yeah, i had to change journals because a lot of people were doing that. it taught me not to put so many pictures up for people to see, to be a little more careful. i'm just glad i didn't tell anyone where i lived, phone numbers, etc. before i got to really find out what they were about!

I had a stalker (and still do for all I know, though he hasn't popped up lately) who showed up because a I posted a link to a video he found objectionable, and a friend of mine reposted it in his journal with the mention that I was the originator. Basically he decided to get on my case and argue with me and harass me through several different accounts about my responsibility to not post crap. Or something like that.

LJ has a couple of features that really help cutting down on this sort of crap. Disabling anonymous comments and screening non-friends comments helps. There are ways of blocking people from commenting your journal, but I'm not sure about blocking them when they add you on their friends list. I seem to remember something about a feature like that from back when there were lots of nuisance serial adders hanging out in the presidential debate communities...

I really wonder why people in the US are that worried about that.

It wasn't really so much 'stalking'.... but there's an online game I play rather frequently, and discuss openly with one of my friends. Now, I haven't told anyone in real life about my LJ, and I hardly made any posts that weren't public. This friend of mine was curious about the game I was playing, and googled for it. Second match on the list? The LJ community /for/ said game... and from there, he found my journal.... and a post I had written bitching about that very friend!

Oops.

I found out about a month ago that an ex-boyfriend had been reading all my protected posts for 2-3 years. He cracked my mail password and then got my LJ pwd by requesting it on the Web site, and then intercepting the email. Fortunately, I got a copy of the password reminder email, and LJ provides the IP address of the requestor (both times it resolved to a POP in the city where I knew he was living...with his MOM). That was enough info to get my ISP's Abuse department to call his and take action on his account. They wouldn't tell me whether they suspended or terminated his his account, citing their <i>privacy policy</i>. Oh, the irony.

Granted, he didn't cause any data loss, physical harm, or hijack my account to bother other people, but I'm furious that he breached my privacy, and that of my friends and family whom I wrote about. It's not like my LJ is all that interesting to people who don't know me, but he's holding on to me in any way he can because I want nothing to do with him. (He got stalker-ish when we broke up; I had to sic HR to get him to leave me alone because we worked for the same company and he harassed me day and night.)

I considered getting rid of my LJ or creating a new one, but ultimately I decided he was not going to manipulate me and that it was MY journal. I've managed to resecure it and associate it with an email address that few people know about.