Fight back
Hopefully you have followed our “help me” advice and now you have lots of info on the person who is (or hopefully was) harassing you.
If you don’t have any proof, or have thrown everything away - there isn’t much you can do about it.
Telephones & Mobiles
If you have a phone number for the person troubling you, you should now call your phone operator and inform them of the number. Tell them exactly what has been happening, give them all of the gory details and make it clear to them that you are a single woman.
At the very least they will be able to block the number that the troublemaker has used.
Contact the troublemaker’s phone operator too and let them take action. This site lists UK STD codes and you should be able to find the troublemakers phone operator if its a mobile number.
In some cases this might not be enough to disuade him as he could easily call you from another phone. In a situation like this you only have the following options;
Ask your operator to change your number.
In the unlikely event that your phone operator refuses to either block the troublemakers number or change your number, close your account with them and open a new account with a different operator.
Report the operator to your local trading standards office.
This part might be a bit technical and if you have any problem understanding the following contact me and I’ll try to help you.
If you have e-mail proof, be it from a web based account (yahoo, hotmail etc) or a pop account through software such as Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook you should be able to find out who the troublemakers Internet Service Provider (ISP) is.
The ISP is the company everyone uses to connect to the internet (BT, AOL etc).
Too get the information you need the first thing to do is change e-mail preferences to view the full headers.
In web-based mail such as Yahoo you will find a link saying “show full headers” or similar.
In Microsoft Outlook, double-click the e-mail so it opens in its own window. Then select the “view” menu at the top and inside that menu select “options”. This will show the e-mail header and you can copy/paste this info if you wish.
When you can view the full header Click Here for a guide to finding information in an e-mail header.
Remember that without the full headers on print-outs etc, not much can be done.
If you are still getting hassled two weeks after sending your complaints then try phoning the ISP in question - understand that ISP’s get thousands of complaints each day and they may not consider it serious.
Phoning them might help!
The Police
If, after trying the above and you are still experiencing problems, go to the police. Take your evidence - and also evidence that you have informed the ISP who haven’t done anything.
The police may be your last line of defence in a situation like this.
If the ISP has failed to address the issue, contact your local trading standards office and also the BBC’s ‘watchdog’ program.
Good Luck
With determination your work will pay off and you are trouble free.