I’ve been getting some unsolicited, personally abusive e-mails from navy.mil. The e-mails appear to be coming from a single individual who claims to be a “P CIV”, whatever that is. I note that navy.mil is in rfc-ignorant so there’s no sense complaining to abuse@navy.mil. Is there some other way of filing a complaint – maybe to the perpetrator’s commanding officer? (I have his name and “P CIV”, which I suppose is his position or rank; is this enough information to find his commanding officer?) Presumably the Navy has rules about acceptable uses of its e-mail addresses and servers.
It sounds to me that the CIV means civilian so although they would still be reprimanded for mis-use of government systems they wouldn’t have a CO or fall under military law in that way.
What reasons do you have to believe that they are coming from the navy’s computers? Almost every thing in a email is generated by the sending machine. Some mail services will put the IP address of the machine that sent the mail but there tends to be a long list of those machines and it is not easy to determine the last trust worthy one.
P CIV is indeed a civilian. There’s a navy helpdesk at helpdesk@xxxxxxxxxxx.navy.mil (Fill in the domain with whatever is the offender’s email). it may be conus.navy.mil. It’s a universal standard, but your email will still not be ignored.
Also helpful would be to let your fingers do the walking and get in touch with somebody like a garrison commander/duty watch/base police officer from the offending domain. An example is like this: you’re getting abused by JOHNCIV@enterprise.navy.mil. You can use Google to look up the phone# of the MPs for the base/ship. Call said police and the action will stop.
Seriously, usage of a military supplied email/terminal is monitored, and you’re not allowed to abuse it in such a way.
How can he send you personally abusive email if he doesn’t know you personally? Can you elaborate more on the type of attacks you’re getting and why you think he (they) are targeting you?
“P CIV” is a generic placeholder rank for anybody not on active duty or government civil service type employment. (Like a contractor.) It is not a way to find out where this individual works.
A) If the emails are merely annoying (thinks like “Your a som-bitch! You can just sork my crank!” etc.), I am guessing that the only legal remedy is to have your email provider block that specific senders’ messages. (Some email systems have an “ignore” feature.) Or get a new email account altogether.
B) If they are of an actual threatening nature (threatening to kill you, burn your house, poison your dog, etc.) that’s different, and illegal.
BTW: Not all commands have their own email server. The shore commands all share the common navy.mil domain, for example… at least on the base I work on.
In my experience with U.S. gov’t e-mail, clients like MS Outlook usually resolve an address by looking it up in the Global directory and substituting a real name for the “name” field before sending it out. So, for example, if I were Seaman Phil O. Bucket, you would see my address as “philip.bucket@something.navy.mil” and you’d see my name as “Bucket, Phil O SEAMAN”. If I had no rank (a civilian) it would append “CIV” instead of “SEAMAN”. I’d guess that his middle initial is “P” and he’s just a regular old civilian.
If you have his name and care to e-mail me, I can look him up using the Global Address List and give you an idea of who his supervisor might be.
DoD e-mail systems have an extremely restrictive acceptable use policy. You could probably get the user into a significant amount of trouble by reporting him.
The individual apparently took issue with something posted on my website and decided the best way of expressing this would be to write a series of personal attacks. I believe the attacks are targetted at me because they are sent to my e-mail address, address me in the second person, and reference material I wrote (eight years ago).
Maybe. It could range anywhere from a verbal warning, to “retraining” (taking the online computer use and security course again), or to job termination. Some of that is significant, some not.
Yes, this is what I had in mind. I suspect that what he’s doing is in violation of the Navy’s terms of use for their e-mail servers. I could just block his e-mail address but that doesn’t prevent him sending more abusive e-mails to some other innocent person. I’d prefer to have his supervisor gently (or not-so-gently) remind him that DoD machines aren’t to be used for harassing random people you find on the Internet.
What I meant by “why you think he (they) [is] targeting you?” was “Do you know what caused him to get mad at you”. But anyway, you answered that question in your response too.
Call this number toll free and discuss the problem.
(877) 253-7122
Don’t do that. Contact the supervisor yourself and give the supervisor psychonaut’s contact information.
That’s the direct line to the NKO Help Desk. They handle all the email and IMO issues for the Navy. Since you don’t know who this person is or where he works, or who his commander is, it would be a good place to start.
His location - 51.464131° N 0.132577° W Puts him just south of London. From Google Earth, it looks like Clapham, but I’m not sure where the lines are, as I’m utterly unfamiliar with the layout of towns/cities/hamlets in Great Britain.
