flamers and trolls using google grouos - consequences?

I've had the misfortune of being flamed on google groups - and not a personal target either - the guy spouts awful things, like stuff to do with my 3 young children, terrorism, the works. The guy, amazingly, hasn't been banned by google, despite having a google account. Is this going to happen to the newsgorup community at large, or is his ISP or google likely to step in?

nope Google and his ISP will do nothing more then likely.

See if the group admin will boot him.

you *may* be able to go to your PD and file a harassment complaint if he's getting that bad. i doubt they will be able to help you being you have no idea as to whom it is correct? but i would try what adragon said and to see if the group admin will give him the boot first, only go to the police department if you feel its the last resort.

and i dont know if i clearly got what you are saying about this guy is he just talking trash about your children? or is he talking about more serious offensive stuff like molestation and things like that?

Google groups and newsgroups in general will never be fully moderated because of the way it works. If reported to google and the Police depending on the threats, they could remove his account via google or his ISP. But the newgroups dont act on a single server or a single company. For all you know this guy doesnt have a google account. Google groups is just an access gateway that happens to be free to the newsgroup world. The guy could be logging on through his verizon account into usenet or whatever server you are looking at.

Ill try and clarify. Google can only do something if he has a google account. He does not need one to post on "google groups" Google groups is a gateway to the newsgroups. Most gateway's you have to pay for. Some come free like google or with your ISP. The newsgroups can not be moderated nor can posts be deleted because they do not belong to a single company or server. Newsgroups operate much like the world wide web in which little bits and pieces of information are scattered all over the world on millions of different computers. The newsgroups were a messaging system that was built long before the internet was more then a few college computers. Because of this the guy could be loggin on from any hundreds of gateways, including esunext, verizon, google, sprint, D&E, or many others. You can see other persons messages in google groups.

Because of this the best thing would be to ignore him. He has about as much chance in finding you in real life as you have of finding him. Now if you feel it is a serious threat look at the messages header (newsgroups work kind of like email in which each "post" has a header file too) and get his IP addy. Then use the WhoIs directory and track his IP. After you know his ISP call them and report a torrist threat and give them his IP, his username from the newsgroups, his messages, and whatever else you may dig up.

Everytime he does it, just post something like, "<name of guy>, I love ya man!"

I am positive after a few times he will stop

mepis said:

Because of this the best thing would be to ignore him. He has about as much chance in finding you in real life as you have of finding him. Now if you feel it is a serious threat look at the messages header (newsgroups work kind of like email in which each "post" has a header file too) and get his IP addy. Then use the WhoIs directory and track his IP. After you know his ISP call them and report a torrist threat and give them his IP, his username from the newsgroups, his messages, and whatever else you may dig up.

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Wow, I thought only emails had headers - I'll do a bit more research about how to do this, but really, since he called all americans "war-mongering oil hoarders that are so in-bred that they have a genetic disorder to naturally hate all french" -I can safely assume he's not anywhere near me. Bit worried about his being able to get IP addresses, since he may indeed have used and be using this info to harass other newsgroup members, but I found out a long time ago that there's little that someone can do with your IP address unless you've violated your ISP ToS.

And yes, ignore will work just fine - I admit, his threats to my children did result in me giving him a bit of an outburst (though nothing to do with terrorism, etc, just childish harassment and allegations that I now regret) - the universal law on the net seems to be, if someone harasses you, your first port of call is to ignore.

gangaskan said:

and i dont know if i clearly got what you are saying about this guy is he just talking trash about your children? or is he talking about more serious offensive stuff like molestation and things like that?

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I didn't want to mention specifics as I thought it might be against forum policies, but yeah, he said something along the lines of "man i wish i knew where ur {sic} kids were, they'd be de-virginised in an instant" - that was the most serious. But as I said above, he's likely on another continent, and IP address non-withstanding (let me know if he can do anything with it other than make up a pack of lies such as "all his HTTP traffic is being used for downloading young girlie pictures!" let me know), the best solution is to ignore him.

Thanks all for your advice, I'd love to reply to everyone for their support, but I feel I have all the advice I need - if any posters read this, you all have my thanks.

thats why we're here man

people get their kicks via the internet because you can talk as much as you want behind a screen and not be physically hurt

i'm sure if he said things like you have implied to your face he would have been beat severely i know i would have torn him a new one.

you could maybe try beating him at his own game, however, does it make you any better then the person who is taunting you?

gangaskan said:

thats why we're here man

people get their kicks via the internet because you can talk as much as you want behind a screen and not be physically hurt

i'm sure if he said things like you have implied to your face he would have been beat severely i know i would have torn him a new one.

you could maybe try beating him at his own game, however, does it make you any better then the person who is taunting you?

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I suck at holding a grudge - after a couple of days, I just pretty much forget the person exists. The fact that the guy uses a fake email address to flame speaks volumes about his level of childishness - Who else would make up a comment about you being abused (quite severely, not going to use the actual words on here of course) as a child? A sicko, that's who, but ignore works wonders...

I hate to be harsh, but the internet is like a tall glass of ultra-concentrated real-life.

Normal person+audience+anonymity=internet badarse.

As long as you post on internet forums (to be honest OCF is the first and only exception I've found to this rule in 7 years of internetting) you're going to get ridiculed, even if you have proven fact on your side.