Harassment and Stalking

Any single message can be explained away. That is the point of the pattern. Repeated contact after you asked it to stop, appearing where you live or work, monitoring your movements, contacting your family, employer or clients, opening new accounts each time you block one: taken together, this is a course of conduct courts recognize and restrain.

Modern stalking is usually digital and physical at once. We treat device forensics as standard: tracking hardware on vehicles, stalkerware installed on phones, shared cloud accounts left in place after a relationship ended, and location metadata embedded in what the perpetrator posts.

People who harass from behind a screen believe the platform is a shield and the distance is a defense. It is neither. Once abusive messages, threats or a coordinated pileon cross a state line, and online they almost always do, the conduct moves into federal jurisdiction and the exposure stops being a suspended account and starts being a criminal case and a money judgment.

Federal law already covers what is happening to you. Interstate stalking and cyberstalking, including a course of conduct carried out entirely through electronic communication services, is prohibited by 18 U.S.C. 2261A, with prison terms that increase when there is injury, a protective order in place, or a minor involved. Transmitting a threat to injure another person across state lines is a separate federal crime under 18 U.S.C. 875(c), and courts have applied it to posts, direct messages and comments. Anonymous or repeated abuse over telecommunications and internet services is reachable under 47 U.S.C. 223. Breaking into an account, a phone or a cloud backup to fuel the campaign violates the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030. If intimate images were shared without consent, 15 U.S.C. 6851 gives you your own federal civil claim with liquidated damages of $150,000 plus attorney fees, and you do not have to wait for a prosecutor to act.

Section 230 protects platforms. It has never protected the person who posted. We treat that as the opening: preserve the content forensically before it is deleted, subpoena the platforms, hosts and payment processors to convert handles into legal names and addresses, package the federal violations for the FBI and the United States Attorney where the facts warrant it, and file the civil case for damages and injunctive relief at the same time. Being harassed by someone who thinks an alias, a burner account or an ocean makes them untouchable is not a reason to accept it. It is a reason to make an example of them.

Harassment cases rarely stay level. They intensify when the target is passive and they intensify when the target responds informally. The response that reliably changes behavior is a documented legal record with a court order behind it.

If you are being told that nothing can be done because the person is careful, or anonymous, or in another country, that advice is wrong. Bring us the file.