By Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON–TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington announced Wednesday he is taking a break from writing for his influential technology blog after being spat on at a conference and getting death threats.

Writing on techcrunch.com, Arrington, 38, said an unidentified man “walked up to me and quite deliberately spat in my face” on Tuesday at the Digital, Life, Design conference he was attending in Munich, Germany.

“In the past I’ve been grabbed, pulled, shoved and otherwise abused at events, but never spat on,” Arrington said. “I think this is where I’m going to draw a line.

“I’ve decided the right thing to do is take some time off and get a better perspective on what I’m spending my life doing,” he said. “I’ll be taking most of February off from writing, and decide what the best future for me is while sitting on a beach somewhere far away from my iPhone and laptop.”

“I can’t say my job is much fun any more,” Arrington said. “Startups that don’t get the coverage they want and competing journalists and bloggers tend to accuse us of the most ridiculous things.”

Arrington, a former lawyer who has been cited as one of the most influential voices in Silicon Valley by several leading US publications, also said that last year, “an off balance individual threatened to kill me and my family.”

“The threats were, in the opinion of security experts we consulted, serious,” he said, “We hired a personal security team to protect me, my family and TechCrunch employees.”

“I write about technology startups and news,” Arrington said. “In any sane world, that shouldn’t make me someone who has to deal with death threats and being spat on.”

Arrington said he will attend the upcoming World Economic Forum in Davos and begin his break next week.