The Hack

Oh my gosh, I do not want to talk about the trolls anymore!!! I'm so over the trolls but I know that a lot of you are waiting to hear about what happened in regards to Saturdays post about the hack, and the hack was initiated by someone trying to figure out more about my real life identity, so here we go again.

Come, join me under the bridge.

So....the hack.

Well I was able to trace it back and to my surprise, it wasn't stemming from the "Answers" post, that's just what they used as a pathetic cover. It actually stemmed from this article "Don't Pretend Your Kid Has Allergies And Be Surprised When Other Parents Hate You." That article was written by a blogger named Maria Guido in response to an article that I had written that ran on the homepage of Yahoo (and before that on YourTango).

Homepage of Yahoo!! Yay! Right?

Except that when articles run on Yahoo it's not atypical for other bloggers to want in on the discussion as well and so to do that they write a rebuttal post. It's fine, tons of writers do it, I've done it, it's not abnormal, except for when they mislead.

To fit her agenda Maria edited my original article to completely change my point. She quoted me in a long paragraph saying that "I cringe when I see other kids eating a cupcake" but "forgot" to leave in the entire point of that sentence, "that I realize my judgments are wrong and I should not be making them."

Basically she portrayed me as a complete bitch just so she could write a rebuttal post.

And?

Her readers called her on it.

Which is unusual because readers tend to be very loyal.

So I popped into the comments over there, chatted with some of the readers, and then it started; the trolling. I won't say who it was but I have my suspicions, which were even more confirmed by a posting that was put on GOMI this afternoon by a 1st time commentor urging people to go look at the article on Mommyish that "one of our bloggers put up about Eden." 

*COUGH*  *COUGH*  Eh Hem.

So then the hacking started and thankfully they didn't get into anything important, but what they did get into was an old account that my ex and I had together; one that I had not even remembered existed until that moment and one that thankfully had pretty much no information tied to it.

Now here's a secret, my real name isn't a complete secret, I've seen it pop up among others in different threads where people speculate on who I am, but at this point I'm supposedly like five different people. (At one point they even had Mr. Attorney Man pegged as a female and then later as some totally other random attorney, but hey, THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT.) Trolls come to this blog all the time and post that they "know" me. They claim that our kids go to school together or that we are neighbors and it always ends in the same kind of way; "And I just can't believe you are doing this" or "and you are such a liar." They attach a name to their claim, whatever one is my supposed current identity that they've seen posted on a thread somewhere, and they try to pretend as if they know me. I even had one troll come on here and spam the site saying that we were "friends in real life, please stop doing this, and do you have a phone number that I can reach you at so we can talk about this?"

-NEWSFLASH- anyone can claim anything but only some people can really prove it. You can hack into my private accounts, you can throw a few names around that you've found online, you can make it look like you know me based on the little info you have, but my overwhelming evidence is always going to trump your game. I write for several large companies that required proof of my claims and verification of my past before I was allowed to write for them. I even had lunch with my YourTango editor a couple of weeks ago when she happened to be traveling through an area not far from where I live. I wouldn't have done that if I had so much to hide. I told my real-life friends about the blog and then they came on here and vouched for me. Mr. Attorney Man not only verifies my claims when needed but is co-authoring a book with me. Do you think he would really put his career on the line for a fraud? Don't you think he made sure to have proof before he joined me on this?

I once asked a well known entertainment lawyer who was assisting me in some of my writing work if I could be held liable in a defamation of character suit should my ex or my parents sue me for talking about them on this blog. His answer?

"No because truth is the best defense."

And you know what?

He is right.

I am well aware of the risks that I am taking when I write this blog. If I thought my name getting out was going to ruin my life then at the very least I would have the comments on my blog set to moderator approval only.

I do not live under a rock. I watched the author of  "A Million Little Pieces" fall to shame when his past was exposed as fiction. I've seen countless news stories of people who have pretended to be sick or have sick children in order to gain sympathy and fill some sort of very real void in their lives. In fact I myself was an avid reader of a blog about a sick little girl named Dakota and her loving mother Emily. I cried for that little girl with every post her mother put up and then when her mother was arrested for intentionally making Dakota sick to gain sympathy from readers, I cried harder. I've seen the stories, I've watched the falls.

I've seen it enough to know that the lies always come out and when they do, their lives tend to explode around them.

And yet...I'm still here. 

When we first started writing our book, Mr. Attorney Man and I had a long talk about whether or not to use my real name. "Do we link it to the nonprofit?" I asked. "It's such a great cause and it would be amazing to get the organization's name out there on a larger scale. Should I just put my real name on the book? I don't really have anything to hide and people will know who I am eventually anyways. Maybe I could just reveal everything in the book." 

I won't tell you just yet what we decided but in the meantime I would like to remind the trolls that despite the fact that I write under a pen name, the overwhelming evidence of my life supports me and not your fantastical opinions based on what you believe. Enough legitimate people have checked out my story, people who were actually given access to my info, and have deemed me truthful.

I really am a domestic abuse survivor. I really did survive child abuse. My husband abandon us, I'm poor as dirt, we have a medical condition that creates the need for a crazy diet, and yet...

You are the one I feel sorry for.

No really, it's true. I'm spending my life trying to help people live their best lives and you are simply trying to bring someone down. Despite overwhelming evidence that aides my claims, you have some twisted hero complex that you are going to save Internet land from Eden Strong. You are an abuser. You may not believe that since in your mind you are just sitting on the other side of a computer, but in reality you are doing nothing but trying to hurt someone for the simple fact that you want to and that makes you a bully; an abuser.

That's really sad.

I guess I don't really understand what you are trying to gain from this. I mean literally, what would make you happy? What exactly are you waiting for to happen? The real people in my life, friends, my new family, the people that I work for or with, they know that I write this blog. Even those that don't know exactly which blog it is know a great deal about what I've written here. It's not like anyone is going to be shocked to find out about it because they already know. I'm not going to go running in shame and pull the blog down if it becomes unequivocally linked to my real life identity. I won't be over here fuming and clenching my fists that you "won" because that's just not who I am. Literally the only thing that's going to happen is that me and my children will have a little less protection from the rest of the entire world and I'll have to worry about my safety and theirs a little more than I already do. If that's what would make you happy then I would urge you to seek help. 

I have a mental image of someone sitting in front of a computer and saying "I know who Eden Strong is!! No one else does, but I do!! I'm the WINNER!!"

So listen up Troll people and people who wrongly do not consider themselves to be trolls, but rather someone out to save the world from me, I don't want to banish you from my blog. In fact I would encourage you to stay because what you are doing is not normal. If I have so many real life people vouching for me yet you still choose to simply believe that I am a fraud, then I really think you should stay here and try to figure out what is making you so irritated because honestly, it's not me. Whatever bothers you so much about me is less about me and more about you. If I were you I would focus more on your real life than on mine but seriously, stay here and try to learn a little something about yourself!

So in short, to wrap this all up, if you think you know who I am, good for you. I would appreciate it if you would keep it to yourself for two reasons. The first being that I keep seeing my name tied to someone that is not me and an attorney that is not Mr. Attorney Man, Those people don't even know who I am and you are wrongly tying their names to a blog they may not wish to be a part of for personal and professional reasons. The second reason being that I really do work with domestic abuse victims as well as being one of them. I would appreciate your help in protecting my identity because not only do I not want the entire world to know who I am, or to tip off my ex that I'm writing about him, but I do run the risk of having a bunch of abusers pissed off at me that I'm helping their former partner get away from them and I would rather they not know such intimate details of my life. If you simply cannot do that and still want to expose not only me but my two children as well, then maybe you do need to be here because you have a lot to work on.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't write under my real name because I am trying to keep my kids safe and to keep myself safe for my kids. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you find yourself hacking into my accounts just to try and gather information on me, you are not only crazy, but you are also a criminal and I'm pretty sure that tops the fact that I'm an annoying blogger. If you find yourself coming to my blog day after day in an attempt to expose who you think I am, then maybe you need to do a little work exposing what is really going on with you.

Truth be told, you aren't the only one who can figure out who "anonymous" is on the internet. P.S. that applies to you, the ex husband that is currently reading my blog only because in the course of stalking your ex wife you found out that she reads it. I know you are here and so does she.

At least I don't have anything to be ashamed of.

I'm not going away simply because you want me to. 

Anyways, I hope you all had a great weekend!

I've had just about enough of this troll drama lately and so tomorrow we are going to jump right into it and get back to our regularly scheduled programming. It's time to bring this blog back to the place of healing it was meant to be.


Photo Credit
Sad Face