Someone mentally ill has been harrassing our staff and users for over a year now

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Costello

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As someone who has been running a relatively large video game site for the past two decades, I can say that it isn't unusual to have to deal with idiots who think they rule the world. We ban dozens of people every day: spambots mostly, but also people who post threats, who post atrocities, and whatnot.

But there's been one single guy that has been continuously harrassing us for over a year now. That guy is known on the internet as "Clancy" or "clancydaenlightened" on Twitter.

You may think I am exaggerating, because this sounds unbelievable, but truly there hasn't been a single day over the past year where this guy hasn't created dupe accounts, flooded our mailboxes, mass PMed our staff or members, posted threats on twitter, facebook and all that. He keeps creating dupe accounts here through Tor, proxies, VPNs, and our staff continues to block him every day. We have a team of 30+ staff members so it only takes us a second to wipe out his dupe accounts (whereas from our estimate it takes several minutes to create a dupe on our site) so we can literally do this all day.

We have had our lot of persistent assholes in the 20 years this site has existed, but none of them had been at it for more than a week or two. This guy has been at it EVERY DAY for over a year now.
Some of our moderators, having had enough with the guy, started investigating him personally to see what the deal was. Turns out this guy has got all his data out there in the open, he literally doxes himself everywhere and shows the drugs he's under, on social media. His real name, address, phone number, family members, are all easy to find or identify.

He seems to be a legitimately, severely mentally ill person, and I say this not just because of his year-long harrassment but also based on the things he posts on social media. He was recently banned from Twitter and subsequently posted this:

1653528875147.png


There is a hall of shame that exists in our collective memory at the GBAtemp mod team, and, through this thread, I wanted to share with you that we have a winner with this guy. None of us have ever had to deal with someone this deranged and bizarre.

He spends entire nights flooding our mailboxes with shit like this:

1653529642120.png


In light of what's happening in the USA lately with the mass shootings and killings, I am truly wondering if we should probably do something more practical about his behavior -- I'm talking about reporting him to the police, but certainly not doing ourselves justice. Inbetween the flood of insults there's also been threats of mass slaughter and crazy shit like that, that you wouldn't normally take seriously on the Internet. But the recent events make me wonder if not reporting him may put us, or someone else, at risk.

A member who was frequently harrassed by Clancy has told us that they reported him to the local police already, but it doesn't look like they did anything about it -- even though the police was given a name, an address, and a phone number. Now if you have any recommendations on how to handle this properly and avoid what could be another true, real life disaster, we're all ears.
 

godreborn

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I want to apologize for what I said before underplaying the threat this was to people. This is serious

I didn't see what you said, but I respect people who can pony up to their mistakes. god knows, I've made a lot of them myself, but I always apologize if that happens. I'm empathetic like that. :)
 

Creamu

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I don't have any good advice for this, it is a rather strange/modern phenomenon. Calling the mother is kind of an awkward move, and if he is in a state like that to begin with, it might not be of any use.

Did this approach of adressing the issue publicly have any effect so far?

I kind of roll with the punches when I encounter bully personalities, but this is on another level.
 

Elodain

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Last week I think?

Did this approach of addressing the issue publicly have any effect so far?
Seems like it, for the time being at least.

Obviously I have no idea what is going on in this individual's mind But there might be a possibility that once he realized the potential for actual legal action against him, jail/prison time, and the subsequent prohibition from using the internet during a probation/parole term has made him start reflecting on weather this is all worth it.

Wishful thinking, but you never know.
 
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Creamu

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Seems like it, for the time being at least.

Obviously I have no idea what is going on in this individual's mind But there might be a possibility that once he realized the potential for actual legal action against him, jail/prison time, and the subsequent prohibition from using the internet during a probation/parole term has made him start reflecting on weather this is all worth it.

Wishful thinking, but you never know.
Thank you for the response. I hope you are right and that he has considered a different path.

If he reads this, I want to say that I wish him all the best.
 

CoolMe

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Seems like it, for the time being at least.

Obviously I have no idea what is going on in this individual's mind But there might be a possibility that once he realized the potential for actual legal action against him, jail/prison time, and the subsequent prohibition from using the internet during a probation/parole term has made him start reflecting on weather this is all worth it.

Wishful thinking, but you never know.
I haven't seen any of his posts for a while, here or the Meme Box.. I hope he finally let go of it. It's not doing any good to anyone (including himself)..
 

godreborn

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I haven't seen any of his posts for a while, here or the Meme Box.. I hope he finally let go of it. It's not doing any good to anyone (including himself)..
I haven't seen any of his posts recently either, and I'm on here all day, and sometimes night. I do remember clancy de enlightened though. I remember the name, but I don't recall the tirades.
 
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CoolMe

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I haven't seen any of his posts recently either, and I'm on here all day, and sometimes night. I do remember clancy de enlightened though. I remember the name, but I don't recall the tirades.
I meant after this thread was made.. He (always) goes directly to the Meme Box after creating a new account, and sometimes he goes to the chit-chat box too..
 
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godreborn

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I don't go to that thread, and I don't think it's part of the normal last post set of threads. that's probably why I haven't noticed. I don't chat in the chat box too often either.
 
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Mayo1990

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Honestly I'd say to report him to the police again, I think there's some kind of internet police in the US or something. I don't really know how things work outside Italy law-wise. Besides, why does this guy hate GBATemp so much to the point where he's straight up harassing the staffers? Legit curious. He's not thinking straight if he takes an insane amount of drugs and alcool though. Just wondering why of all the forums/websites online he took GBATemp as his main objective.

About the multiple accounts thing, isn't there like a way to prevent people from using temporary emails so he has to waste much more time in making the email with GMail/Outlook/whatever?
 

Cris1997XX

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I've found this thread just now, and...holy shit. Holy fucking shit. I swear the dude is a real threat. I'd lock him up in a jail
 
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Creamu

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I've found this thread just now, and...holy shit. Holy fucking shit. I swear the dude is a real threat. I'd beat him to a goddamn pulp if I were to encounter him in real life
Who knows how much of a threat he truely is. Causing bodily harm to him only brings more destruction.
 

DolphinCube

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Is there any updates on this guy? Sorry if I'm being rude or anything it's just giving me anxiety if something like this happens and I dont know if its taken care of.
 

chrisrlink

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I’ve literally called the police due to the constant harassment he’s been giving me and my community, we even got confirmation that they spoke to him. That still hasn’t deterred him and now it’s starting to escalate to further legal actions. It’s actually gotten to the point where we had to bring on new members to our staff to have constant 24 hour monitoring and completely restructure how our server is operated. He seriously needs help and it’s scary to have someone so unhinged stalking me and my community.
I can forward along my evidence if you want to give that to the police.
good luck with that a neighbor of mine (who's also mentally ill) was threatening us all in our complex police are practicly called daily to deal with him and due to his mental instability he's protected unless it escalates to an actual crime...it did on May 30th he was FINALLY arrested for "unlawful trespass " into another neighbors apartment (personally breaking and entering would be more fitting) only spent 3 nights in jail and back to his usual BS
 

Elodain

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unless it escalates to an actual crime...
That's kind of the thing though.

If he's really strung out on drugs, he is PROBABLY committing a crime right there. The harassment itself might not be a crime depending on various factors (but I'm pretty sure it is) but even if not, whatever drugs he's on probably ARE illegal. XD

If he's openly bragging about it online (was he I cant recall) then I would imagine that's probably cause for a search warrant.
 

chrisrlink

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That's kind of the thing though.

If he's really strung out on drugs, he is PROBABLY committing a crime right there. The harassment itself might not be a crime depending on various factors (but I'm pretty sure it is) but even if not, whatever drugs he's on probably ARE illegal. XD

If he's openly bragging about it online (was he I cant recall) then I would imagine that's probably cause for a search warrant.
not talking bout this post i mean the guy in my complex (though it sounds like a simmilar issue)
 
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