From 2020 to 30 July 2026. Six years in which a Skopje family lived with a stranger inside their messages, comments and notifications. That is how long it took for the case to finally end up as a police report.

A 27-year-old man from Skopje reported to the city police that he and his wife had been harassed for years through fake social media profiles. According to him, the profiles belonged to V.A. (37) from Skopje, his wife's former partner. The report was filed on 30 July at 18:30. The very next day, 31 July, officers conducted an official interview with the man named in it.

So: the police respond in one day. The problem lasted six years. The distance between those two numbers is the entire story.

A fake profile is free, and deleting one means nothing. A new one goes up in two minutes, different name, same intent. That is why this kind of harassment drags on for years - not because the perpetrator is a genius, but because the system has no fast answer, and the victim spends a long time unsure whether there is even anything to report.

That same week, in Veles, a 37-year-old man reported that his ex-wife had been persistently following him, forcing unwanted contact and taking actions that harassed him. A public prosecutor was notified. Two reports, two mirror-image constellations - and in both, the obsession came out of a former relationship.

The Interior Ministry says the appropriate filing will follow once the case is fully documented. The wording is standard. What is not standard is the question: how many people are going through exactly this right now and have not reported it, because they think "it's nothing" or that police can do nothing about one nameless profile?