Welcome!

Posted on June 20th, 2006 by Cyn

I’m Cyn­thia Armis­tead, known as Tech­noMom to many peo­ple I’ve encoun­tered online since 1995. I’m a mother, a writer, a com­puter geek, and many other things. I’m also a sur­vivor of inter­net harass­ment, because a mul­ti­ply con­victed felon, Richard Hill­yard, tar­geted me and my daugh­ter Katie for harass­ment in 1996.

Our story has been online for some time. I’ve done many inter­views to raise aware­ness about inter­net safety issues as well as spend­ing hours as a vol­un­teer with law enforce­ment offi­cers and oth­ers, help­ing to trace mes­sages from stalk­ers and other crim­i­nals. I’ve writ­ten arti­cles about stay­ing safe and avoid­ing harass­ment, as well. I spent years vol­un­teer­ing with Work­ing to Halt Online Abuse (and I will con­tinue to refer peo­ple to them, as I left on a friendly footing).

While I’m no longer offi­cially vol­un­teer­ing with an orga­ni­za­tion, I’ve decided to cen­tral­ize my safety infor­ma­tion to this site, and com­bine that with giv­ing other sur­vivors a safe place to speak, if they wish to do so. I’ll be using this forum to pub­lish infor­ma­tion about stay­ing safe and remark­ing on cur­rent sto­ries or issues that touch on the inter­net and how it affects how we relate to others.

I encour­age you to ask any ques­tions that occur to you about inter­net safety or our expe­ri­ences with cyber­stalk­ing. I will not answer any­thing that would reveal too much about our phys­i­cal where­abouts, or that isn’t mine to tell. Oth­er­wise I’m quite open.

Filed under: General

3 Responses to “Welcome!”

  1. Karen, on August 3rd, 2006 at 4:41 pm Said:

    You men­tioned you rarely go to your stalk­ers site. If you are try­ing to keep your phys­i­cal wher­abouts a secret, you shouldn’t go at all. If he has a site counter it may show what city your inter­net provider is in, and also what city you are vis­it­ing from. While it doesn’t show your name, if he’s a nut­bar, he could likely fig­ure out which one is you. My huband’s sis­ter claimed we were stalk­ing and harass­ing her, when in fact it was her comb­ing her sta­tis­tics counter on her pub­lic blog, and her mak­ing up hate­ful and hurt­ful lies on her web­site while we did noth­ing but sit in amaze­ment that her mother believed it all. She has a long his­tory of men­tal and per­son­al­ity issues, but the whole fam dam­ily believes her. It’s utterly unbe­liev­able. In any event, I wouldn’t visit his site at all.

    Sin­cerely,
    Karen

  2. cyn, on August 3rd, 2006 at 8:31 pm Said:

    Thank you for your con­cern :-) I can’t remem­ber the last time I viewed the stalker’s site. Peo­ple men­tion things about it to me, but I pre­fer not to buy into his worldview.

    Nut­bars are, unfor­tu­nately, plen­ti­ful. I’m sorry there’s one in your life. Hav­ing one in the fam­ily must be dread­ful. I hope you and your hus­band have other, move sta­ble fam­ily mem­bers or fam­ily of choice in your lives.

    Namaste,
    Cynthia

  3. Karen, on August 4th, 2006 at 8:06 am Said:

    Thank­fully, we have my side of the fam­ily who are nor­mal and nice human beings. I really just can’t get over the utter dis­be­lief that EVERYONE lis­tens to her, despite the fact that she has a known and doc­u­mented his­tory of men­tal health and per­son­al­ity issues, can­not hold a job due to this dis­abil­ity and is known for being overly histri­onic. She even phoned the police, who then dis­missed it. It’s kind of like being the spe­cial guest star on The Prisoner.

    Good luck to you, and thanks for respond­ing,
    Karen

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