You name it!

Lesson learnt. I now don't post anything online that I wouldn't want a person to know IRL. I have blocked her on social media and come off all forums except Mumsnet where I name change regularly and only post about fashion and make up!

That's all you can do really. I do sympathise though. Definitely block her as much as possible, and your housemate too.

A von will help you against sniffing and against router logging. It won't help against someone looking through your computer when they are on it.

I use Linux, but Macs are similar in that they have a very solid concept of multiuser security, so I have a guest login on all computers and tell my DCs the same, to let others only ever use the guest login, as this will not allow any access to your files, history and the like. Windows is much softer on enforcing this.