New legal guidelines target online trolls

It was announced this week that online trolls could face prosecution in the UK under new legal guidelines.

The BBC reported the story on Monday, with Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, commenting:

“The internet’s not an anonymous place where people can post without any consequences. People should think about their own conduct.

“If you are grossly abusive to people, if you are bullying or harassing people online, then we will prosecute in the same way as if you did it offline.”

This news was greeted with praise from anti-bullying campaigners, but it still leaves one very big question mark over the whole issue – how do you actually find out who the online trolls are? It’s all very well being able to prosecute them, but if you can’t find out who they are, there is nobody to prosecute.

Anybody who has reported online abuse to the police will know of the frustrations with getting any resolution. Some people hit an immediate brick wall, with the police saying they can’t do anything about it. It’s still a very new crime, with very few specialists in dealing with it.

Without a name or, at the very least, an IP address of the culprit, it’s impossible to get justice.

Our eBook on tracking down the originator of a fake Facebook profile contains the answers to finding out the identities of online trolls. It doesn’t just apply to Facebook either; the process of finding out details about an online troll would work just as well for something like Twitter.

The eBook is £29 but, with the discount code FBTRACE, it can be downloaded now for £9.99. With this being National Hate Crime Awareness Week, what better time to get hold of it?

• About
• Latest Posts

Darren Jamieson

Technical Director at Online Learning Academy

Latest posts by Darren Jamieson (see all)

• New Year’s Resolutions for 2017, and why they fail - 25th January 2017
• Can I really get business from LinkedIn? - 18th January 2017
• What are you doing for Short Story Day? - 21st December 2016