Question: Have any of the online threats targeted against females in the gaming industry or press escalated into a real event? Meaning, are those making the threats showing up at the homes or offices of these females? Any threats coming through the postal mail? I hope not, but here is why I ask....
We keep hearing about threats through social media, email, etc., but I'm wondering if law enforcement can do anything more if something offline happens. It would be nice if those making the threats can be revealed and documented through police reports or restraining orders. I ask about postal mail because I believe postal inspectors can bring in other law enforcement personnel. Can anyone shed light on this?
As far as I'm aware, there haven't really been any "offline" threats made outside of some people taking photos of themselves outside of one person's business (though that may be for something else that I'm remembering that).
However, as for the authorities doing something more just because it's "offline" instead of online, I think more and more, the authorities are starting to do as much as they can when it comes to online threats like what's been shown here. They may have better or easier leads if someone were to actually send something physical in but it is perhaps no easier or harder than using something like an IP or email to track someone that made only an online threat. Assuming an effort is made, that is.
A few years ago I was a moderator on a rather large community forum site. I gave a member there a link to the forum rules after he started to get a little heated in a thread with other members. It wasn't an infraction, not a ban, just a link to the rules and a suggestion to chill out about something that was getting him a bit too riled up. He started to stalk me. He sent me threatening messages on the forums and on another site I was a mod on. He was banned repeatedly yet would make new accounts to message me. He publicly posted new threads with my address and number (though fortunately he had all of the information completely wrong). Though the information was wrong, it was still quite frightening at the time. I was away at college and I was worried about my family back home. I mean, what if this guy eventually found real information about me? In fact, I still have one of the messages saved in an email, sitting in my Gmail account. Here's a small bit from it:
Like I told you in the last PM John, I decide when I post on this site, not you. And I also told you I was about to obtain your address, after which you and me would be having a little tete-a-tete. I'm a man of my word, and also as I told you you're going to be the 4th moderator to whom I've taken the trouble to teach some respect and basic good manners. You still feeling cocky son? Still thinking you're the big I-am from behind the safety of your keyboard and monitor? Still think you can speak the way you do to people more than twice your age? You and me are going to have a good discussion on those issues, during which time I'm going to give you a good long hard smell of the coffee. You're going to be educated John, and some day you'll thank me for it.
My name isn't John, but this guy believed it was. And again, this literally all started because I linked the guy to the forum rules.
To make an already long story short, the guy was caught... eventually. Though it wasn't really thanks to having filed a police report. It took the effort of two different companies (the two sites I was a mod for) in order to find out where this person really was when he wasn't hiding behind proxies. It was only after a filing of a police report with the man's local authorities in a European town and a filing against that person's ISP, did the harassment finally come to an end. The reports were filed on my behalf by an owner at one of the companies that either lived in Europe or knew people there due to his job, I can't recall at this exact moment.
The thing is, I don't know if anything would have actually happened if I wasn't fortunate enough to have some people helping me out with it. If I just left it to the authorities, would it have stopped? Maybe. Maybe not. I was never really told the extent to which my local authorities helped, if at all. This was about eight years ago, so I'm sure things like threats made online are taken a bit more seriously now than they did then. At least, I'd hope so.
