Need help, been harassed for 2 months..

MC212

Hi all. In need of some real help dealing with a person thats been harassing me for 2 months so far.

I have had this person online for the past 2 months initially harass me and my YouTube channel by making multiple channels of their own to mass-dislike videos (this is easy to do on the site, you use an email to make one account but you can make up to 50 or so channels per account). He/She also frequently leaves abuse and threats on my posts. I ignored this for a while but they escalated their actions by creating a channel that is impersonating me and leaving racist and abusive comments on other channels. There have been times where the channels in question have filed complaints against me and have sent me death threats believing it to be myself which has hurt my business and has damaged my reputation etc.

They have since threatened to take things even further beyond YouTube and given how persistent he/she is and how much work they have put into their actions I am worried that he/she may harass my family, friends or workplace and get me fired. Filing the standard complaints to YouTube does nothing as this person will simply make another account then another 50 channels and continue on as normal.

I've tried everything I can from ignoring him to putting up disclaimers but he just keeps on and on day in day out. My channel is slowly getting killed by it and theres nothing I can do. The impersonation issue is obviously more concerning, I had one famous YouTuber slate me on their Snapchat which was followed by more death threats. I cant take it anymore. I want to get law enforcement involved but who do I talk to about my problem?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Jesus Wept

Any idea who the person is?

Kimbot

MC212 wrote: »

Hi all. In need of some real help dealing with a person thats been harassing me for 2 months so far.

I have had this person online for the past 2 months initially harass me and my YouTube channel by making multiple channels of their own to mass-dislike videos (this is easy to do on the site, you use an email to make one account but you can make up to 50 or so channels per account). He/She also frequently leaves abuse and threats on my posts. I ignored this for a while but they escalated their actions by creating a channel that is impersonating me and leaving racist and abusive comments on other channels. There have been times where the channels in question have filed complaints against me and have sent me death threats believing it to be myself which has hurt my business and has damaged my reputation etc.

They have since threatened to take things even further beyond YouTube and given how persistent he/she is and how much work they have put into their actions I am worried that he/she may harass my family, friends or workplace and get me fired. Filing the standard complaints to YouTube does nothing as this person will simply make another account then another 50 channels and continue on as normal.

I've tried everything I can from ignoring him to putting up disclaimers but he just keeps on and on day in day out. My channel is slowly getting killed by it and theres nothing I can do. The impersonation issue is obviously more concerning, I had one famous YouTuber slate me on their Snapchat which was followed by more death threats. I cant take it anymore. I want to get law enforcement involved but who do I talk to about my problem?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

If actual threats are made then you need to contact the Guards OP. I suggest you go do that ASAP with documented evidence to back up your story.

ScumLord

MC212 wrote: »

I want to get law enforcement involved but who do I talk to about my problem?

Youtube? If someone is harassing you and creating fake accounts youtube can shut them down.

MC212

Nope. No idea who they are, where they're from or why they're doing this.

Boom_Bap

Have you considered closing up your channel? Is hassle from the internet worth spilling over into real life?

Kimbot

Also report to Youtube/Snapchat or basically report to the owners of the platform you are getting the hassle on.

wakka12

Have you ever done anything memorably bad to anyone you know OP? Try to think back . Because Id bet my life savings the person is somebody you know in real life . Yes there are crazies in the world who'll target innocent people for no real reason but its exceptionally rare

Could you get somebody who's good with computers to find out their IP address so you even know what country or city theyre from? That would at least help find out if you know them or if its a stranger

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

I am interested in knowing what you have done to piss this person off so much.

Call the Gardai regarding the death threats. Contact youtube also.

MC212

wakka12 wrote: »

Have you ever done anything memorably bad to anyone you know OP? Try to think back . Because Id bet my life savings the person is somebody you know in real life . Yes there are crazies in the world who'll target innocent people for no real reason but its exceptionally rare

Could you get somebody who's good with computers to find out their IP address so you even know what country or city theyre from? That would at least help find out if you know them or if its a stranger

That would be ideal. I think I maybe told this person to f- off at one point but im just astounded at their persistency

MC212

Valentin Sweet Mocha wrote: »

I am interested in knowing what you have done to piss this person off so much.

Call the Gardai regarding the death threats. Contact youtube also.

Youtube is no good, may as well talk to a brick wall. Plus as I said he has made 50 channels on one account, it takes weeks and loads of effort to ban one channel, he'll just switch to another and continue

MC212

Boom_Bap wrote: »

Have you considered closing up your channel? Is hassle from the internet worth spilling over into real life?

The channels quite big though, big enough to be making me some money every month. Ive put years into it.

Stigura

HitMan.com

I am not sure there is a way to get someones IP address from you tube activity. It is not like Email where their messages come with Headers and the like. Only You tube have that information I suspect. I could very much be wrong there of course, but that is what I expect.

OP There is not much advice to give I fear. If someone's activity in You Tube is in your opinion a breach of the TOS, then you have to talk to you tube. If they are making threats to your real life then you have to take to the Police. There is not much else to be done short of letting the bully win - and closing down your account on You Tube entirely.

As for _who_ to talk to in the Police - just walk into your local station and talk to the first person who comes to you. They will know better than anyone who you can talk to from that point on and advise you on what can or can not be done.

The only other advice to be offered is not what you should do but what you should _not_ ever do. Do not respond to it in kind. Do not use foul language - threats - aggression or anything else. Because if it at any point ever does come to be a legal issue - you want to be morally and legally clean. Follow only proper procedures and behaviour at all times - and do not ever give anything that could be used against you morally or legally in the future.

However You Tube is a large community and this kind of thing happens all the time. There is _bound_ to be videos by people who suffered the same as you are - who made videos about how they resolved it and how they dealt with it. Watch some - maybe mail the authors of them for further advice on your specific situation etc etc

wakka12

MC212 wrote: »

The channels quite big though, big enough to be making me some money every month. Ive put years into it.

God thats so awful Im really sorry. Similar thing happened to my brother with his youtube account which he worked very hard on, thankfully they just stopped harassing though . He couldn't do anything either. I think you should get the gardai involved, the person has made threats which is concrete engouh reason to get police involved. And Im sure they would be able to source the location of the accounts easily. Hopefully theyre irish and then the gardai can speak to them, give them a warning,fine ,whatever.

Valentin Sweet Mocha

Valentin Sweet Mocha wrote: »

I am interested in knowing what you have done to piss this person off so much.

Potentially little or nothing at all. It is amazing how little it _can_ take to trigger someone into behaviour like this. I had a sequence of death threats once myself merely for mentioning off hand that I planned to become a father. The user in question (not on boards - somewhere else) decided I should never become a father for a variety of reasons and deigned to inform me that if I ever did - he would personally find me and kill me.

scamalert

by creating a channel that is impersonating me and leaving racist and abusive comments on other channels. There have been times where the channels in question

if dont mind asking do you comment on stuff or do you go on cam ? since what way one does impersonate channel do they go like anonymous with robotic voice type of crap text on screen ?

should be obvious to anyone who looks your channel to see fake one

as cyber threats go dont imagine any of that crap materializes,dunno what guards would think if you told all story.

presume messages you got was either youtube or email so thats your point of contact for them to solve it be it youtube or other providers who can get straight lock on the person.

anyway seems trolling or competition hate etc.

only advise separate your personal friends home business accounts from twitter youtube or wherever you post.

find someone with skills to trace ip's be by setting up fake skype account or email and root out the troll.

scamalert

scamalert wrote: »

should be obvious to anyone who looks your channel to see fake one

It is quite common on You Tube actually. In fact many people will advise you when selecting a user name on You Tube not to use certain characters and letters that _can_ look like other characters and letters. Observe -

IrelandOnline
lrelandOnline

They at first glance may look like the same channel name. So if I owned the first one and suddenly someone with the second one started going around making abusive - racist - or violent comments on every one elses videos - some of the back push from that will come to me.

scamalert wrote: »

as cyber threats go dont imagine any of that crap materializes,dunno what guards would think if you told all story.

Only one way to find out. Go and talk to them and find out!

But yes - the vast majority of online threats are made by people with no intention or ability to follow them through. But although there is almost no chance of winning the lotto - people still play the lotto - because of the "what if" effect.

And when you are the subject of an online threat that effect is strong. You might now intellectually that it is highly unlikely they will ever come knocking with knife or gun in hand. But you still get the "what if" feeling of fear and dread and start jumping at every knock at your door.

When you get _enough_ threats I am sure you start to develop a sense for which ones to take seriously. Sam Harris has talked about that at some length how he gets threats all the time. But there was only one or two he genuinely sought police advice on.

But most of us do not get threats regularly. We get them once - if ever - in our life and we do not know how to deal with it when it happens.

MC212

scamalert wrote: »

by creating a channel that is impersonating me and leaving racist and abusive comments on other channels. There have been times where the channels in question

if dont mind asking do you comment on stuff or do you go on cam ? since what way one does impersonate channel do they go like anonymous with robotic voice type of crap text on screen ?

should be obvious to anyone who looks your channel to see fake one

as cyber threats go dont imagine any of that crap materializes,dunno what guards would think if you told all story.

presume messages you got was either youtube or email so thats your point of contact for them to solve it be it youtube or other providers who can get straight lock on the person.

anyway seems trolling or competition hate etc.

only advise separate your personal friends home business accounts from twitter youtube or wherever you post.

find someone with skills to trace ip's be by setting up fake skype account or email and root out the troll.

They make another channel under my name with my profile pic and link the person thats being abused to their "main channel" which is mine. They have a message like 'check out my main channel which im always on' on the spoof channel and a link to mine. I get reported then. Some people dont fall for it but a lot of them do and I get called a 'racist!' and reported.

GBX

Surely Youtube will have your profile history and all the details on the fake profile to warrant shutting it down if you report it?

scamalert

so you get threats from people that fall for impersonator ? or person himself.Since i imagine gmail youtube would be able to point out address if its coming directly from the person whos doing it, given theres always long trail of records.

Might be well worth to hit some security forums, you might get better advice or suggestions maybe even someone willing to help.Other then that Guards if you dont see other way.

ScumLord

MC212 wrote: »

They make another channel under my name with my profile pic and link the person thats being abused to their "main channel" which is mine. They have a message like 'check out my main channel which im always on' on the spoof channel and a link to mine. I get reported then. Some people dont fall for it but a lot of them do and I get called a 'racist!' and reported.

If they are using your photo and content then they're technically using your intellectual property illegally. If you take a photo you own the copyright and can take someone to court for using it without your permission.

Isn't there a way to flag youtube videos for illegal use of other peoples intellectual property? Report him that way to youtube too. At the very least they'll likely restrict his account straight away while they check the validity of your claim.

Wabbit Ears

Close it all down and walk away. No job/Business is worth this sort of grief.

Canis Lupus

MC212 wrote: »

Hi all. In need of some real help dealing with a person thats been harassing me for 2 months so far.

I have had this person online for the past 2 months initially harass me and my YouTube channel by making multiple channels of their own to mass-dislike videos (this is easy to do on the site, you use an email to make one account but you can make up to 50 or so channels per account). He/She also frequently leaves abuse and threats on my posts. I ignored this for a while but they escalated their actions by creating a channel that is impersonating me and leaving racist and abusive comments on other channels. There have been times where the channels in question have filed complaints against me and have sent me death threats believing it to be myself which has hurt my business and has damaged my reputation etc.

They have since threatened to take things even further beyond YouTube and given how persistent he/she is and how much work they have put into their actions I am worried that he/she may harass my family, friends or workplace and get me fired. Filing the standard complaints to YouTube does nothing as this person will simply make another account then another 50 channels and continue on as normal.

I've tried everything I can from ignoring him to putting up disclaimers but he just keeps on and on day in day out. My channel is slowly getting killed by it and theres nothing I can do. The impersonation issue is obviously more concerning, I had one famous YouTuber slate me on their Snapchat which was followed by more death threats. I cant take it anymore. I want to get law enforcement involved but who do I talk to about my problem?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Link to your channel there. Lets see this abuse.

wonderfullife

In my experience, social media sites are very poor in handling harassment.

I was targeted on Twitter by someone who said "I hope your kids get raped by a priest" and "it'd be unfortunate if they were gang-raped in a car park" and "I know where you work, I'll find you and end you".

Reported all to Twitter who responded "We found no violation".

It takes quite a lot to get banned. As for the Guards, honestly you're wasting your time going down that road. If you could determine what country the harassment is coming from it might help.

Boom_Bap

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Link to your channel there. Lets see this abuse.

Don't do this.

MC212

Ive obviously reported the channel impersonating me to YouTube via their oh so useful reporting tool, nothing has happened. Even if it was taken down, it would take literally a few minutes to put up a new one in its place.

And im not walking away from something ive sunk years into and have built a community with

Pat Mustard

MC212 wrote: »

There have been times where the channels in question have filed complaints against me and have sent me death threats believing it to be myself which has hurt my business and has damaged my reputation etc.

How serious are the internet death threats, on a scale from Eric Cartman to Liam Neeson?

Kimbot

MC212 wrote: »

Ive obviously reported the channel impersonating me to YouTube via their oh so useful reporting tool, nothing has happened. Even if it was taken down, it would take literally a few minutes to put up a new one in its place.

And im not walking away from something ive sunk years into and have built a community with

Contact the guards so OP and go from there.

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MarkR

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801947?hl=en

Seems they have a procedure for this.

ScumLord

MC212 wrote: »

Ive obviously reported the channel impersonating me to YouTube via their oh so useful reporting tool, nothing has happened. Even if it was taken down, it would take literally a few minutes to put up a new one in its place.

And im not walking away from something ive sunk years into and have built a community with

Start making youtube videos about youtube abuse. You could also make a case study out of your stalker, going over everything he does pulling apart all his shortcomings as a human being.

scamalert

scamalert wrote: »

so you get threats from people that fall for impersonator ? or person himself.

According to the first post on the thread itself - it is both.

MC212

Pat Mustard wrote: »

How serious are the internet death threats, on a scale from Eric Cartman to Liam Neeson?

Theyre not all from the guy thats at me, theyre from people who've been racially abused by the account impersonating me or in more cases (at least where the death threats are concerned), their fans. The threats from them dont bother me too much because I know they've been mislead.

The messages I get go something along the lines of "youre a f-ing racist, if you say one more thing about *so and so youtuber* i will slit your throat in your sleep" etc. Thats one thing he likes to do too, he makes other accounts and comments something like "I saw what you did on that video, you are a filthy racist!" Just to try make people dropping in think that I said or did something racist or whatever. You can easily tell its him though he has this really odd way of phrasing sentences that he adopts under every channel he comments using.

MC212

ScumLord wrote: »

Start making youtube videos about youtube abuse. You could also make a case study out of your stalker, going over everything he does pulling apart all his shortcomings as a human being.

I've thought about that but I think that would just fuel him even further. Mind you ignoring it hasnt done me much good..

GBX

So hes abusing people on his own version of your channel but they are replying via your channel? or through his at you?

Stonedpilot

Boom_Bap wrote: »

Have you considered closing up your channel? Is hassle from the internet worth spilling over into real life?

Many narcissists rather die than give up their self indulgent vanity projects online.

Boom_Bap

MC212 wrote: »

Theyre not from the guy thats at me, theyre from people who've been racially abused by the account impersonating me or in more cases (at least where the death threats are concerned), their fans. The threats from them dont bother me too much because I know they've been mislead.

The messages I get go something along the lines of "youre a f-ing racist, if you say one more thing about *so and so youtuber* i will slit your throat in your sleep" etc.

Are these in the comments? Can you disable comments and write in the blurb that they are disabled due to persistent abuse due to impersonation?

MC212

GBX wrote: »

So hes abusing people on his own version of your channel but they are replying via your channel? or through his at you?

He has made an account identical to mine and uses that to abuse people. On the account he has made he has a message up saying "this is my alternate channel, check out my main channel with all the vids where im always on it" and then links my own channel. People who have been abused then go to my channel and leave their comments or threats, message me or report me, thinking that I left the racial abuse.

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MC212

Boom_Bap wrote: »

Are these in the comments? Can you disable comments and write in the blurb that they are disabled due to persistent abuse due to impersonation?

Tried that for the best part of a month, didnt make much difference. May try it again, I dunno..

retro:electro

If it was me I'd just ignore it. Maybe do a video about how you're being trolled online and the content of what's happening and then leave it at that. When you get anxious and defensive, that is the trolls oxygen. They live to see you sweat and to hear you mention them. The more you try and address this, the more attention you bring to it and the worse it may get for you. Just ignore it and they'll eventually get bored and it'll stop.
The Guards can only do so much. They can't stop the person setting up another account and impersonating you that way.

MC212

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I would love to. If I could find his main channel (the one he uses personally when hes not at me) then I could more than likely find out who it is. I dont know if I could find an IP for one of the throwaway channels he makes to mass-dislike one of my vids or leave comments.

MC212

anna080 wrote: »

When you get anxious and defensive, that is the trolls oxygen. They live to see you sweat and to hear you mention them. The more you try and address this, the more attention you bring to it and the worse it may get for you.

Wouldn't making a video about the troll be doing just that though?

GBX

MC212 wrote: »

He has made an account identical to mine and uses that to abuse people. On the account he has made he has a message up saying "this is my alternate channel, check out my main channel with all the vids where im always on it" and then links my own channel. People who have been abused then go to my channel and leave their comments or threats, message me or report me, thinking that I left the racial abuse.

Fair enough, wasnt sure what way it was done.

Obviously you dont want to detract from your own channel but can you put any sort of message with some sort of warning about impersonators etc?

Beta Ray Bill

OP

Can we have the link to your channel please?
I'd like to see the comments

That is if you don't mind.

Ignore

Didn't see this:

Boom_Bap wrote: »

Don't do this.

If you want you can PM me.

G.

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MC212

GBX wrote: »

Fair enough, wasnt sure what way it was done.

Obviously you dont want to detract from your own channel but can you put any sort of message with some sort of warning about impersonators etc?

Tried that for a while, didnt make much difference, may try it again.

retro:electro

MC212 wrote: »

Wouldn't making a video about the troll be doing just that though?

The point of the video would be more to let the people accusing you of being racist know what's going on. You could make a point of saying that this is the last time you're going to address it and won't be mentioning it again. At least when you're impersonator directs people to your channel the commenters will see the video where you address what's going on and they'll know it's not you saying those things.
You can pin tweets on Twitter so they stay at the top of your content. Maybe have a link to the video there too.

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I consider myself somewhat IT literate but perhaps out of date with modern systems as I did my IT Degree in the early 2000s. But I am genuinely unsure how you would go about obtaining the IP address of a You Tube user?

If they _email_ you sure, you have all the header information of the email including the originating IP address of the email.

But on you tube there is no such information shared with the end user, or? Please correct me if I am wrong here as I plead genuine ignorance! But I would have assumed until today that the only people who have access to the IP address of people posting videos or comments on you tube _is_ you tube.

Hrududu

MC212 wrote: »

I would love to. If I could find his main channel (the one he uses personally when hes not at me) then I could more than likely find out who it is. I dont know if I could find an IP for one of the throwaway channels he makes to mass-dislike one of my vids or leave comments.

Can you find an ipaddress of a YouTube user? I think only YouTube would have access to that. You would have to petition them for it and i doubt they'd give them out without being forced to comply with the police.

Have they ever sent you an email?

Definitely sounds like someone who knows you. If you ignore it long enough they might get bored.