I got in a political argument with some clown on Facebook. He managed to retrieve my wife’s cell phone number and our home phone which is unlisted and technically just provided by our Internet company that we never use.

None our personal info is really available on Facebook and our profiles are pretty locked down, but he called my wife’s phone a few times last week which she has blocked and never answers. Comes up as anonymous on her id.

He tried our home phone 16 times which I ignored, everything stopped, he called again tonight. I decided to answer. He said he knows where I live my wife and daughters name, and our address. He never gave out that though and that he is coming to kill us. Said that on the line

I have called my local police department. But this is rural Nebraska they said they can’t do anything or have our phone companies run a trace.

Is there anything I can do to figure out who this guy is?

  • AlecSadler@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    12 hours ago

    If you can DM me their name and any other identifying info you have (general city, photos, phone number, email address, social links, etc.) I can maybe provide quite a bit of info on them. I will not say how.

    But I would also ask what the end game is here?

      • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        22
        ·
        edit-2
        11 hours ago

        Unfortunately there’s no real way to identify him from the profile, but this guy’s almost certainly just a harmless troll.

        His profile has zero identifying info and is clearly intended to be a harassment account. (literally the only post he’s ever made is a sign saying “Support Your Local ICE Raids”) A clear hallmark of a troll is just an account made for a clear and obvious purpose: aggravating you.

        The name “Frank Rizzo” is the same as this Frank Rizzo who did things like urging supporters to “vote white”, decreasing black people hired as part of the police force, raiding the Black Panther Party, general police brutality and racism, etc. A common thing trolls will do is take the name of a historical figure that somewhat aligns with the ideologies they’re trolling about, and using that name or a variation of it.

        If he actually intended to kill your family, he wouldn’t have given you advance warning so you could prepare, and if he was local and was just stupid enough to do so, he probably would have shown up already.

        Trolls incredibly frequently will just say anything they can to make you either angry or afraid, death threats included.

        I’m not necessarily saying there’s no threat here, but it seems to me like just a guy making a deliberately inflammatory account, using data brokers to get freely available information because you annoyed him a bit, then saying what he can to make you angry and afraid because that’s why he made the account in the first place.

        Edit: to clarify, I’m not trying to make light of the situation at all, I just think personally this seems like a lot of troll accounts I’ve seen before.

        • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          2 hours ago

          It’s not entirely true that you can’t identify him from that Facebook account. It’s just really, really hard.

          Facebook almost certainly knows who he is. Like specifically, name and all. Their data mining is VERY extensive, and he likely has other accounts.

          Anyway, with a lawyer’s help, you can (possibly) get a court order for Facebook to reveal what they have on the guy. They certainly have things like IP addresses and timestamps, but they also probably have name, other associated accounts, viewing history across the web (from those “share with Facebook” icons/links, even if untouched), and hundreds or thousands of additional pages.

          Is it worthwhile? Probably not. But it can be done.

      • Seleni@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        12 hours ago

        I hate to say it, but I absolutely guarantee the law will do nothing but show up afterwards and pick up the pieces. If he does decide to get his fat ass off the couch and come get you, you’ll have to handle him yourself.

      • AlecSadler@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        12 hours ago

        Unfortunately I can’t do much with just that.

        Keep a gun close, add some cameras, but otherwise this person is probably just a POS troll.