Date |
Incident |
| early March 1997 | The prosecutor's office told me that Hillyard's new attorney (new since the January hearing, I take it--I'm not sure if that was his second or third attorney), Steve Roberts, wished to speak to me. I called and left a message for Roberts, hoping we could find a way to end this mess. He did not, however, return the call. |
| March 6, 1997 | Hillyard spams newsgroups using his WorldNet account. |
| March 13, 1997 | Hillyard spams newsgroups using his WorldNet account. |
| March 18, 1997 | Hillyard spams newsgroups using his WorldNet account. |
| Thursday, March 20, 1997 | The CyberAngels contacted me asking if I'd mind speaking with John Hendren, an Associated Press reporter who was doing a story on cyberstalking. I gave the reporter a telephone interview. It was picked up by various papers. There is or was a copy on USA Today's site from May 12. That story was the first time I gave permission for my name to be used in a story. |
| Friday, March 21, 1997 | Hillyard spams newsgroups using his IBM, WorldNet, and blanca.lavaca.com accounts. |
| Thursday, March 27, 1997 | Due to all that's happened, I do periodic searches of the web and newsgroups and check out Hillyard's known web sites from time to time to see what sort of libelous twaddle he's been posting. If I find activity, I check that forum more frequently for a while. On March 27, Hillyard (or someone an awful lot like him) posted replies in atl.general to two posts I'd made to mindspring.local.atlanta--a newsgroup whose distribution is limited to MindSpring subscribers. The posts came from zippo.com. Since he'd shown his head again, I went ahead and did one a slightly more thorough search than usual, and found that Hillyard had a web site at vaca.net. When I looked at it, there wasn't a main page, so the directory listing was shown. One of the directories was called "data," and in it were various zip, Excel and Quicken files. The directory was not in any way protected and was publicly accessible to anyone. None of the files were password protected, either. The only html files in the vaca.net directory sent the viewer to Hillyard's new site at a domain he'd registered. Out of curiosity, I tried to go to the directory named "data" on the new site--and it was indeed there and not protected in any way--open for public access. In that directory, along with more Quicken and zip files, was a Word file named cyn1.doc. It contained copies of several posts I'd made to mindspring-only newsgroups, showing that a MindSpring user was (as I had suspected) forwarding copies of my posts to Hillyard. The posts were largely part of a major flame war with someone who had launched a wholly unwarranted attack against another woman in atl.singles, then taken his attacks to the mindspring.* newsgroups. The file properties said that the document author was Larry Kruger of Advanced Visual Systems--apparently one of Hillyard's coworkers. Some of the Quicken files were named pack590.*, as in Cub Scout Pack 590. Yes, that's the pack that Hillyard was supposedly not to be involved in any more. I don't believe that the BSA official, Tim Cooper, lied when he said he'd kicked Hillyard out--but I believe the local scout master has not enforced that decision. That would, to me, be a matter of great concern both for the parents of the boys in that troop and for the BSA authorities. |
| Friday, March 28, 1997 | Having nothing to hide, I mentioned the data directory in a post to mindspring.local.atlanta. By that time, Hillyard had apparently noticed the visits to that directory in his web logs and had password protected the directory, so I never tried to access it again--attempting to get past the password would be hacking, and I've never been interested in that. |
| Saturday, March 29, 1997 | I checked Hillyard's new site again, and found that Hillyard had put a banner on the main page (of a site supposedly intended for business use) that said "Hi Cyn!" and linked to a file called cyn.htm. On that page he claimed I'd hacked into private directories on his site, and he posted web server logs showing that a MindSpring user had indeed viewed the files in the directory named "data." They also showed that there was no password or other protection on those files, giving the lie to his claims of "hacking." He tried to get my MindSpring account canceled (as he's been doing since July, 1996) with claims of hacking. Had I done anything questionable in the least, I would have been out in the cold--but as I hadn't, I had nothing to worry about. |
| March 29 thru April, 1997 | Hillyard added more and more web pages with every access of his web servers by any MindSpring user--he had apparently decided that any MindSpring user visiting his pages had to be me (he later seems to have decided that anyone visiting his pages using the Anonymizer was me--what's next, AOL?) He made some extremely libelous statements, claiming I was stalking him and that I'd called him (I've never so much as dialed his number, as phone company records would easily prove). I was, of course, staying informed as to what was on the site, as it was obviously in my best interests to know what Hillyard was saying about me. If even half of what he claimed were true, he would have been able to get warrants for my arrest--but he hasn't, because all of his claims are lies. He also tried to claim that several of the charges on which he had been convicted in the past were in fact dismissed--but if they had been, I wouldn't have copies of the court transcripts of the trial in which he was convicted (I may get them scanned in at some point, but that's too much bother right now--I will get the case numbers and dates and post them shortly, though). I've written a rebuttal of the various charges he's made against me on that page and in other forums--because while, considering the source, they are quite ridiculous, I do wish to protect my personal and professional reputation. He also made the mistake of lying about the prosecutor on those web pages, stating . . . that is what the solicitor is having a problem with. She is harassing him "big time" though and has him between a rock and a hard place. I faxed copies of those web pages to the prosecutor's office. The prosecutor contacted Hillyard's attorney, and the web pages mentioning me disappeared within days. I learned at that time that Hillyard was on his second or third attorney since the first arrest in September. |
| Sunday, March 30, 1997 | Hillyard's name was receiving notoriety again--but this time in abuse reports posted to news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins about inappropriate posts he'd made to many newsgroups advertising a multilevel marketing long distance scheme he was selling. No wonder he didn't like me in that original thread about commercial advertising way back in July 1996! The messages were posted through blanca.lavaca.com, the news server at vaca.net. The original of the bulletin is in Robert Braver's archives. |
| Friday, April 4, 1997 | One of the CyberAngels wrote to me saying that a producer from ABC's show Unsolved Mysteries wanted to speak with me about an episode they were doing on high-tech harassment. After I spoke to her and felt certain that they weren't doing anything too sensationalist and were focusing on the issues rather than personalities, I did a lengthy phone interview with one of their people. They then asked if I would appear on the air. I agreed, as long as they wouldn't show my residence or my child on television and would focus on the issues. Since I'd permitted the AP reporter to use my name, I had no reason to say no. Unlike many other victims of similar harassment, I've never been paralyzed by fear. I decided that the more I spoke out, the more it would help others to more easily fight their way through the system. Unsolved Mysteries moved very quickly--they flew me out to LA within a couple of weeks to do the show. They sent the airplane tickets and paid for the hotel and rental car and gave me a small per diem to cover meals, parking, etc., but I certainly neither made nor sought any sort of monetary gain from the interview. They gave me a baseball cap bearing their logo, which I gave to Katie--I assure you the value of the hat is far below my billing rate for even one hour of computer consulting, much less twelve or so hours required to do the shoot! |
| Monday, April 7, 1997 | Hillyard spammed more newsgroups using blanca.lavaca.com. |
| Tuesday, April 8, 1997 | I received a strange bounce message from a mail server at j3com.net. It was odd because I've never sent anything to anyone at that domain or had an account with them. Looking at the message that bounced I found that it was a message Hillyard had forged in my name (the headers show x-sender as atlga@atlga.com), replying to a spammer who had sent email to him. Replying to spammers is known to be a great way of staying on their mailing lists as a verified good email address. I had noticed an increase in the amount of spam I was receiving, and now I believe it was because Hillyard was forging replies in my name to every piece of unsolicited commercial email he received. I notified the postmaster at j3com.net of the forgeries, but didn't hear anything from them. Hillyard had used his access at j3com.net to post the message using the name Jerry Lisler, as well as spamming various newsgroups in January. |
| Thursday, April 10, 1997 | Hillyard spammed more newsgroups using applied.net and zippo.com. |
| Friday, April 18, 1997 | Hillyard spammed more newsgroups using applied.net. |
| Tuesday, April 29 and Wednesday, April 30, 1997 | Hillyard spammed another 12 newsgroups on April 29 with promoting his long-distance services MLM, posting from applied.net. The posts were cancelled by Robert Braver on April 30. On that day, Hillyard hit another 36 newsgroups, posting from zippo.com. Those posts were cancelled on May 2. Again, one of the messages had avstlc.applied.net in the headers. |
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