Did I commit sexual harassment by asking a spam caller when they would sleep with me, to stop the calls? My friend used to complain that he gets phone calls from credit card companies many times (about 1-2 times per day). I had noticed the same, we would be chilling and he would get such calls and it was pretty irritating. They would change their phone numbers so frequently that blocking the numbers was useless. One day when we were watching a movie such a call comes and he gets furious. I tell him that I will handle it and I take the phone. I talk to the credit card selling woman for some time asking things I am not at all interested in and then I state that sure I will take it, but when will you sleep with me. She thought she probably misheard and asked me that she didn't get me the last time and I repeated the exact same thing again to her. She paused for around 10 secs and then disconnected it herself and my friend never ever got a phone call from those credit card companies again. However as I was narrating my story to another friend, I was informed that this probably constitutes sexual harassment. Even though it has been months since the incident, I am a bit concerned. Did I actually do something illegal?
The legal answer is that it depends on where in the world you are. In the US, &quot;sexual harassment&quot; is legally subsumed under laws against illegal discrimination, which can exist at the federal level and the state level. You cannot discriminate on the basis of race for employment, housing, public accomodations and so on. You cannot discriminate on the basis of sex in employment. However, you are not employing anyone, so that law does not apply to you. In general, being a customer or potential customer, or a person in possession of a phone, is not a federally-regulated activity. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects your right to expression, regardless of whether they may be found to be offensive. It is legal in the US to be rude.
Is blocking certain people while allowing everybody else to view some content discrimination Yes. and violate anti-discrimination laws Probably not, at least in the US. There is no federal law prohibiting "discrimination" in general. There are specific laws regarding discrimination against certain groups in certain contexts. They would probably not apply to an individual determining who is allowed to view their social media posts. That said, there are some specific contexts where this might be illegal. They would generally involve non-personal use of the account. The courts recently ruled that Donald Trump may not block people on his Twitter account, because he's using it in an official presidential capacity rather than just his individual capacity. Also, racial discrimination in housing is illegal, so if you're selling your house and you block all black people from viewing your house photos, that would probably be illegal as well. Also is not being able to consume information available on a public platform a violation against right to freedom. I'm not sure what you think a "right to freedom" would entail. But I don't think you have the right to demand that a person allow you to access their social media accounts.
You can file a lawsuit of course. The question is whether you have any evidence whatsoever that they didn't hire you because of illegal discrimination. As you say yourself, they didn't hire you "for no apparent reason". It is entirely legal not to hire you "for no apparent reason". Without evidence of illegal discrimination that court case will go nowhere. Consider that there are jobs where 100 people apply, and a dozen people are interviewed. Getting not hired three times, when 12 people got interviewed, is just normal. If the same 12 people were interviewed at each job, then you and eight others were rejected each time, because there were 12 good enough to be interviewed, but only one job. Not being hired three times is nothing. Maybe instead of thinking of lawsuits, you might think of some training to do better in interviews. So not only do you not have any evidence of illegal discrimination, it's not even reasonably likely that there was illegal discrimination. Are you really claiming that all the three times where you didn't get the job you were the best possible applicant that was there? Did you check who got the job? Maybe it was a gay black jewish woman in a wheelchair who was just exceedingly good at her job? The point is really: Belonging to some protected class doesn't give you a right to get the job. It gives you a right not to be rejected because you belong to that protected class. It doesn't give you a right not to be rejected for any other reason. And being rejected without being given a reason is no proof, not even an indication, of some illegal discrimination going on. The most obvious and common reason for rejection is that out of all the applicants, you were not the best.
Short answer: yes and no. I've never heard of this term before, but what you are calling "mobbing" does, in fact, sound like the dictionary definition of type 2 sexual harassment, at least if said "mobbing" is done with a sexual bent. http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/types-of-sexual-harassment.html This type of sexual harassment occurs when a co-worker or supervisor in the workplace makes sexual advances or comments to an employee that, while not affecting promotions or the future of the employee's job, makes the working environment of the employee offensive and hostile. In general, the comments tend to affect the employee's ability to do her job. Note that this is completely different from "type 1" or "quid pro quo" style sexual harassment, which is the kind that everyone is aware of; however, this version occurs quite often as well and is pretty well codified. Again, that's straight-up sexual harassment, though; there are other illegal forms of harassment that deal with singling out someone because of their race or creed, for example. That being said, I am no lawyer but the simple act of ganging up on a worker is not, I don't think, in and of itself illegal. If you're being ganged up on because you're black, or because you were a whistle-blower, that's one thing, but if people are ganging up on you simply because they don't like you, well, I'm sorry but you probably don't have any recourse (please note that I am not a lawyer and that this is not a site to receive legal advice from). More info on "mobbing": http://www.manageangerdaily.com/2010/03/how-to-combat-workplace-mobbing/
No, it is not illegal. The company has no standing to punish you for that. Companies can't sue random people for sending random email... that was largely settled under the (YOU)-CAN-SPAM Act, when in the guise of standardizing US anti-spam laws, spam was largely legalized and state laws were pre-empted and barred from existing. However, all the other laws still apply Laws on harassment, for instance. Sometimes people with mental illness think another human &quot;owes them&quot; a relationship (which kind of misses the point of what a relationship is, but never mind that). And those people, who sadly are an all-too-common cliché, tend to act badly in very predictable ways. As such, we have plenty of laws on the books (and plenty of family court judges who have seen it all) to dispense consequences to the misbehavior and protection to the victim. All those laws really don't care in which medium one might violate them: sky-writing, naval light signal, email, whatever.
"Nexus" means "connection". A "causal nexus" in this context is a connection that causes harassment at work. There isn't any bright line dividing behavior on personal term that does or does not meet this test. The law does't work that way. Instead, there is a fairly vague test (in legal theory this is called a "standard" as opposed to a "rule") and there are examples of conduct that does or does not meet the test. A lot of the more obvious examples would be the kind of situations that come up in small town life. For example, suppose that the worker who is being harassed is the firm courier, and has only about half a dozen main stops that she visits several times a week, all of which are businesses or government agencies run by people who are part of the Pessimists Club together, whose members have beer and rubber chicken at a member's bar together every Tuesday night. In that context, saying lewd and suggestive things about the courier whom a member employs over a poker game with the people who run all of her main stops in connection with her job might have a causal nexus for harassment case purposes with her job, effectively enlisting everyone she has to do business with in her job in a campaign of harassment against her. In contrast, suppose that someone who is engaging in iffy conduct that doesn't quite cross the line of harassment at work towards this courier goes to that Pessimists Club meeting and targets his crass comments not at the courier but his ex-girlfriend towards whom he has engaged in lots of harassing conduct. His comments about his ex-girlfriend would not have a causal nexus to the courier's workplace and probably wouldn't be something that could be considered to determine if he was engaged in workplace harassment. This would be true even though small town gossip made his harassment of his ex-girlfriend common knowledge which make the courier take otherwise ambiguous conduct from him much more seriously knowing his modus operandi and capacity for escalating the situation. But, ultimately, one has to make a rather holistic evaluation of the entire situation to determine if there is a causal nexus or not between non-workplace behavior and alleged workplace harassment.
This would be wire fraud, which is any type of fraud committed using electronic communications (the term originally comes from the use of telegrams to commit fraud... just like how &quot;wiring&quot; money devised from paying the bill at one telegram station and having the bill collector take an equal amount of money from a different station.). Wire Fraud is basically a fraud crime over electronic communications, so it doesn't matter how you defraud someone, the fact that you did it in this manner is guilty... using a bank system to fraudulently create more money in your digit account would qualify. The bank would be the victim since it does have a set amount of money in assets that it owes to its customers (account holders) and Federal Insurance (which prevents the Bank Run scene in &quot;It's a Wonderful Life&quot; from happening) requires the bank to carefully keep books. Additionally, Wire Fraud comes with a $100,000 fine against the perpetrator for committing the crime where a financial institution is a victim, so it's in the Bank's interest to report a sudden income surge of fake dollars to the authorities lest they have to pay the fine out of their own pocket, risk their federal insurance, or lose their consumer confidence with account holders (who will pull their money and go to a more honest bank).
There is, in most countries at least, no law requiring a business to treat a customer fairly. In general, a business may refuse to serve a would-be customer for any reason or none, provided that the reason is not membership in a protected class (racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual bias, mostly). Exactly which classes are protected depends on the local law (in the US, there can be such laws at all of federal, state, and municipal levels). If a customer is asked to leave and does not do so, s/he could be charged with defiant trespass (or local equivalent). More likely, security, or the police, could simply escort the customer out of the business, using as much force as is reasonably needed for that purpose. Unless there are grounds for action not mentioned, I see no basis for a successful suit by the customer.