Short history at Mudcat - starting around 2009 there was a Troll making life miserable for Mudcat members. People could sign up without a gatekeeper and he set up literally hundreds of sleeper accounts that he would activate when one of his others was deleted. Accounts would have almost the same name as a regular member and would talk trash, would promote the BNP, UKIP, EDL, etc. and for a while those were forbidden topics because of the Troll. Then as members joined Facebook he started creating fake accounts in their names by harvesting their own Facebook information and putting those fake accounts out there to make mischief. They usually involved photos of buxom young women, sometimes porn, and always the ultra-xenophobic demeanor he'd used before.

Over time and enough reporting at Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and various now-long-dead social sites (thank god Opera died anyway, but this was a huge reason why it should never have existed) he moved onto different targets (is my guess). The worst of it was gone by about 2013, I'd say 2011 and 2012 were the worst years for wasting time shutting down his stalker spam accounts. But occasionally he comes back and posts as a guest in other people's names and it's always the racist stuff or it's sick sexually and it's deleted pretty quickly because his writing style is recognizable.

Newcomers may wonder that we made such a fuss, but he pulled some nasty tricks, setting up accounts and linking them into associations that the victims were active with, trying to get people fired. People finally started getting smart and not posting publicly on Facebook, choosing instead to post to Friends, or at the most, Friends of Friends, and they shielded their personal photos and photos of themselves, so they couldn't be harvested and added to the fake accounts. For those trying to put a stop to his activities there were a lot of smarmy rabbit-holes to travel down as linked accounts and image searches revealed the sleeper accounts waiting to be activated. To those who suffered through those days, I'm sorry to even describe it here. I'm sure it is causing elevated blood pressure for a few readers.

Facebook is a tool that is easily weaponized, as are most of the other social media sites out there, and they're undermanned when it comes to humans who will take a look at a case and resolve it. So you have to be smart about how you use it and keep your privacy settings in mind all of the time.