erin mccann |Verified account

Years ago, when Twitter was in its infancy, some photographer friends and I got into a beef with a guy who was ripping pics off for his site

We ranted and raved, contacted local media, got into some fights about what was and wasn't fair use.

I was sitting at work one Sunday morning when I got an email from the guy we were angry with. It included my home address.

I have always been careful with private information like that, and it turned out he'd gotten it from some congressional testimony I'd given

(That's a whole other story)

this middle-aged businessman was angry that I'd complained about him publicly. He made sure in his email that I knew he knew where I lived.

I lived alone at the time in a not-very-secure building on the hill. So I stopped at the police department on my way home.