Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

major-grooves.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 225 posts

Re: How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

#71

Post by [deleted] »

bigpeach wrote: post #12
ketzo wrote: post #3

Maybe obvious, but uh: don’t fucking do this! I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane! Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE…

I thought this too. But you can feel incredibly powerless if all you do is “let the police handle it.” Even in this instance, nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy. Prosecution of crime happens after a crime is committed. Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one. Even if stalking is illegal, cops won’t / can’t feasibly spend the resources investigating and punishin…

[deleted]

Re: How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

#72

Post by yreg »

> Side note for Bumble — this is what we would call an “entity resolution” problem, leading to safety problems for your platform. When someone installs your app, you need to detect whether they have already installed it previously. If they have, then their activity (including blocks and people who have already declined them) should be linked to this new account.

What is Bumble supposed to do if the user asks them to delete all the data that is connected to them? Can Bumble keep a hash of the name/phone and store it with a list of users who have blocked the user which is being erased?

Re: How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

#73

Post by femto »

vorpalhex wrote: post #46
femto wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Collect evidence and get the authorities involved!" is excellent advice. Though if other options were exhausted, I'd be more prepared to "give it a go" in the UK than in the US. Stricter gun laws mean you're unlikely to be confronted with a firearm, and if outnumbered and tempers are kept at bay the person would be more likely to run or surrender. Think I would have had more than two people on my side.

So you confront someone you think is a criminal with a group of men and get into a brawl. How much time are you willing to spend in jail? Even if the gent is a stalker and you are right - you still instigated a brawl! You still assaulted (or more) someone. If your thought process is "ah but he won't have a gun! My lads and me will really have an easy time now!" that may be a sign you are doing something unwise. And w…

> you still instigated a brawl!

Why go in with an assumption that violence is going to occur? That's a recipe for trouble. You would have to pick your friends carefully, so none of them loose their cool. If there is going to be violence or any contact, let the stalker initiate it.

I'm not arguing that it would be risk free or a lark. It's a case of accepting the risks and being happy that the likely outcome would justify the risks.

Re: How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

#75

Post by barry-cotter »

mabbo wrote: post #45
Pepe1vo wrote: post #5

Truly, what compels a person to do such a thing? I too have struggled heavily with depression in the past, but I've never once felt the urge to repeatedly vandalize anyone's property. Like, I just don't understand what's to gain.

I think it's important to remember what mental illness is, at it's core- an important organ that isn't working correctly. The brain is the thing that tells you what is and isn't right. It provides motivation, impulses, everything. And it can break in any number of ways- depression is merely one of them. This person is ill. That doesn't excuse them, but it does help explain them.

People have different values and desires. That you cannot imagine doing something without being mentally ill doesn’t mean others can’t. The world is much more diverse than the upper middle class of early 21st century Anglophone progressive culture.

Re: How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

#76

Post by steveBK123 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #7
ketzo wrote: post #3

Maybe obvious, but uh: don’t fucking do this! I get it, I'm an older brother, I would wanna go ballistic too. But the fact that these guys skipped over "notify the police" and went straight to "seek out in-person confrontation" is insane! Stalkers are not people in their right mind. Staking out and planning to “citizen’s arrest”(???) someone who has repeatedly visited late at night to threaten and harass is NOT SAFE…

The problem is the cops tend not to give a shit.

Its an information/risk asymmetry problem too right.

For an individual its better to be safe than sorry on something like a stalking incident.

For the cops dealing with a plethora of complaints, on average, most of these resolve to nothing..

Further, these complaints often come with unspecific information thus requiring some amount of surveillance, some of which is easier for the victim to do (put cameras up your own property) than they are able to do legally, especially without a warrant.

Further, with some information in-hand from surveillance, the victim also has access to all their own social media/etc accounts that you can try and make connections between whatever information you collect.

Most people are probably not going to be be OK with "sure we can help you, but we need to put cameras on your property, car and permission to login to all your social media accounts / email / texts, is that ok?"

Obviously this is not ideal, but the vast majority of cops are not detectives. They aren't sending out their best to every seemingly minor call.

I had a friend involved in a domestic incident and when the cops showed up, because she had fought back enough, they both showed evidence of a struggle, and the guy lied about incident. So the cops spent less than an hour on site, shrugged their shoulders and dragged them both off to lockup to go sort it out with a judge in the morning.

One alternative is maybe she didn't fight back and the cops would have seen only marks on her neck and took only him away, maybe. The other alternative is, she didn't fight back, and he choked her to death.

It's often better to fight back than to let yourself get killed while waiting for law enforcement, but there's also a risk that whatever contact with law enforcement you make will not go precisely your way, immediately, without side effects.

Re: How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

#77

Post by giraffe_lady »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58
bigpeach wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this too. But you can feel incredibly powerless if all you do is “let the police handle it.” Even in this instance, nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy. Prosecution of crime happens after a crime is committed. Cops can’t do much if you’re worried someone will harm you or a loved one. Even if stalking is illegal, cops won’t / can’t feasibly spend the resources investigating and punishin…

> nothing would have come of it had they not traced the guy Notify the cops. Track the guy down. Go to the station and request someone come out with you. This takes cops off the desk, which they’re rarely against unless you’re a nutter.

> unless you’re a nutter.

Or undocumented, or a member of another group for whom interactions with the police are potentially dangerous.

Or for that matter, what if you are "a nutter?" People with mental illness also get stalked, and also deserve protection. Going in person to the police station is unwise for so so many reasons for so many people.

If this approach works for you then cool, for you. It's not going to work for most of us.

Re: How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

#78

Post by thih9 »

Pepe1vo wrote: post #5

Truly, what compels a person to do such a thing? I too have struggled heavily with depression in the past, but I've never once felt the urge to repeatedly vandalize anyone's property. Like, I just don't understand what's to gain.

I guess they see it as a way to express their frustration with the world. Or perhaps they hope to intimidate someone into loving them. Or maybe it’s something different, but similarly broken.

Would be great to see more focus on mental helth care, I guess this is the way to prevent situations like this one.

Re: How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

#79

Post by yreg »

Eisenstein wrote: post #10

Would have been better if we didn't have to hear about how great it was that she had three brothers. If she had three sisters into security I guess she would have been screwed?

I also found the formulations off-putting, e.g. repeating how lucky it is for a girl to have brothers (emphasis on their gender). Or how they felt the need to explain specifically to the male readers why the sister was concerned by what's going on. I am a man and I would be scared shitless if some weirdo was breaking eggs on my car.

The author probably just didn't realize this angle, I doubt he meant it in a bad way.

Re: How we turned the tables to catch my sister’s Bumble stalker

#80

Post by stickfigure »

It's not just women.

I have a male friend in his late 50s who's been dealing with a stalker for the last 30 years. Every few years or so the stalker goes off his meds and starts harassing my friend. It's never gotten violent but you never know what kind of psychotic break is around the corner.

Post reply on HN