Thread: Cyber-harrassment by a colleague

I have my own blog (online diary) on the internet, in which I write about the main events in my life, but nothing too personal. I only update it in my own time (never when I'm at work) and I'm always very careful to avoid writing anything negative about other people. I find it much easier to express myself in writing than I do verbally.

Yesterday, someone left a comment on my blog which I found really offensive. This is what they wrote: "Bloody hell [my real name] you are a freak…. you don’t speak to anyone at work, you write on here like you have a personality but in fact you can’t speak to anyone face-to-face….
What’s wrong with you??"

I don't know for sure who it is as they used a false name. I do have their IP address though, as that gets logged automatically by the blogging software, so I found out that their ISP is BT Broadband.

I get on well with everyone at work; it's true that I'm one of the quieter ones, but I'm always friendly to people and I always get positive feedback from colleagues.

I think it must be someone who is friends with me on Facebook, as I have a link to my blog on there, and I don't give out the website address anywhere else other than to people I trust. My Facebook account is friends-only, but I have a lot of colleagues on my friends list.

If a total stranger left an offensive comment, it wouldn't bother me and I'd just delete it. What makes it worse is that it's a colleague. It makes me feel sick that a colleague, someone whom I trust, could write something like that. It makes me feel paranoid about who the culprit might be - for all I know it could be someone who sits on the same row of desks as me.

I actually went through all my colleagues' profiles trying to see who has a BT email address. It turned out that my main suspect actually has an NTL (cable) email address so it's unlikely to be him, but I did find someone else in my team who has a BT email address. He seems quite a friendly person in real life, so I'm really shocked that it might be him who left the nasty comment.

Is there any way I can find out for certain who it is? If I wrote to abuse@btbroadband.com, would they be able to do anything to help?

As the culprit wrote the comment on a Sunday (ie out of working hours and they used their home computer) does that mean my employer won't be able to help me even if I did manage to find out who it was?

By the way, this isn't the first time a nasty comment has been left on my site, but this time it's much more personal.

This is why I would never 'expose' myself on the internet in this way; I know that isn't very helpful but look at all the angst it is causing you now.

I once had a work colleague scream abuse at me out of his car window when we were both on our lunch break, my employer was not at all interested when I complained about it and responded pretty much as described in BBs' post above.

Not knowing who did this makes it even worse, I know. And you are clearly a sensitive person. Takes one to know one

In this situation I would close down the blog (without explanation) and forget about tracking down the culprit, at the end of the day they have behaved like a coward.