Email harrassment

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decembersal

Registered User
Messages
158
Hi Guys,
A friend of mine has had their hotmail account hijacked by an evil, twisted ex, who has sent a vicious, slanderous email to everyone in the address book. According to hotmail the account cannot be terminated and the ex has changed the password so the friend can't gain access either. What is the best course of action, can everyone on the list get emails blocked from this account or is there some way of hacking into the account? Scarey thing is that the friend has had to change their mobile phone number and email address already because of similiar unwanted attention from this individual.
Would really appreciate some advice on this matter,
Thanks, Sal
 
I would first of all contact everyone I know and make sure they understand that these emails are not coming from me, and advise them to either put a blocker on them or just delete them unread.
If the harassing emails are obscene, vicious and possibly of illegal content then I would get onto the guards straight away. It isn’t that difficult to trace the user of a webmail account to their actual location.
Hacking someone elses webmail account is illegal, albeit not a significant crime in itself. Collect all the emails sent from the account and bring them to your local guarda station. As I said, dependent on the content of the emails sent, this could or could not be a serious crime.
 
decembersal said:
Hi Guys,
A friend of mine has had their hotmail account hijacked by an evil, twisted ex, who has sent a vicious, slanderous email to everyone in the address book. According to hotmail the account cannot be terminated and the ex has changed the password so the friend can't gain access either. What is the best course of action, can everyone on the list get emails blocked from this account or is there some way of hacking into the account? Scarey thing is that the friend has had to change their mobile phone number and email address already because of similiar unwanted attention from this individual.
Would really appreciate some advice on this matter,
Thanks, Sal
Click to expand...

there is a forgot my password option on hotmail (i'd say that how the ex got access)

get access through that again , and change the details...
 
Thanks for your replies guys, if the ex had control of the inbox would they know then that everyone had blocked the emails? lessen their sadistic satisfaction!! A voicemail and a few of the texts have been kept as proof... but it's all very hard to prove when it comes to a war of words.
 
Get anyone who has received one or several of these emails to keep them, within the full headers of the email it will show the ip address of the computer that was used to send the mail. So regardless of whether they are using hotmail and free isp dial-up account the ip address can be traced back to the phone number or leased line etc where the connection originated from. All this will have to go through the guards however - I think their computer fraud/security issues are based in Hartcourt terrace.
 
Go to the Gardai and report this straight away. However be aware that it can take time for the Gardai to get information from Hotmail to identify the culprit as this involves the Gardai having to arrange with the police force where hotmail is located. They then have to serve a warrant to hotmail and the information passed back through the chain to the Gardai. A very long a time consuming process.

The best piece of evidence your friend has are the text messages. These should be saved and brought to the Gardai. Also the mobile operator probably has a facility to report harrassing calls.

C
 
Capaill said:
However be aware that it can take time for the Gardai to get information from Hotmail to identify the culprit C
Click to expand...


They don't have to contact hotmail at all, the ip address will be in the email headers that the recipients have got - the ip links back to an ISP and the guards just have to contact the relevant ISP and get them to see who had the ip address at the date/time in question
 
If the content of the email is to be used as evidence the Gardai will have to get copies of the email from hotmail. they will also require the IPs from the relevant ISPs to track the whole email conversation.

Don't forget email headers can be forged, so if the Gardai are to proceed they have to ensure they have all the factual evidence to hand.

The IP address in the headers may point to where the account was logged in from. If this points back to the ex's house then the evidence points to him. However, if it points to an IP address in an Internet cafe then it is more difficult to prove that the ex sent the mail.

Don't forget that in a criminal case, the evidence has to be beyond all reasonable doubt to convict the person of the crime.

To get who used the IP address will also take time as the Gardai will have to serve a search warrant to the relevant ISP to get the details.

C
 
They won't need to get a copy of the email from hotmail as no isp keeps copies of all mails - the more emails that are kept means the more headers there are.

I used to work for an ISP and quite ofter got these types of requests, for them to take a case against an individual the emails with full headers and the details from the ISP should be all they need, plus as stated above they have also left incriminating voicemails.

I do agree it will take a bit of time for the guards to process it however.
 
Nope, they would have keep the mail logs for 3 years or something but not the content of the mail, ie mail from "a" with ip "b" sent mail at "date" & "time" to recipient "x"

But as this info would be all in the email headers mail logs shouldn't be needed
 
paddyc said:
But as this info would be all in the email headers mail logs shouldn't be needed
Click to expand...
Paddy

For legal reasons are they not better off getting this info from the ISPs etc.? After all an email header can be spoofed.

C
 
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