Ex paid for me to be traced and contacted. What do I do?

[danibc]

Long story so will try to keep to the point.
Nearly 20 years ago when at uni, I met and fell in love with someone from another country. He's from a very traditional culture where arranged marriage is the norm.
We were friends all through uni before the romance side of things happened.
Long story but also his family (back home in native country) knew about me being his friend, they were against the romance and threatened him with all sorts of nasty stuff - emotional blackmail. He wouldn't stand up to them, despite claiming he would and promising me the earth. Claimed he wanted to marry me and would tell parents to deal with it.
After graduation (PhD) he went home to his native country in the Middle East and had an arranged marriage. Entirely predictable, no surprises there.
I cut off contact with him, mainly out of respect for his wife and because I needed to recover from all the heartache he'd caused me.
This was in around 2005.
Around 10 after that, he emailed me out of the blue saying he was returning to the UK for a work-related trip (alone) and asked if I'd like to meet. I declined as it felt totally disrespectful to his wife. He then sent a long rambly email about all his regrets, wishing how he'd stood up for himself and for me. Wishing he'd been strong enough to refuse the unwanted arranged marriage and so on.
I replied that he'd made his choices so had to live with them and that I no longer wanted to be friends (because he'd never taken any ownership or responsibility for all heartache he'd caused me).
All went quiet.
Then, around 6 months ago he got in touch out of the blue again, pouring his heart out. I ignored it.
His emails have carried on coming about 3or 4 times a week for the last 6 months. I've got tired of reading. Around 3 months ago he made reference to a "people tracing agency" based in UK that specialises in tracing long lost friends and that he was thinking of hiring them to "find" me.
Fast forward to last week, I received (at my home address), a letter from said agency! All official and I've contact them as well as researched to check it's all bona-fide. All check out legitimate.
Ex has paid a fortune for this to happen - I looked at their costs out of curiousity.
Sounds like he's told them I'm "an old friend" rather than any of the rest of the story.
I'm so upset that he's disrespecting his wife in such a way, writing all those (unanswered) emails to me over last 6 months, complaining about his regrets and decisions.
How do I deal with the agency - do I tell them the story from my position. It's unlikely he will have told them anything about being unhappily married and trying to track down his ex because he's missing me.
It all feels very delicate.
I've done a bit of googling and FB detective work... I've found someone who I think is his wife but I've no idea if she speaks English. Do I contact her? Or just tell the agency the full story and let them (hopefully) shame him into stopping.

How is this a GDPR breach?
Presumably the agency has used information in the public domain , not everything is a GDPR breach

Make no response to the agency; you're under no obligation to them.
You tell ex that in UK, his repeated unwanted harassment is now a criminal offence, and the agency report is the latest proof of it.

IF he ever contacts you again in any way:

You will lodge a formal complaint with UK police.

You will send his wife and his parents/family copies of the agency report he commissioned on you, and all his harassment messages, and tell them you have reported him to police.

If you do contact the police, they will ask you if you have clearly told him that you want no contact with him.
If you haven't done that, it's the first thing they'd expect you to do.

I would suggest that he doesn't actually care about your feelings in this.
The fact that he has mentioned using such an agency is another way of him already fishing for your address.
You didn't give it to him & he kept looking anyway.

Please send him an email to clearly say you want no further contact from him then block him.
If he tries using a different email address or whatever, do nothing but block from the point where you send the stop contacting me email.
You don't need to explain why to him.

Don't bother reading anything written by a man who doesn't care about the real you (just the fantasy doormat in his head who is fine with being stalked) any longer.

Tell the tracing company you do not want any of your info to be passed on.

Waste of his money then wasn’t it?
Id report to police as stalking, ( him, not the agency) Send the agency the crime number to pass on to him saying you will take it further if he ever contacts you again.
What the further is I don’t know as he’s not in UK! But hopefully he’ll think you’ll contact his parents/wife/employer and he’ll back off.

Keep it simple. Tell the agency there's a huge back story that you are not going to tell them. You chose to cut-off contact with their client and have no intention of getting back in contact with them ever again.

Make sure some close friends you can trust are aware of this man and his obsession. Check your social media profiles and the security/visibility settings and be comfortable with what's visible to people you don't know/haven't chosen to view your updates (this is something everyone should do periodically).

Contact both yours and his email carrier and ask for help/support with harassment.

Also report to the police. You can do this online. It doesn’t matter where the person is. Mine was international. Police took all the details.

Cyber crime is taken very seriously in many countries. Cybercrime units don’t just investigate in their own country, they work with other global agencies when there is a need.

Clear instruction to leave you alone: Tell him clearly in writing you do not want any further contact with him.

No letters, emails, phone calls, social media messaging- nothing.

Tell him to call off the enquiry agency.

Tell the agency to leave you alone.

The evidence: Collect all your statements to, and approaches you have ever had from, him and the agency.

Add in anything else that comes.

The formal complaint: report this as stalking and harassment to the police and get the reference number.

Support: Women's organisations and your solicitor may be helpful.

The problem with situations like this is these obsessed men with zero respect for your boundaries can be dangerous.

How is this a GDPR breach?
Presumably the agency has used information in the public domain , not everything is a GDPR breach

If the agency passed OP's details on without her consent it would be a GDPR breach. Thankfully, they sound professional and won't do that.

OP - can you afford a solicitor to send a 'cease & desist' email / letter to him - or via the agency?

Surely given this bloke has paid lots of money to source the OP’s address, the company will give him her address? Presumably she’s on the electoral role so fairly easy to find? I can’t imagine the company then saying ‘Oh yeah, she doesn’t want you having her address’.

Don’t respond to him, OP. Mark further emails as spam.

I wouldn't contact his wife. You have no idea what situation she is in, especially as he sounds unhinged.
I would either just ignore the agency or send a brief one-liner to tell them you consider any contact from him to be harassment and you will be contacting the police.
Send him one email telling him the same thing - that you never want to hear from him again and any further contact is harassment. Keep all emails and anything else from him and report if he contacts you again.
I can understand why you haven't blocked him. It is much more useful to keep a measure of it than not know if he has stopped or not.

As a further precaution I'd look at People Finder 192 and contact them if you are on there, to say you want your details taken off; a friend did this to avoid being contacted by an ex.

Exactly this.

I disagree.

I would definitely contact the agency, in writing, advising that for security reasons you do not agree to your address being given out.

I'd send this registered post too!

I don't think this is that unusual, my dad was contacted by an agency on behalf of his daughter and my half-sister who was looking for him, and who he hadn't seen since she was a child.

I would be clear you don't want any contact at all and they must not pass on your details.

You need to contact the agency and make sure they don’t pass your details on. Jeez it’s scary really

This

Its a bit premature going to the police without telling him to stop and that any further contact would then be considered harassment and police contacted.

Have you clearly told this man to stop contacting you? I don’t think you can report him to the police unless you have specifically told him not to contact you again and he has ignored your wishes. If you are just ignoring his emails but haven’t told him to stop, then I don’t think it would be considered harassment. If you have already told him to stop, then yes report to police.

If it hasn’t been said to him then send him an email clearly stating that you do not wish for him to contact you again. And that you will consider it harassment if he does so. No need to tell the agency any of your story - just tell them that you do not wish to be in contact with this person and you do not authorise your contact details being forwarded to him.

Don’t tell any random third party the full story. It’s not their business, they don’t care, and you don’t owe them or him your time.
Just tell them this person is already in contact with you and is already harassing you, despite being asked to stop. Tell the third party that you hope they won’t continue to facilitate additional harassment of you.
then you block his email.
and that’s it.

if he finds another way you could contact the police

Do not contact his wife, if she is a married woman in the middle east she has zero agency in this situation. At best you will cause her heartbreak, at worst the situation will be blamed on her for not pleasing her husband enough.

I would reply that you do not want to hear from him again and you consider his behaviour to be stalking. If there is any more contact you will report him to the police. And do just that if you hear from him again.

I doubt the agency will care about the history and backstory. He’s paid them for a service which they’ve carried out. To them the reasoning behind it will be irrelevant.

I would just tell them you don’t want to be found, you absolutely don’t give them permission to disclose any details and you’re not interested in hearing from him. Repeat the same to him and tell him if he doesn’t leave you alone, you’ll be contacting his family and wife to tell them how he’s been harassing you.

Yeah normally I'd be in favour of enlightening a wide about a h's attempted infidelity etc.

But what rights does she have to leave him/divorce him/keep access to any children.etc in that country?

Probably not many at all.

It's not fair to make things even harder on her.

Depending on your work It may also be worth informing hr so they don’t publish anything with your name/work location eg awards you’ve won that would enable him to locate you or your workplace. Same for hobbies too.

His wife is a victim as much as you. I would leave her out of this as she will have her hands tied here.

The (UK?) agency needs to be officially informed that they are not to share details with him. That is all they need to know.

Contact the police or maybe citizen's advice (solicitor even) to gain further guidance on how to stop this.

Change your email address if possible. Blocking just means he creates a new one.

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/stalking-or-harassment

She told him back in 2015 not to contact her anymore (at least that sounds like the gist of things) and has ignored every message since. So why the fuck would she have to get in touch with this stalker to tell him 'no' all over again?

Don't do that. He is nuts. Any contact you make will only encourage him.

Op are you sure the agency is legit? Have you googled it?

If it is then they should have policies in place for these situations. I would ask them (via email) to tell him you are not interested in contact and to send you a copy of their correspondence 'as this man is harassing me and if it continues I may need to go to the police'.

He's absolutely crazy and tbh I would go to the police just to make a note of things incase they escalate further.