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Let me give you the background in context so that you know the full story.

Last summer my web guy (he put my website together) got in a fight with someone who attempted to register on my site using the name of my company as part of his user name. I was not aware of this at all until it had escalated dramatically. I don't know why my web guy was so unprofessional in his response to this person. I really don't know him - met him via SCORE and have never met in person. He is a vendor. Anyway, this guy who got into it with my web guy then threatened to do all he could to hurt my business and said he was internet savvy, etc.

So, nothing seemed to happen for a while then not long ago this guy attempted to send me a friend request on Linkedin. After his behavior I declined it. Shortly afterwards I began seeing a dramatic increase in spammers posting comments on the blog part of my site.

Just lately I have been receiving Emails from a variety of names but all with the "@___" that I own - for my business.

I had additional security added so now they have to register in order to comment on my blog and I am seeing a lot of registration attempts from the same (and similar) IP addresses with bogus names and weird Email addresses being blocked. So, it is not creating more work as it is all automatic.

The Email addresses are of more concern.

Is there a way to identify a person through an IP address or a place to report the behavior or the Email usage?

This guy lives in South Carolina so he is not overseas.

Any help/advice you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Joy

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  • W/ regards to the emails, check the "Received" headers of the spam emails to see if there's a "Received: from example.com ..." entry that matches your mail provider's SMTP servers. If it does, and you're using an email provider that requires authentication for outbound emails (as most should), then you might have a problem. Otherwise, they're just spoofed emails, and you don't need to worry about them. SMTP is not very secure by default, and it's very easy to spoof the sender address.
    – Lèse majesté
    Commented Dec 31, 2012 at 0:54

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@Joy save all the data especially the IP address. Also gather the IP address of the SCORE person your web site guy spoke with. If they had any email correspondence save it. If he registered an account on your blog prior to the argument log the information date and time along with your raw access logs.

You may be able to identify a person if the IP is static and assigned to them. That takes a court subpoena though.

Gather the IP addresses, full name address email addresses linkedin account of the SCORE person. SCORE usually has contact information for their members on the website. Make copies of all this and take it to you local police station or call their non emergency local number and ask which precinct handles computer crimes. There's usually a small department within a county which handles high tech crimes.

Accessing your website without authorization is a misdemeanor usually called unauthorized access of a computer. If they've made changes to data that becomes computer tampering and can potentially be a felony. You have to be the one to initiate a complaint against them and make sure it's with detectives within a computer crime squad. Follow up with them to see what happened with your complaint they should send local PD to interview the SCORE member and if they get a judge to sign a warrant they'll serve it at his home and or office and seize his computer equipment as evidence.

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