If she is “promoting events” for a marketing company, organization, or a brand for events held at bars and nightclubs and similar venues it would hardly require a GPS to guess fairly accurately exactly when and where she will be. These brands and companies often make a big deal in ads and various media of which venues they will be present at. That’s the whole point.
Is he is showing up constantly when she is just out socially and not promoting stuff and she is in out of the way venues then there might be cause to worry.
If she’s an event promoter then she likely liaises with the police: she should speak to them. Also, if he’s turning up at events she’s promoting she should speak to the security staff to see if he can be refused entry.
Trading phones with somebody and seeing if the guy is following the phone is a good suggestion. Make sure it’s somebody who will recognize the guy if he shows up.
Hiring somebody to threaten the guy is a very bad idea.
I am not advocating violence or illegal activity here.
No, not that type.
Up until dark alleyways and broken fingers were mentioned, I envisioned an average sized man in a dark knee length overcoat and flat cold eyes who always shows up, standing about ten feet behind your friend, in the line of sight of the Stalker.
Just staring at him. Drinking club soda. No lime.
Maybe showing up once outside his work. On the tube he takes. In his grocery store. (I don’t know why I find the grocery so intimidating.)
Just a very scary looking guy (if you watch the same movies I do) who just happens to show up whenever the Stalker shows up wherever your friend is.
This, by the way, is not something I would advise, because the Stalker would probably never notice him.
Things aren’t always as coincidental or malicious as they seem.
Maybe they just enjoy the same pubs, if they went to them when they were friends, why should they stop when they stop being friends.
Though, just to be sure, I second DigitalC’s suggestion, it’ll give you more information at the very least. Also, some websites such as facebook tag a photo with your location, giving a stalker a way to track you.
Echo’s idea is very bad, and it might actually end up with the potentially innocent guy getting a restraining order against your friend.
Many years ago when I was still young and sociable, I was sure I was being ‘stalked’ by a guy who would just happen to be at the same pubs, clubs, parties and the like. Didn’t know him, didn’t know anyone else who knew him, but it got to the point of feeling a little creepy…at least once a week he’d just appear wherever I happened to be.
With the wisdom of maturity and hindsight, it was pure coincidence. The places I hung out in were geared towards the 1970’s folk and traditional music scene, so anyone also enjoying that type of music was inevitably going to show up at the same venues. And it turns out he was just a loner who liked to listen to live acoustic music (hence why nobody claimed him as their friend).
Unless your friend’s ‘ex friend’ is trying to harass her in other ways, I’d just let it drop.
Other than being “present” too often for her comfort no one has mentioned that this guy is annoying her, or harassing her, or even approaching her and as I have pointed out there’s a good chance this is simply what happens when people frequent hot spots vs him hacking her phone to stalk her. If he’s a social butterfly and wants to be where the party and event action is and it’s apparently her job to “promote” events where the social action is, that she runs into him quite often is hardly a brain teaser.
And now we’re talking about having people threaten him with a potential beating.
one more piece of info could be very relevant:
When does he arrive at the bar, and when does he leave?
If she leaves one venue and goes to another 20 minutes later, does he show up there, too?
If he matches the movements of the woman, then that’s suspicious. Otherwise, it’s a weak case.
I might even consider finding someone with the identical model phone and also swapping with them [you will probably need to go to the phone store to get them to swap the phone numbers over if you can’t do it over the phone or online.] Unless it is the time on your contract to upgrade to a new phone?
[though if it is an older model that you like, sort of like I am still using a droid 1 you might be able to get a cheap one online to swap the phone number to … let hom wonder why it looks like hte identical phone but his little geobug isn’t working!]
I will not say on a Message Board to do something illegal, but, if you can’t see how introducing threats of violence into the equation would help, I’m not sure that you can understand any advice given.
And if you can’t see that introducing violence into a situation which is in no way threatening at this point, based on what the OP has said, then maybe you should read the OP again. And if you can’t see that your post is insulting to the OP, read IT again.
If that is all, who is to say that it isn’t the woman trying to use pressure & sympathy to force the supposed stalker away from her favorite watering hole?
Then again, if physical evidence was found that the stalker was using some sort of technology to spy on or track the victim, I hope there are laws in place which could stop it.
I had a stalker once. She did exactly what the stalker in the OP is described as doing – turn up at all my regular haunts, all the time.
No GPS involved, no technology. I knew her, I’d gone on a couple of dates with her, not really felt a spark, didn’t date her again. She felt otherwise. She also worked at the same place I did. She was a freelancer there – I met her when she came in to deliver some work. After we dated, and then didn’t date (it’s not like we ever had enough of a relationship to call it “breaking up”), she weaseled herself into a job there as part of her stalking plan.
So she knew a lot about me. She knew where to find me. She would go to my regular hangouts looking for me. If I wasn’t there, she’d ask about me.
Really, she made my life miserable for a while. She was never a physical threat, but she was definitely unstable.
I got rid of her only when she left the place where we both worked and took a job where image is everything, where there can be no hint of insanity. Then I had something to threaten her with, and I told her that if I ever saw her anywhere near me again, I’d contact her employer and tell them she was a stalker.
It worked. I don’t know if the woman described in the OP has anything like that kind of leverage, but it’s way better than hiring thugs.
Okay, hiring a thug is not a great idea, but what about hiring a private detective to follow the stalker? The P.I. could gather evidence as to what the stalker is doing.
Actually, your first nugget of advice was one of the worst suggestions i’ve ever read. It’ might work in the movies, but the last thing you ever want to do is put someone in a potential dangerous situation. Confronting someone you think is unstable is especially dangerous, since who’s to say they don’t have a gun, knife, or something on them that would make the visit from the tough guy a bad situation for all involved.
Hiring a PI is a little over the top at this stage too, although it’s far better than confronting him. Stick with the advice given: if he is not showing any signs of confronting your friend, or being a physical threat to her, she should check out the GPS tracking possibility on the phone. The other thing she could do is rent a car and see if he shows up… Or maybe swap cars with a male friend of hers and see where he shows up. If he’s following the car, it’s a decent bet he has the car bugged, which I’m guessing is illegal. The phone and the car are the only two ways he could track you (I’m guessing) unless he put something inside her purse and she carries the same one.
If he’s obsessed, and he seems to pop up everywhere, once you eliminate the phone and the car, the only thing left is that he’s following her. If that’s the case, call the police. I’m guessing it’s illegal to install a tracking program on someone else’s phone, too, but I do 't know about that.m tampering with her car would be serious. Another call to the police.
It doesn’t sound to me like it is just coincidence, but like others have said, if she has a habit of going to the same places, he could just know her schedule. Still kind of spooky, though. Absolutely don’t ignore it. i don’t know what a stalker’s mindset is, but if he’s been doing it for a while, he’s obviously not going to stop without incentive or unless the tracking device is found and removed.
The idea of following the phone is good - but only if it’s the sort of place the OP’s friend wouldn’t normally go to - and it’s multiple such places in different “genres”. (i.e don’t convict him on one occasion that might be a coinkydink)
As some stage the OP’s friend knew this person well enough to lend him her phone for an unspecified amount of time? How long was that, and how did it come about?