I did that. He IMed me under a second name. A third. A fourth. His message on the fourth, “I can keep this up all night; you’ll get tired of it before I do.”
I talked to AOL. Their advice? “Turn off your IMs.” I patiently explained to them that 1) people DO need to talk to me for perfectly legitimate and necessary purposes and 2) someone else’s bad actions deprives me of system functionality and harasses me in the process and that’s just too bad? WTF?
The AOL associate said that AOL had no control over AIM to speak of and that there was nothing that could be done.
All this being said, I think the point’s been made.
I’m removing Oscar’s information from this thread. However, anybody that needs it can get it from me or from Lynn.
Glad to hear it Tuba, because no matter what anyone thinks of Oscar, you’ve violated his privacy under the Federal Privacy act as a company(I.E.- as caretakers of the board, the Chicago Reader is liable for your actions). He gave you an E-mail to use, and one of your mods decided to post his PRIVATE E-mail address. Read below, this was copied from http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs18-cyb.htm And is an excerpt of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
(bolds, underlines Etc., are MINE)
So, SamClem, you’ll see that he IS protected by the law.
Now, I’m not disagreeing whether he was harassing anyone or not, but I do question Ms. Bodoni’s Ethics in posting personal info(that was gotten how?), on a poster, and posting a PRIVATE E-mail address that was not used to register with the SDMB.
You all do a great job, and I’m grateful for the job you’re doing, however, you’ve gotta stop crap like this.
In this instance wasn’t Tuba the sender and adressee of the e-mails in question? If so, the cited law does not seem to apply. Rather it appears address the responsibility of a mail server sysop to insure that messages are seen only by their intended recipient.
From the posted quote,
" The service may legally view and disclose private e-mail if either the sender or the recipient of the message consents to the inspection or disclosure. "
None the less I am still a bit uneasy that a board mod would post such info, even if they were fully within their rights to do so.
[quote]
In this instance wasn’t Tuba the sender and adressee of the e-mails in question? If so, the cited law does not seem to apply. Rather it appears address the responsibility of a mail server sysop to insure that messages are seen only by their intended recipient. **
I took it to mean that the “Admin” of a site or service(E.G.–the Mods), couldn’t divulge E-mails to anyone other than theirselves and the originator of the message, unless there was an agreement between the end user and them.
Now, if E-mail is sacred in the privacy act, I’m sure that an IP address, that is held secret from the eyes of the users, and unlocked by the mods is also protected. THe Chi Town Reader has built in a safety net here, and the mods used it against a poster by tracing the IP back to the ISP.
Good detective work, lousy ethics. Undoubtedly a violation of the ECPA IMO, although I didn’t have the time to read the whole act, and am not a Lawyer.
If I’m wrong…sue me It was still without a doubt lousy to post the info.
This is obviously goiung to spiral down to a war of semantics and interpretations of the law. Since I’ve said my piece, let’s let this one die out, ok? I’m sure Oscar’s done playing stupid games, and his private info has been removed.
I would like to mention that I knew quite a bit about ‘Oscar’ myself, without ever exchanging any e-mails, IMs, or anything else with him. I addressed him as ‘Oscar’ over a month ago, when he was banned as The Urge.
I knew all of this because he had provided a link to his webpage (I don’t remember if it was in his profile or in a sig line). I saw pictures of him and read a ‘diary’ type page where he posted private info about his life that was, to me, a cry for help. (Why else would you make such revealing statements available to the general public?)
After seeing all of that, I made a post basically asking everyone to cut him a little slack and pleading with him to get counseling. He has some serious problems that he refuses to recognize - his behavior re: this board is a good example. He is not just a young asshole looking for entertainment - he is seriously emotionally disturbed and needs help.
Oscar, if you are reading this: turn off the damn computer and go talk to a counselor. GET HELP. PLEASE.
If you MUST know, and I hate explaining these things, I obtained Oscar’s address from his sig. While he didn’t come right out and say “THIS IS MY ADDRESS”, he did put enough information in that thing for me to track him down. I didn’t use any administrative powers. Anyone who read his sig could have done the same thing. Incidentally, his last name was also in the sig.
I didn’t INTERCEPT any email. I was the sender. I didn’t use administrative powers to get Oscar’s address. ANY of you could have done the same thing, had you been so inclined.
For the record, I don’t KNOW how to track down IPs. Tubadiva has promised to teach me sometime. But I didn’t use any “confidentially supplied” information. If Oscar wanted to keep his name and school private, he shouldn’t have posted what he did.
It was still without a doubt lousy to post the info.