Tell me if you think these are stalking. A lady friend is upset at me and thinks I’m a stalker. The below is over the course of about 6 months.
An employee at the gym (John)…his father lost his job of about 35 years at one place. This lady wanted to do something nice for John and his family by getting them some gifts/gift certificates last Christmas. Before donating to it, I looked John up on Facebook to see about his family and what the father did for work at the company through the news story. I did NOTHING with the info and never looked any further.
Another employee at the gym recently lost her 50 yr. old brother. Wasn’t sure how he died. So, I looked him up on Facebook to see what kind of guy he was. I did NOTHING with that afterwards.
I asked the lady friend about a older guy at the gym and if he was retired. She wasn’t sure. She asked what his last name was, I said “Smith”. I only know that because I could see the computer from the spin bike when he checked in. She asked his age, I said, “I’ll tell you tomorrow”. Tried to look it up, but his name is too common.
Lady friend asked what the real tall guy “Vern” did for a living. Said, I wasn’t positive who he was. But saw him drive into the parking lot. License plate was VL-*. Not hard to look for local tax assessor records for “Vern L”. Found him, found his Linkedin page. She asked me, I found out and told her. That’s it. ** I think she set me up on this one.
I mentioned the lady friends age to her once, she didn’t say anything, but apparently I was wrong.
She now calls me a stalker just because I looked these people up online. And it seems that our close friendship is not so close anymore. There is no stalking. This bothers me. I try to be a kind person and empathetic when needed. I don’t follow people or bother anyone.
Your thoughts. Don’t you occasionally look someone up online?
Looking up people online is fine. If it’s publicly available information, you’ve not done anything anyone couldn’t do, and otherwise you seem to be a very observant person who sees and notices things around you. That’s not a bad thing.
OTOH, you may be lacking in social tact. If someone asks a question, you don’t have to provide the answer just because you know. Just because you’ve gained this knowledge “innocently,” I can see how it could have a stalkerish air if I started asking you questions about random people around the joint and you kept coming up with the answers.
Not that I’m encouraging anything–on the contrary, nobody likes a stalker–but LiveFree’s profile isn’t exactly hiding who he is.
“Stalker” usually means to me that someone is looking up a lot of information about a single person, especially due to a lopsided emotional attachment to that person, whether it’s sexual or hateful or both. I don’t think that’s what you’re doing, LiveFree. But if I found out you were constantly doing things like license-plate lookups on people, I’d probably tease you a bit about it; and if you did it on me, I confess I’d be a tiny bit wigged out.
I didn’t actually look up his license plate. Just noticed his initials, and with the name “Vern” it wasn’t hard to find tax assessor records. I never would have looked him up if she hadn’t asked what he did for a living. Was just trying to help her with an answer. But, I get what you’re saying.
I think the first couple Facebook checks were ok. Tax assessors records went way too far. Checking up over again on different people comes off a bit creepy.
I don’t think your a stalker in the obsessive about a single person sense but ya you sure give out a creepy stalker vibe. Seriously you did a license plate look up and a LinkedIn search for some random dude at your gym. That is way outside the bounds of normal. Noticing a person’s info on a computer is normal and happens making a point to learn more about them beyond asking them is weird.
I once got called a stalker because a woman I know posted stories on her facebook feed and then I brought them up to her.
She’d post about how she burned her hand cooking on facebook, then the next day she’d say ‘guess what happened last night when I was cooking’ and I’d say ‘you burned your hand’. She’d give me this uncomfortable look. That was fun. Don’t post stuff on public forums next time.
As to OP, the first two issues on facebook weren’t bad but the last two went over a line a bit. Awkward people can cross boundaries that some people find discomforting.
I wouldn’t call it stalker exactly, but it’s hard to find the right word, and like some others I’d say the last couple of things are over the line. Also, the fact that the information gathering seems to be a frequent habit and not a one-time thing.
For me, stalker = no, suspicious/weird/disturbing = yes.
I missed the edit window, but I want to say I don’t think you did anything literally wrong, just did things to cause a reasonable person questions and discomfort.
People post stuff on Facebook and Linkedin because they want it to be publicly accessible; that’s the whole point of such sites. Accessing it isn’t weird, unless you are accessing it for a weird purpose.
Cross-matching a partial name gleaned from a vanity plate with tax assessor records, however . . .
Not a stalker in the serious, scary, threatening sense.
You’re not in restraining order territory
Yes a stalker in the colloquial weirdo, awkward, not socially normal sense.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow” - odd. What’s wrong with “I don’t know”?
Deducing possible names from licence plates and searching tax records??? Very odd
Totally agreed. The fact that you can look such things up (and do a bit of connect-the-dots) doesn’t mean that it’s welcome. As it is, people overshare regularly on social media, and they negatively react to people seeming to “know too much” about them, just based on what they put on Facebook (see Wesley Clark’s post).
I, too, advise you to tone it down…or, if you feel that you have to satisfy your own curiosity, keep it to yourself.
Joining in with the crowd. The Facebook stuff is fine. You knew their names, and you looked them up, and saw what they wanted to tell the world. More importantly, you didn’t do anything with the information. The license plate stuff, on the other hand? Yeah, that’s creepy. Maybe you looked it up for curiosity, but don’t ever tell anyone about stuff like that.
That said, if she’s calling you a stalker but still willingly talking to you and asking you questions about people, I’d assume it was more an affectionate nickname. She doesn’t get to tell you that you’re wrong while clearly asking you for info about these people. She’d be just as much a stalker.
LiveFree: I think the reason people generally dislike and disapprove is that they can’t think of good/innocent reasons why you would want to know the kind of information you looked for. I know that curiosity is a reason, but I then think “Yes, but why are you curious? What’s in it for you?” AND… The point here is not that you give a list of legitimate innocent reasons for wanting to know - the point is for you to understand that in general people don’t like this and will want you to stop. The one person who said “stalker” is speaking for the majority, not an isolated hater.