I had to find a way to end this before it escalated yet again. Body of email: “Who do you think is harassing you on the net?” In another message to Maithri that showed up as a text on her phone apparently sent from my email address, he urged her to “put up more photos on facebook please!!! im bored.” Someone, likely Danny, sent her an anonymous email using a service called Guerillamail with: “Roni Jacobson is not your friend,” in the subject line. She got messages alerting her he was trying to hack into her gmail and social media accounts. He sent spoofed emails calling her “ugly” and “a slut” while pretending to be me or one of our mutual friends. Danny had also started harassing my friend Maithri, probably after intuiting our best friend status via social media. If they wouldn’t acknowledge the bruises that covered her arms, neck and legs, I didn’t have much confidence in their ability to see what Danny was doing to me.īut impersonating me, by spoofing my accounts, was too much.

A few months earlier I had watched as a couple of officers successfully dissuaded my neighbor from reporting the physical assault she had just suffered at the hands of her boyfriend. Besides, I had my doubts about the police. He obviously had a problem, and would likely be better served by therapy than jail-time, I thought. And anyway I didn’t want to get Danny in trouble. But by that point I regarded Danny as an annoying fact of life, the hole-dwelling rodent in a decade-plus game of whack-a-mole. Friends and family had been encouraging me to go to the police for years. Maybe it seems weird that I waited so long. Two years passed before I finally decided to take legal action, in late 2014. “If this incident ruined Roni Jacobson’s career in journalism, that is personally not my responsibility and she will have to deal with the consequences from her actions.” and New York City in addition with a number of journalism associations have been contacted to maintain the integrity of internet communication, to uphold ethical journalistic responsibilities, and uphold ethics in the journalism industry,” he wrote. In 2013 he sent my parents a letter detailing his recent activities: “A number of federal government agencies in Washington D.C. I filtered out his emails and blocked his text messages, but some communications always managed to slip through as Danny contrived new usernames and methods to harass me. Instead of his typical ramblings, Danny started calling me names, insulting my “Jewish nose,” and making thinly veiled threats to ruin my career. “That was easy.” Then he sent three more angry messages in quick succession and I blocked him on Facebook. good luck on your quest,” he wrote back three minutes later. I caved and sent him a message asking him to please stop messaging me so much or I’d block him.

His messages had ramped up to a maniacal rate - every few hours for about three days straight, unreciprocated, with no end in sight. The last time I talked to Danny was in 2012. But his Facebook messages only seemed to increase, an almost daily barrage of friendly if disjointed missives responding to my status updates or providing commentary on his political beliefs, job hunt and other aspects of his life. I took him to the cafeteria and made awkward conversation until I faked an excuse and left.Īfter that incident I cut off contact, figuring his fixation would dwindle with time. But I also didn’t want to hurt his feelings and felt touched by his gift. I panicked I hadn’t seen Danny since middle school and didn’t want to see him now. He handed me the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers CD (Stadium Arcadium, not great) and asked if we could eat dinner together. I was leaving the library when I saw Danny standing outside. I didn’t think much of Danny’s behavior until one evening during my sophomore year of college.

Friendly stalker memes