[mattl]

This is something that we have had great difficulties with on our forum. A user persisitantly registered under new aliases after he was first banned. He made threats to moderators...which became very serious, registered abusive usernames - all sorts. We spent a very long time trying to think of solutions, but nothing seemed to work. Many of his email addresses were hotmail accounts - we went to hotmail with emails that he had sent out to various people, containing threats etc. - gave them the full headers with times/ip addresses etc - they did nothing. We then moved on to his ISP, BT Internet. Did the same again, gave them all the information they could need....they did nothing. Next stop was for the individual who had been on the receiving end of most of the abuse, and had kept a record of the majority of it, to go to the police. At first they were sympathetic, and said they were treating it very seriously - we were even able to give them the address of this user, and they said they would be in contact with the relevant force elsewhere in the country, and that he would be paid a visit. In the end...you guessed it, they did nothing.

We *seem* now to have persuaded this user to stay away, as he knows that we are watching his every move, but basically, there is nothing that can be done. If someone wants to cause problems, they can. We can only hope things change in the future, but at the moment, that's the way it is!