Reporting Harassment

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  mistressmandoli · Member · Jan 21, 2015 at 5:06 am

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  I’m having a bit of a problem with another member of WordPress, and I’m not exactly sure if you’ll be able to do anything.

  This member made a WordPress account for the sole purpose of harassment towards myself and someone else. What happened to get to this point started off-site, and made its way to this site. The user in question threatens death to not only myself, but the second victim.

  I know it’s freedom of speech, but wanting to kill someone is a different story. Besides reporting it to the site outright, how am I supposed to get rid of this guy?

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  kokkieh · Staff · Jan 21, 2015 at 8:22 am

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  Hi there. First, it is possible to block this person from commenting on your blog completely by blacklisting his username, email and URL under Settings ->Discussion in the dashboard. Of course, this won’t prevent him from logging in using a different username to comment, but it’s a start.
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist
  (Despite what the support doc says, do not blacklist the IP address. All WP.com blogs share IPs, and they change over time, so that method is not effective for blocking someone.)

  You can also set your blog to private so this person is completely unable to access it, though I realise this is far from ideal and might be considered letting him silence you, but it’s an option.
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/

  Then you can also try reporting this person, but unless this person actually has content on his own site that violates the Terms of Service I doubt there’s much WordPress will be able to do about it. In any event, instructions for reporting a blog can be found here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/disputes/
  http://en.support.wordpress.com/report-blogs/

  As the person has made death threats against you you might also have grounds for a legal case, but laws on this differ from area to area, so I’d suggest you contact local law enforcement in your location to find out what your options are.

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  mistressmandoli · Member · Jan 21, 2015 at 4:59 pm

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  Did the blacklist, so I’ll see how that works.

  I’ve tried reporting him to the authorities, but they took it as someone who is just angry at me and will say anything to get me to crack. I keep telling people about this, and I get “there’s nothing you can do”.

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  kokkieh · Staff · Jan 21, 2015 at 5:11 pm

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  That’s the internet, I’m afraid. It’s not right, but that’s how it is. Anyone can say anything to anyone else and there are seldom real consequences for the bully, cause that’s what he is.

  Blacklisting will have all his comments go straight to spam, so you won’t need to see them and won’t be tempted to engage. Good luck with this.