Help needed to find out who is behind cyber harassment since October 2015...

[anna_laurene]

Hello everyone! This is my last resort as I have been trying to work with legal counsel as well as investigators, but no one will help me. Institutions have basically protected all harassers out there and let them get away with it. I have been the victim of cyber harassment since last year and basically just want to find out who's behind the fake/malicious FB using my name (variations of them), the spoof calls and the spoof text messages. Not only that, but they have contacted my family, harassed my sister's boyfriend about his dead father, and now threatening to involve my work. Will someone please help me?

[TheCotMan]

Hello everyone! This is my last resort as I have been trying to work with legal counsel as well as investigators, but no one will help me. Institutions have basically protected all harassers out there and let them get away with it. I have been the victim of cyber harassment since last year and basically just want to find out who's behind the fake/malicious FB using my name (variations of them), the spoof calls and the spoof text messages. Not only that, but they have contacted my family, harassed my sister's boyfriend about his dead father, and now threatening to involve my work. Will someone please help me?

"We" do not provide customer support for items outside of spaces DEF CON controls, and rules on no discussion of politics on the forums makes it difficult for me to discuss all of the legal/constitutional issues with this.

Attribution in large, global systems like the Internet are very hard. A source IP address is insufficient to attribute identity to an individual, or country. Even if we assume a source IP for traffic claims an IP address, there is no guarantee that the actual alleged attack actually came from that where that IP address is "supposed" to be. This is an ever greater problem with UDP packets/traffic, but with control of routing updates, TCP or UDP sessions can be made to appear to originate from one IP address, but actually come from some other location on the Internet.

Add to this, the implementation of anonymization systems that attempt to obscure original source IP (VPN service providers, Tor network service, etc.) any sufficiently technologically advanced user can understand how attribution and tracking original source is a hard problem. There are entities that have the resource to do this:
* Governments (beyond local or state level: federal agencies with time and money to spend on tracking down problems like these.)
* Organized Crime (not just "mafia" style, but large bot-net owners that emulate mafia style organizations)
* Insider Threat (someone within the group that "outs" their co-conspirators for whatever reason)

Local and state groups can track down abuse sources when the source of abuse make stupid and obvious mistakes, but this requires expending a lot of resources for a politically low-profie issues to spot the mistakes, and then leverage those mistakes into helping to track down the person. (Tracking down someone that has been calling someone else names on the Internet does not usually get headlines. Busting human traffickers , busting drug shipments, finding a serial killer, millions of dollars in damages or threats to large financial sectors or economy, exposing domestic terrorism (after an attack, not before), all of these generate headlines, and are politically advantageous to elected officials and directors/managers in law enforcement, allowing departments to justify expenses.)

The only times bullying, verbal abuse, name-calling, harassment from anonymous sources (not the proper noun "Anonymous" but the description "anonymous") really generates headlines is when death, real-world violence, unpopular derision based on innate quality unrelated to personal choice (sexual orientation, sexism, racism, disability, mental illness, etc.) catches on-going media traction, or risk for successful lawsuits focus attention on the topic, then in the next media cycle, the issue is forgotten by the general population with short attention spans.

The government has access to all of the legal (and illegal -- when found unconstitutional) tools to find sources, but this task is expensive with time and money. If they are reluctant to help, your options are historically few:
* Lawsuit that you can win against the agency that is not helping
* Death of people in real world, or in-person physical abuse by one or more attackers using weapons. Example: use of guns generate more headlines than use of knives.
* Go to social media and find ways to get enough support to make it a news-worthy item. This is difficult, as it needs to be of interest to enough people to become "viral" and persist long enough to enter into a news cycle, and then persists long enough to make change possible, out-competing other stories.
* New/Media exposure of the problem you face, which gains traction by the general population to put pressure on the agency to spend money. (Sensational stories in the media that already have headlines can be politically advantageous for agencies to support.)

I can't think of any other tools you may have to convince agencies to help you.

[cysgod]

Hi Anne, Sounds like you are being bullied. If they are not requesting money as blackmail then it is likely personal and you know/knew the perpetrator, as The CotMan has said, there is quite little you can actually legally do, and what information Social Media sites will give you, or support you with, I would suggest to change your phone numbers, contact email providers and other social media accounts and provide them with concise evidence of bullying and harassment over time. The best solution is often to ignore (even if hard, and if they are contacting friends and family) and they will go away over time. As a last resort, consider changing all email addresses and social media accounts, you need to go darknet for a while ;)