On the next day 19.09.2024, the first identity theft case was performed. The editorial team of a journal with a name starting with “Financial” registered me without my consent, as seen in figure. My tasks would probably include “review, to write articles for the journal, or to process submissions”. This is the first time that a person has done something against my free will. Almost a year ago, I’ve declined to be a member of a Scientific Committee (SC) since the invitation was followed by inappropriate private messages that I have denied to receive. After my eventual refusal to be in the SC, mansplaining, darvo and negging occurred – they all are psychological war techniques. I never expected that a person being in a conference chair would not accept my denial gracefully, nor that I would be – more or less – “forced” to provide services without my consent. What is more, the journal’s topic is about finances, so there is no way that I could provide constructive services anyway.
I answered with my standard Email mentioning the GDPR and also with the following Email, after consulting my lawyer; even if an Email is public, no one is allowed to register anybody else without their consent. Imagine a situation where you are registered for online shops and services by other people; this is illegal. I was strongly advised by my lawyer that this person(s) that do it are in some way obsessed with me, that I should not post my current job (which I didn’t) and that it wouldn’t be a surprise that this person(s) might pop up not in the front of the company I am currently working on, but to the tram stop / U-Bahn stop that I am taking every day to go to work. This person(s) know the law and how far they can go so that I am disturbed and know about their obsession with me, but still hide it behind seemingly legal and harmless ways.
The journal never answered about the identity theft case until today (09.10.2025). My personal Email was found in the old version of the FORMEC presentation, which was deleted more than a month ago. One can see in the figure how long that link is; this is a link that only people that are co-authors have, or it can be received by a person doing a very dedicated and complex search. How desperate were those people from this Journal that dealt with Finances for reviewers and authors that made so much effort to reach out to me and use my personal Email? I feel deeply sorry for them
My answer to this is shown in figure, and I immediately contacted the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior (Bundesministerium für Inneres), the Federal Criminal Police Office ( Bundeskriminalamt) and the Victims of Cybercrime in the City of Vienna (Opfer von Internet-Kriminalität der Stadt Wien). That day, I’ve wasted 3 hours from my job in the private sector – which I had to, of course, compensate later – with calls and EMails to people that helped me immensely. I am extremely thankful to the person in the Victims of Cybercrime in the City of Vienna who heard my concerns. It was pretty clear to her also who was behind it, and I was strongly advised to take that as a real threat, to understand how serious the matter was, to make my Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms private because I need to understand that I have (at least one) stalker in my life. According to her, this will never stop; this obsessed person(s) will always need to know where I am and what I am doing, and I need to radically accept that I would never be able to have an official/public Email address in my life even for professional reasons; this person will spam my Email, watch me and observe me all the time.
The people from the Financial Journal were probably very desperate. As one can see in the figure, on 26.09.2024, they wanted to remind me that I had to make a review about a topic that considered Inflation (!!!) despite the fact they never answered me why they registered me without my consent. The responsible person informed me that this is a “matter of urgency”… it was so urgent to them that they repeated where they’ve found my EMail without answering about the identity theft case until today (09.10.2025). At that point, I’ve decided, together with the professional in psychology that advised me, to make a careful official statement in my LinkedIn, Google Scholar and social media profiles, which came out on 13.10.2024 to stop this. Not everybody would necessarily see that, but I could always refer to that and also have some reasonable expectation that if somebody wants a review or publication with me, they must have checked my profiles. It was a time when I had intrusive thoughts during my work that I needed to process with the help of art and recapping negative experiences. I’ve started to learn about the process of a narcissistic personality’s eventual win/compensation by hoovering and discard.
I remember vividly how a person approached me at one of my last conferences to give me a professional card, connect with me in Facebook and LinkedIn, and give so much effort to collaborate with me, only to then disappear from the Email conversation, as seen in figure. This person reappeared on Facebook to ask me if I was ready for the publication, only to discard me again since I’ve left the milleau. I couldn’t believe that people did not have anything better to do or/and did not find pleasure in other ways but to try to create artificial situations to discard me too and to tell themselves that deep down I want to publish, do reviews and/or that I need them to do so. They wouldn’t need to do that if they discarded me first and if they were not deeply hurt and unhappy. I feel sad, sorry and even pity for them. I had lots of that in the following months that reached even opening and leaving the conversation, which consists ghosting and silent treatment – both are tactics of psychological war. In some of those cases, with professional advice, I did obviate to give the supposed “win” to the narcissistic personality, but in this case I was strongly advised never to do a review or a publication because this might be a way the stalker wanting to do a review/publication together with me and misinterpret this as me showing interest. I’ve found the work of Laura Richards https://www.thelaurarichards.com/ and her quote “stalking is, murder in slow motion” very helpful.
