Please Help, Is this identity fraud, can it be stopped?

Stevev99

Not sure if this is the right place to post this or not?

Basically my retired father and his wife have been subjected to bouts of poisonous emails from their neighbour and he is now complaining to the council about an outside light in their garden...you see the picture here!
I've seen the emails and they're the ramblings of a twisted mind.
My Dad's left it until now and changed his email account away from his @waitrose.com to a new one.

So now all the estate agents in the area are contacting him saying he has emailed them all to sell his house!! :mad:

Basically someone (obviously we can guess who!) has set them selves up with a new wiatrose account in my father's name so he can pretend to be him and ask estate agents to market his house!!!

I've told him that he must go to the police and report this since it's harrassment.

Am I right in thinking that if someone contacts Waitrose they'll have a copy of any IP address that originated the email and that he could be traced back to his AOL acount from that to show he sent the emails to the estate agents?

My poor Dad is beside himself with worry and his wife is just recovering from a heart attack and doesn't need this worry so any advice on what can ir cannot be done would be appreciated and whether this is some sort of identity fraud and therefore a chargeable thing. I don't want the police going round and just saying "be a good boy and stop" and therefore possibly making it worse!

Thanks all,

Steve.

odowdchr

For somebody to have created a Waitrose account in his name...they must have known he'd cancelled that email account and then registered themselves using the same email alias when it became 'available' again. Did he tell his neighbour that he'd cancelled it..?
Also, how do you know they've used a Waitrose account...they could have used any account and just forwarded your father's contact details to cause him distress.

The Estate Agents can forward the email headers that they've received to the relevant ISP abuse address and report it as a scam...but it's unlikely that an ISP will take much notice unless it's pretty serious.
All your Dad has to do is tell them that it's nothing to do with him, they can't charge him for something he knows nothing about.
He might want to file a police report just so they have something on record in case anything else happens....including the previous 'poisonous' emails. It probably won't get much attention, but might be useful as a historical record if anything else happens in the future.

thewizard

Also get your dad to back up his inbox regularly, and keep a record of his emails so if required they can be used as evidence against his neighbour. Also if your dad has a wireless network make sure it is secure with encryption and if possible MAC address filtering and/or IP address filtering. If you dad no longer uses the waitrose.com website try blcoking the site in your routers settings, this may then help prevent anyone using his waitrose account.

Also ask the estate agents for a copy of the emails and keep them and the headers safe. If it gets any worse also keep a diary of events so it can be refered to later if necessary.

Stevev99

Thanks for the reply,

My Dad cancelled his Waitrose account to try and stop the barrage of abusive emails he was getting.
It seems that the loony neighbour has therefore received an error back saying account doesn't exist and then registered again using my Dad's name.

The Estate Agents received emails therefore with my father's name in the From field.

Is it pretty impossible to find out who really sent these emails then?

albertross_2

http://www.politics.co.uk/domestic-policy/anti-social-behaviour-hotline-launched-$7583246.htm

only available in the north east at the moment.

If the neighbour lives in a council house, then the council may be able to help.. Can't you go around and have a word?

zappahey

Stevev99 wrote:

Thanks for the reply,

My Dad cancelled his Waitrose account to try and stop the barrage of abusive emails he was getting.
It seems that the loony neighbour has therefore received an error back saying account doesn't exist and then registered again using my Dad's name.

The Estate Agents received emails therefore with my father's name in the From field.

Is it pretty impossible to find out who really sent these emails then?

He doesn't have to register a Waitrose account, it's very simple to spoof the sender's address. If you can get access to the full headers of the sent emails then it's possible to trace which ISP it was sent from and then report the abuse to them.

MrsTinks

As others have said get a copy of the full e-mail with headers Yes it's very easy to change the from address and name (infact this is how most spam viruses work, they hijack an address from the e-mail address list in outlook and use this as the from address... simple code, objective being to stop the spam to be easily traced to the infected machine and thus stopped).

From a legal point of view then unless yo involve the police then you might be a bit stuck... Unless the sender of the mail DEFINITELY has tried to pass himself off as your father then I don't know what law this would come under other than harrassment. If he has clearly intended to pass the mail off as being from himself then I would have thought he'd broken a law somewhere... I would seriously contcat the police and also the estateagents and ask them to NOT delete the mails off the servers or mail accounts as you have passed the matter on to the police. You could contact the ISP the mails are from (if this is Waitrose) and advise them that the account now appears to be used for fraudulent purposes (include a copy of one of the mails) and advise them that they are more than welcome to contcat your father to verify his identity. Also tell them this has been passed to the police and you would be grateful if they would co-operate fully in their investigations as to the IP address and details of the person who has now registered this e-mail address.

If the guy knows what he is doing how-ever then it is not impossible to hide your IP address but if he is truely deranged then he might not have thought about that

My vote is for contacting the police

thewizard

I think it may come under the computer miss use act

Little_John

Most national estate agents have web pages that you can register your interest in selling your house. give them your name and email address and they will contact you directly to arrange a visit or somthing.

Unfortunatly there are people that enjoy doing this sort of thing, I have seen sites that you can post details of people and then others will send pizza, skips, taxis to the address. it is usually because someone at the address has cause them a problem and they are getting revenge. has he ripped someone off on ebay? some people give the most tedious reason for starting these campaigns.

thewizard

There are so many nice people out there lol