Troll Hunters

The target - go, go, go, go, go.

This programme contains some strong language

and some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

He's parking. He's parking.

Oh, my God!

Are we ready?

I'm Em Ford and I'm a beauty blogger, YouTuber and film-maker.

I have around 1.5 million followers on Instagram,

YouTube and Twitter and Snapchat combined.

I'm used to criticism, but after posting make-up tutorials

for others, who, like me, suffer from acne,

nothing prepared me for the onslaught of abuse I faced.

It's the ones that want to send you messages

saying you're so ugly, you're so disgusting,

you look revolting, you make me feel sick.

So six months ago, I decided to fight back.

I turned hurtful online comments into a positive film

highlighting cyber abuse.

It got ten million views in the first week alone

and I knew I was tapping into something

that's much bigger than just me.

You Look Disgusting, to me, was my armour and it was empowering

and the film literally changed my life.

Online abuse is everywhere

and the trolls behind it are nowhere.

Anonymous...hidden in the masses.

Internet harassment and cyber bullying is on the rise.

All you ever see is people saying, "This is bad,

"you shouldn't say mean things to people"

but they don't do anything about it.

I want to meet victims of trolling abuse and bring them closure

by trying to help them confront the person hiding behind the keyboard.

I don't really know who I'm going to come up against.

I'm hoping that by meeting the people that do this,

I will start to understand why.

Facebook has recently surpassed 1.5 billion global monthly users

and there are 15 million Twitter accounts in the UK alone.

There's many benefits to greater connectivity,

but with it, the scope for online hate is on an alarming rise.

If I'm going to track down even one troll, I need help.

I've arranged to meet tech journalist and digital detective

David McClelland.

-Hey! David.

-Hi.

-Nice to meet you.

-How are you?

-Good, good, how are you?

-All right, thanks.

I'm hoping that you can help me in just finding out the ways

-that different people hide themselves online.

-OK.

Or just different ways of trying to track down these people.

So what you want to do is to try and identify who they are?

I think I'd like to meet one, just to get a better understanding

of why people think that it's OK to act this way online.

I deal with a lot of cyber crime, a lot of scammers,

a lot of people who try to hide themselves online.

Trolling, social media, that's part of that.

Everything we do online, you leave some sort of footprint -

digital breadcrumbs, if you like.

I will use whatever tools and contacts I've got

so you can try and find the answers to your questions.

I want to go after online abusers

who hide their hate behind anonymity.

I've found a story of a leading model

who frequently gets trolled.

20-year-old Neelam Gill is taking the fashion industry by storm.

She leads high-profile campaigns for Dior,

Abercrombie and Fitch

and was the first Indian model for Burberry.

You'd think she'd have the world at her feet,

but with her fame comes consequences.

Neelam receives regular racist abuse online.

She's agreed to meet David and myself at her London home

to tell us about the extent of her abuse.

-Hi, I'm Neelam.

-Hi!

-I'm David.

Nice to meet you.

When did you first start to notice negativity

directed towards you online?

When I first entered the modelling world -

that was, like, two years ago,

I got a lot of racism.

Er, and that was, like, something I suffered with

from the start, really.

I feel like now I'm more in the public eye,

people think they can just say whatever they want to say.

These people that say it behind computer screens,

I'm like, "What if people outside think that of me?"

I get really paranoid.

When I get in those zones, I'm like, I don't want to leave my flat,

I don't want to go to the gym.

I don't want to even go food shopping.

I don't want anyone to see me because I get scared.

One profile, DavidClarke00, is the most prolific.

"You're just an ugly, annoying curry slurper."

He said, "You know nothing" and then called me the N-word.

I'm not even going to say that word.

-Every single tweet on that profile...

-Yeah.

-..is a troll comment.

-Yeah.

If I was to find one of these kind of like keyboard warriors

that talk about me all day online, I would just want to know why.

Is it because they're insecure as a person? Is it because they

don't have a job? Is it because they really dislike me?

And I'd want to know what they dislike about me.

It's hard because a lot of people think, "Why do you care?"

But when it's such a big part of your life, you can't help but be affected by it.

Neelam has asked for our help finding DavidClarke00.

However, his identity and location are completely unknown.

What we do know is he likes to send vicious, racist abuse.

She is ready to face them off if we can unmask their true identity.

Many of these racist comments come from private profiles,

ones which are not following anyone, have zero pictures,

zero friends, anything.

And it's as if these profiles have been set up

purely just for hate reasons.

But I'm determined to help her out on this.

And I'm sure between us we might be able to get a better

understanding of who the people are.

# We are everyday robots on our phones... #

Some of the most vicious harassment on the internet

is directed at women.

The fact is, for women in public life and women on Twitter,

they are threatened with rape on Twitter every day, every other day.

I can't count the number of times I've been threatened

with rape on Twitter...

Author and former politician Louise Mensch has written received more

than her fair share of abuse, but she, like Neelam,

is also out for confronting her troll.

Louise has been living in the US since 2012.

Why don't you tell me

a little bit about your relationship with social media?

I like Twitter, I've always enjoyed Twitter

because Twitter is direct conversation

and I like the sense of communication that it provides,

and you take the rough with the smooth on Twitter.

By the rough with the smooth, what's your experience like, then?

I have experienced some trolling that has gone beyond what

any reasonable person would think is OK.

Specifically, I did call the police once - only once - and that was

when a troll, who found me on Twitter,

made anonymous threats to my children, and he was found

by the police and brought to trial, and given a suspended sentence.

He was exactly as you imagined a troll to be.

He sort of lived in squalor and attacked women, serially.

I was his latest fixation to attack women on the internet,

but when the threats become serious, I do think it's important that

action is taken because it deters other people from doing the same.

I've been having a little look at some of your @ replies

on Twitter and there was one profile that really stood out to me -

probably because it was full of porn.

It's the level of misogyny, of hatred of women that runs, very, very deep.

That's when the abuse they throw is half the time sexual

and the violence that they throw is half the time sexualised violence.

If we were able to track this guy - or anybody, really - that's giving

you these horrific messages, what would you say to them?

I would ask him if he has any women in his life.

Would he be ashamed if his employer

knew what he was sending to women online?

Would he do that if it were publicly known?

Would he sit down at the dinner table and show his wife,

his daughters, or his sister? "What did you do today?"

"Oh, I sent a bunch of obscene porn to a woman in the public sphere

"whose opinions I don't really enjoy."

If you feel that you've got a good shot at tracking him down,

I'll see what I can do. We'll give it a go.

It's good to have the support of a strong woman like Louise behind you,

that's saying, you know, you are doing the right thing.

So a very different

sort of abuse with Alam.

Have they left any clues in the data

that will lead us to them

and allow Louise to come face-to-face with them?

I really hope so.

If I'm going to confront the trolls,

I need to know what sort of character I'll be up against.

Many believe the term "trolling" has its innocent routes

in online gaming, with players wreaking havoc on others,

as seen in this popular Sandbox Let's Play video game.

No, no, no!

-Burn! Burn, baby, burn!

-What are you doing...

LAUGHTER

But with the rise of social media,

it's evolved into something far more sinister.

Dr Emma Short is a specialist in cyber stalking.

Can you talk me through the different types of trolls

that you might come across online and how they differentiate?

You could probably split it down, in a simple way -

this is very simplistic...

People who troll to disrupt the activity of that particular

chatroom, that particular thread,

then the ones you see more in the press

that I think the word "troll" has been applied to more and more now,

are people who target individuals.

Those people are the ones who are probably the most threatening to

any other individual because their behaviour is so out of the ordinary.

I find it difficult to understand why somebody could do this.

They want to raise the level of the relationship

and go from someone whose tweets you might see,

or comments you might see, into someone who you exchange comments with.

What do you think about the other people who are saying you

should go and kill yourself or you look terrible, you know,

nobody will ever love you?

A large proportion, if you met them,

you would probably never imagine they would post those

sorts of comments because it seems to be

something about the nature of the environment,

people seem to express themselves online

in a very disinhibited way.

If you create the identity of someone who's different from you, who is more aggressive,

who's more out there, who will say things that challenge

and frighten and shock, it's very easy to get stuck into that role

and really act it out to the extreme.

I'm literally just starting my kind of troll-hunting journey now.

Do you have any advice?

Just be careful about what you choose.

Where there are persistent threats that are vivid in their

accounts of violence, I would stay absolutely away from those.

BOTH LAUGH

My heart is going!

This is the problem with cyber crime.

We can look at nasty comments and a lot of people talk about,

it's just words, it's not dangerous,

but we don't know who's behind those words.

I'm a little bit more scared now.

Before I met up with Dr Short, I did think that, you know,

these people just don't have anything better to do

with their lives, they enjoy spreading negativity, you know?

They rise from putting other people down and there's a part of me

that still does feel that way.

Also, there's a part of me that does...and is curious

about why these people have got into this position

where they can't stop sending abuse to other people online.

To track down even one of these abusers,

I have to accept I'm taking a leap into the unknown.

I'm going to do what Dr Short warned me about

and meet a troll who has been convicted

of an horrific form of cyber abuse.

I don't know what to expect,

this is all becoming very real now.

-Hi, Stuart.

-Hiya.

-I'm Em.

-Hiya.

-Thanks for coming to meet me.

I said on the social media that I was the killer of that missing person

and I was holding up his body, or holding him hostage

and I was refusing to give his body if they didn't meet my commands.

I just thought I'd try and see what reaction I could get

out of people if I started trolling.

In 2014, Stuart targeted the family of a local missing person

with a series of disturbing Facebook messages.

When I started the trolling, I just thought they would take it as a joke

by saying such and such, but they took it as a serious matter.

Myself, I was under the influence of alcohol at the time

and, me, I can get a wee bit aroused under the influence,

so I don't know what I'm doing when I'm drinking.

I didn't think trolling was the biggest crime going.

-I didn't think it was even illegal.

-You didn't?

Because when I see it on YouTube and other people doing it online...

..they get away with it.

Was it the numbers that you enjoyed seeing,

the replies or the likes or the...

Or was it just the interaction that you enjoyed?

Er, I think it was probably the interaction.

The interaction.

It was quite enjoyable at the time when I was doing it,

but after committing it,

I just felt disgusted.

How much did alcohol actually have to do with it?

Or was the attention the bigger factor here?

When I set up the profile picture, I took three litres of cider.

Then I drunk another three litres of cider

and that's when my mind was going a wee bit crazy.

That's when the rush was kicking in and that was

when things started kicking off on Facebook.

-I know you said it was a thrill...

-Yeah.

-..but how did it feel?

When I was sending the messages at the time,

I was just laughing at myself.

Just laughing at other people's reactions of arguing with me.

I didn't care at the time what people were saying.

How do you feel about it now?

I feel disgusted, disgusted with myself

because why would somebody put that on a social media?

Why did you?

That's a question that I can't even answer myself.

There must be some part of you that knows.

I think it's just a thrill of attention-seeking.

Is there a part of you that worries it could happen again?

There is worries that I could do it, but...

You never know, anything can happen.

I'd never do something when I'm sober,

but when I'm under the influence, that's the biggest problem I've got.

I was expecting to meet a monster,

but Stuart has problems with alcohol

and an addiction to the attention he gets from his trolling abuse.

I think I purely just survived that meeting on adrenaline.

Now I just feel... I feel sad.

If I was to take anything forward from meeting Stuart,

it is to bear in mind how much of an addiction this is for people,

because it's just as addictive as getting nice comments

and... You know, you'll post a selfie on Instagram, for example,

you might get, "Oh, I really like your make-up"

or "I really like your dress,"

to a troll, getting, "You're a sicko, you're wrong in the head,

"there's something wrong with you, how can you say that?"

..Just as addictive.

So some trolls are addicted to hating just for the attention,

but others are far more sophisticated.

Neelam has invited me to her family home to find out how

her trolls are affecting those closest to her.

As family members, you just automatically want to defend

when they're really personal attacks.

You do sometimes want to say something.

Some of Neelam's trolls even go as far as to tag her family's

Instagram accounts in their abuse.

What are the type of things that they say to you?

Because you're just a sister, you're not in the industry.

The worst ones are when they're racist.

If I put a picture of me and Neelam and I'll think,

"That's a nice picture,"

they'll be like, "You and your sister both look like monkeys."

I don't usually react to it because when I see it,

I think it's so negative. Why would you say that?

But when it's personal, it does hurt.

You read it and it does, deep down,

you're absorbing that information and that comment.

Before, when I was at school and I was being bullied,

you could actually face that person and confront them.

Whereas now, who do you confront?

They are just fake accounts and they'll just disappear.

I think it gives them more confidence

to feel that it's OK to do that.

In the taxi journey, Neelam and I discuss confronting

her troll, DavidClarke00.

I want to reach out to him and I want to...

kind of lay my cards on the table.

How would you feel about unblocking him and tweeting him?

I would never normally unblock someone because I feel...

I'm quite stubborn, once I block them, it's for a reason.

I want to meet this guy, you know. I really want to.

Here he is.

I feel quite nervous, if I'm honest.

Is he going to reply to me, is he going to just be rude to me

and try and embarrass me?

I feel like no matter what his response,

I'm determined to find him in real life.

While Neelam waits to see if her troll responds,

I'm back on the hunt of Louise's abuser,

meeting up with David to analyse our target's Twitter feed more closely.

This is Alam.

Straight away the first thing that you see is his header

is of some fetish clothing

and his very first tweet is a picture of a dead rat.

Alam, or Cruella180 as he is also known,

is a Twitter fanatic, having made over 10,000 posts in five years.

But it's his trolling of high-profile women like Louise

that he appears most proud of.

"Blocking me on Twitter means I got to the feminazi bitch"

and a picture of a dead rat.

OK, that's pretty robust.

There are people that make it their mission to torment someone

so much that they will block them and then they celebrate.

-Yeah.

-They celebrate it.

There's something else that is quite prevalent in here, as well.

There is a lot of pornography.

"You feminazis really turn me on."

-Wow!

-Wow.

-OK, that's a bit far.

-It's certainly not safe for work, fair to say.

-100% not.

What he's done there in those other ones, the one which he was

putting quite graphic images on, he was hashtagging her as well.

-So other people would find it...

-So other people would find them

and other people would then stumble upon those graphic images.

-And maybe join HIM in trolling, as well.

-Yeah.

-So he wants other people to see those.

-Yeah.

Here we go.

"I don't know about Burntwood School,

"I went to Beechwood School in Slough..."

EM GASPS

-"..which is a shit-hole."

-That's his school?

-16th October.

-OK.

We could do a bit of research to find out what the relevance

of Burntwood School is, whether there was a news story at the time,

to see why he's actually tweeted that.

He's retweeted on November 14 - a tweet saying,

"Between a church and a sex shop, my favourite house in Slough."

I think we've got potentially quite a big clue.

All roads lead to Slough.

By the looks of it, they definitely do.

-You're getting right into this...

-I'm getting really into it.

-..with your whiteboard and coloured pens.

-I've got the power.

-You haven't got the red pen yet.

-I haven't.

-We'll work on that.

Neelam and Louise are being terrorised by their anonymous

trolls, but is it that simple?

-Nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

I'm meeting tech entrepreneur Milo Yiannopoulos,

a vocal advocate for freedom of speech online.

What advice would you give to somebody who is subjected to abuse

that is saddening them and that is affecting them quite deeply?

-What advice would you give?

-Toughen up. Toughen up.

The majority of what's called abuse, harassment

and trolling is ridicule - sometimes it's strong ridicule.

It's criticism - sometimes it's strong criticism,

but that's what the internet's for.

You know, we're going to miss out on some really important

essential conversations if we don't allow people to

communicate in the way they want to.

They are just people letting off steam, you know.

To the person receiving that message... So if somebody sends me

a message saying, "You need to fucking die, I'm going to murder you

-"and put your head on a stake..."

-You need to learn to laugh it off.

But to the person receiving that message,

that could be a very real threat.

If you get a rape threat or a death threat, that's against the law.

There are laws for this. Report it to the police and get on with your life.

You know...

Do you feel like they have a right to send that message,

that it's OK to send that?

I don't think it's OK. I'm not going to defend their right...

I'll defend their right to say, I'm not going to defend the statement.

No comment on the internet constitutes harassment.

It's the internet. Turn your phone off.

-But it's not as easy as that.

-Turn the computer off.

They've all got power buttons, you just turn them off.

Social media is so ingrained with us in society these days,

the fact that everybody is on social media these days.

If you don't want to get these comments,

stop tweeting every five minutes.

You know, people get the comments they deserve, by and large.

This is a public publishing platform.

Take responsibility for what you do on the internet, people, for God's sake.

What if you're just using it as an effective tool to communicate

with your friends and your family and your close circle?

Why do you need to do this stuff publicly on the internet at all?

It's an optional part of society.

If you choose to use it, you have to understand that you

are publishing to the entire planet stuff about your personal life.

That comes with consequences.

Milo makes a strong argument, but I absolutely don't agree with him.

For some people, the words and thoughts exchanged online

can have some very real consequences.

I just can't understand

how anybody can think it's OK to send

horrible comments to people online.

One thing that really stood out to me

was that he said it's just the internet, it's not real,

they can't hurt you.

But for a lot of people, it can go very, very wrong

and even though these may be funny comments,

to the person receiving them, they might not be a joke

and I think that's really important to remember.

I'm meeting two people for whom the consequences of words online

have been life-changing.

Mark Halsey is a recently retired Premiership referee.

In 2009, he fought back from cancer to adjudicate once again

at the highest level in football.

Six months ago, Mark's family were subjected to disturbing online hate.

"Your daughter will go to Jesus after I rape and bleed her to death.

"Cancer scored against your wife."

"Imagine using emojis.

"You won't be when I massacre your family after

"raping your daughter, a cancer patient."

It actually baffles me

how somebody can feel it's OK to send that message.

It's not just the one message, there are ones that are

so much worse that I cannot read some of them out.

There's nothing wrong with using a pseudonym,

but it's how you use it that matters.

Online words do hurt.

This is so much more than "the ref's an idiot" or whatever, you know.

It's because it brought his family into it and that's the key.

His family felt threatened.

There was a real danger of this spilling over into real life,

as far as they were concerned.

-Hello, Mark, good to meet you.

-Good to see you. How are you? You OK?

-Very well.

-Hiya.

-Nice to meet you.

-How you doing, you all right?

Now, let's talk about some of the gyp that you get

when you are in the middle of the pitch and you've got fans

baying at you, calling you all sorts of names under the sun.

How does that make you feel?

To be fair, you shut it out because you're fully focused,

you're fully concentrating on what's going on on the field of play.

You don't really hear that, you don't hear what's being

shouted at you from stands, unless, you know, the game has stopped

and something's gone on and all of a sudden you get a moment's lapse

in the game and sometimes you do hear that.

Can you give me some examples

of the type of things that would be flung at you?

You get the F word, you get this, you get that, you get the B.

I mean, it's even worse from the fans, you know...

Sometimes it's like...

# The referee's a wanker! #

Yeah, all that.

Talk to me about when some people on Twitter have crossed the line

with you.

Er, it started back in April.

I was watching a game, you've got your phone there

cos you're looking at decisions that are going on in a certain game

and all of a sudden these tweets come in.

You sort of take a quick look at them and all of a sudden...

"Jesus, what on earth?"

Some of the things that were coming in about my family.

Not so much me - I can handle it, but...

Obviously, my wife's got leukaemia, so...

Things were coming through about her,

things were coming through about my eight-year-old daughter.

Some of the things that he was going to do to my daughter was just,

you know, they deserve locking up, they deserve locking up

and throwing away the key.

Straightaway, I got onto the police. I thought, "This ain't right."

They spent four or five hours going through all these tweets.

And did you find that the police took it seriously

when you approached them or did they say, "Oh, it's just the internet"?

No, no, to be fair, Greater Manchester Police,

I thought, were absolutely first class in what they done.

Despite the police acting quickly,

their investigation spooked the trolls

and they vanished into thin air before they could even be traced.

If the authorities can't even track down these people,

what hope have I got?

Were you fearful of what might happen outside of the internet,

but in real life, given the nature of these threats?

Yeah, because he was going to, he was going to...

He knows where we are, he knows where my daughter lives.

He knows what school she goes to.

And... "We're going to get her.

"Catch us if you can."

What kind of impact did that have on your family life?

Michelle suffered quite a lot and...

It's brought on anxiety and she was worried all the time. Why? Why?

What made him, you know, tweet all these messages? Has he got family?

Has he got a mum and dad? Has he got grandparents?

Have any of his family gone through cancer?

Suffered what I've gone through?

What my wife's suffering at the moment?

I know people will look at those and think, "Oh, it's not real,

"none of it is real, nobody was ever in any danger,"

but try telling that to his wife who is having to read

these messages about their eight-year-old daughter

about what this sick individual will want to do to her.

I don't know any mother that would not feel threatened by reading

those comments - or any father, even.

It's just deplorable.

As shocking as Mark's story is,

unbelievably, for others, it is even worse.

Over a third of teenagers have experienced harassment online.

I want to find out what can happen

when young people feel unable to escape their cyber abuse.

I've been in touch with a teenage anti-bullying charity called Papyrus

and they have very kindly put me in touch with a lady called Gabbi Dix.

Now, Gabbi had a teenage daughter called Izzy,

who sadly took her own life

after being on the receiving end of some horrific abuse,

both offline and online.

Shortly before she died, she wrote a poem called I Give Up.

"Suddenly they call me over. I think, 'Yes, they've noticed me.'

"But then it begins. They start to ask questions as to why I'm here.

"They begin to tell me that nobody wants me there.

"They tell me to leave and that I'm not wanted, not there, not anywhere.

"My heart, my head, my body, numb."

It's just so heartbreaking.

It's just so saddening to read and what makes it more sad is that it's

very similar to the type of poetry that I wrote when I was a teenager.

Izzy and her mum Gabbi lived in Brixham, Devon,

but since Izzy's death, Gabbi has moved to Bath.

-It is so lovely to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

-You had a good journey?

-I did, thank you.

This is a scrapbook that I keep with me all the time.

This is not long before Izzy passed.

-You can see she's quite nervous about holding the...

-Yeah!

-She's holding it at a distance. "Oh, don't come any closer."

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-I think I would do the same, as well.

This is Izzy doing a funny blog-type thing.

I'm here today on the train to Brixham from Dartmouth.

Hello?

That was the leader...

She gives off... This tribe has a very distinctive scent,

if you like, pheromones, if you will...

..of poo!

SHE LAUGHS

THEY CHUCKLE

-That's so...

-She was so funny.

What was Izzy's relationship like

with social media and the internet?

Izzy was very open about her internet use.

She came to me to show me what had been happening on Ask.fm

and she had numerous...

very disgusting, disturbing things said about her.

And I said, "Well, we need to deactivate your account,"

and she agreed with me.

But then it just transferred to Facebook.

And then the isolation just got progressively worse.

About four weeks before she died,

she became very guarded about her internet usage

and we now realise that's because she was being trolled.

She was being told to go and die, that no-one wanted her,

she didn't deserve to be alive...

The day Izzy died, it was a relatively normal night.

I went upstairs to check to see if Izzy was in bed,

she'd had a shower and done her nails and...

..I just went to push the door open and the door wouldn't move.

And I thought Izzy was just sitting behind the door.

Er...

I got her body down...

And, er...

tried to get her breathing again, but she wasn't breathing.

After... After Izzy's death,

her Facebook page was trolled very severely.

Chants such as, "Izzy Dix isn't breathing any more, ha-ha ha-ha-ha."

And, "I bet her mother's proud of her now."

I don't think I will ever be able to wrap my head around

what type of person...

It's a person that needs serious help.

I wish I'd been more aware of the dark side of the web -

the real dark side of the web -

because it's affecting young minds on a really deep level.

It's psychological warfare for these children.

For months after Izzy's death, Gabbi's personal social media and

the Izzy Dix Foundation website were both repeatedly trolled.

There's a picture here that was posted to the memorial page and...

..I just don't get why you would want to send that to people

that are trying to keep this girl's memory alive and...

..that, I think, I will always struggle to understand.

How you could possibly find that funny.

With both Gabbi and Mark's stories playing on my mind,

I have to find one of these online harassers.

David is helping me out by taking what information

we have on Louise and Neelam's trolls to digital specialists.

I'm on my way to a company called Sentient.

These are professional digital dark-net detectives.

I'm hopeful that with the manpower of a team like this,

we will be able to bring together

as many sources of information as we can

to build up a picture that will enable us to hunt down these trolls.

The team uses a combination of powerful software and expertise

to pick out clues from the public data scattered across the internet.

And it seems, in Louise's case in particular, there's progress.

What have you got?

We have... He actually is quite active on the Twitter account

and has been tweeting for some time, so we did actually manage

to build up quite a good picture over a span of quite a few years.

The main one for us was this tweet from the 26th of October,

where he had tweeted to Slough Council about bins that

haven't been emptied.

And, you know, we'd like to presume

that, in order to know that those bins haven't been emptied,

you have to be in one of these buildings to be able to see it.

He's not trying too hard to hide anything here.

He uses this account for normal, personal, day-to-day stuff, clearly.

-Yeah.

-As well as the trolling stuff.

There was just a handful, I would say, of tweets that were

personal, like this one, but that was enough to be able to

kind of piece together a bit more about him, really.

So you've got Slough, you've got a kind of street location

and you've got a picture.

Well, from this, we obviously looked on a map

and when you look at it on a street view, you can see...

-Some bins.

-..the bin section here.

When we continued looking through the account,

we actually found he likes to post pictures

of his neighbour's cat and you can see the bins in the background,

which would indicate that it's been taken from the back of the building.

-Wow.

-Kind of looking out over the bins, which is this area here.

-Yeah.

There was a number of pictures he'd taken,

which was clearly from the upper floor.

-Yes, taken from high up, isn't it?

-Yeah.

And, based on that information

and then looking at electoral roll information,

we were able to get a rough idea of who it was behind the name.

-You've also got what you think is a picture of him, as well.

-We do.

He actually had been at a protest, I think it was,

and looking at the picture a bit closer, he actually had caught

a reflection of himself in the doorway when he took the photograph.

-Oh, wow. There he is.

-'Hello?'

Hello, Em. I'm down here at Sentient, I've just spent some time

with the researchers here.

I'll tell you what, we've been able to track him down

to a bedroom window in a particular block of flats.

Not only that, we've also got a picture of him, as well.

I'll tell you what, it's from a picture that he's taken himself

and it's a reflection of him in a window,

so we've got him taking a picture that he then posted up online.

'That's actually insane!

'That's actually insane.'

We've had a huge breakthrough in Louise's case,

but now I need to catch up with Neelam.

-Hi. How are you?

-Hello.

-Haven't seen you in ages.

-I know, how are you?

-I'm good, how are you doing?

-I'm good.

So last time that we met,

you reached out to DavidClarke00 on Twitter.

Did you ever get anything back from that at all?

-Er, he replied a few days later.

-Really?

-Yeah.

And he was like, he said, erm,

"That was months ago, that was ages ago," something like that.

So it just shows me he's not ashamed of his actions.

How did that make you feel?

It just shows me that a lot of people who do this

don't understand the impact it can have on someone.

Well, look, I've got some news for you.

-I'm really sorry, it's not good news.

-Why?

We couldn't get him.

-Why? What was, like, the...?

-Erm...

I mean, like, it's not like we didn't try.

We took DavidClarke00's profile to linguistic experts

and we just couldn't do it, it just seemed like all

of our routes that we were going to, we weren't getting any replies in.

I kind of had a feeling it would be difficult because I feel

like people who do this and troll online, like, they know how to

cover their tracks and they know how to, like, be untraceable.

But I don't think, really, that you needed to meet him

to get some closure.

Calling it out could be enough.

I'm just glad I got to raise awareness on this and maybe open

other people's eyes a bit more to what goes on online so frequently.

I think, before, it would have affected me a lot more,

but now we've researched into these people, it just makes me

realise they have no life.

And if we were to stop, and I said to you,

"Look straight down that camera

"and say how you really feel to DavidClarke00," what would you say?

-There he is.

-Oh, God!

I think I would tell him... or you, DavidClarke00,

that I can't understand the place you're coming from.

I use my time wisely.

I hope you realise that it's fine to dislike someone, but it's

the way you voice your opinion, and especially when you're being racist,

I feel like you should be held accountable for that.

I actually feel really gutted for Neelam because I know how much

she wanted to meet DavidClarke00.

The fact is, when Neelam gets racist abuse on a daily basis,

every little insignificant comment will hurt.

And I am actually gutted for her.

She said, "This has happened to me, I don't like it,

"I don't stand for it and I won't accept it."

And I think that is commendable.

With Neelam's case hitting a dead end, I'm worried that

if I don't find even one troll, then I've failed.

But there is still hope with Louise's troll

and I'm catching up with David one last time to see where we're at.

-Louise Mensch.

-Yes.

-We've been doing a bit of work.

Now, as you remember, we had a look at some of Cruella180's tweets

-and there were quite a few little clues in there.

-Yeah.

He's not been that fastidious in covering his tracks.

There are a lot of resources online that can tell you

-about addresses and who lives at addresses.

-OK.

I mean, this is one very popular website, 192.com.

And we can see the residents of this block.

-OK, wow, straightaway we've got his address.

-Straightaway.

-No?!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It gets better than that.

-Going back to his tweets...

-Yup.

So that's what he looks like?

It's now crossed over into real life.

Because he might be doing these things online, but it's very real.

We've found one troll.

There are hundreds, thousands, millions of trolls out there.

You know, we are not going to change the world by having a conversation.

-No.

-I'm trying to understand why he's doing this, but if we can help

the people who are victims of trolls to understand what trolls are,

why they do it, what motivates them to share this hatred, or whatever

it is they've got within them, then I think that helps a lot of people.

-I'm going to give that to you now.

-Thank you.

Oh, I'm shaking taking that off you, like, holding it.

-I don't think it's just the cold, either.

-No.

I think it's my heart just, like...

This is it. Probably the scariest thing I've ever done in my life.

But I think I'm ready.

As I say goodbye to David, all I have in my mind is Slough.

# Who's bad to the kiddie in the Jekyll hat... #

I've got all the info now, so it's over to me to try and scout it out.

Basically, the bins are my biggest clue.

The fact that he always seems to moan

about the bins not being emptied

and they're in this court area.

And that seems to be in the line of sight from his house.

So if I can track down this picture, where the bins are,

then that should bring me quite close to him.

After trawling the estate,

I'm confident I've got a positive ID on Alam's house.

With the net drawing in, now all I need is the lady herself.

And to join me in the hunt,

Louise has flown in especially from New York.

-We've found out where he lives.

-That does surprise me now

because that's actually a pretty nice-looking flat.

So we can look up the electoral roll.

-That's right.

-And we found his name.

And there's your guy.

There he is.

Well, the guy in this picture is wearing a suit, a tie,

a pair of brogues, looks like a professional.

And now I feel extremely angry.

And I want to go get him.

I'm actually feeling a little bit nervous.

For me, I'm like, "Oh, God, what's going to happen now?"

Well, I'm only nervous that we won't get him or that he won't be there.

Alam works shifts. I really hope he's in.

That's his house.

Nice-looking flat.

We only have one shot at catching him.

So it's about two o'clock and he usually gets home any minute now.

It would be great to have the opportunity to confront this guy.

Do you feel like it's going to give you some sort of closure?

Yes, he's tried to intrude on my life

and now I will have a sense of his real life.

Trolls like him target women like me

or other women and, having fixated on a target,

will spend a lot of time just obsessing, obsessing, obsessing.

This is, like, a little bit crazy.

I've been doing this for, like, months now and it feels like this

has totally been my life for the past couple of months.

And I can't believe we're actually sat here, sitting in a car waiting.

Oh, there's a car.

Sorry. False alarm.

Every time somebody walks past us or a car comes round the corner,

-you go...

-LOUISE GASPS

I think that's what makes me more nervous.

It's just the waiting and just not knowing

if he's going to turn around or if he's going to turn up

because I know when he comes, I can't be nervous.

So it's been like, what, a couple of hours now that we've been

sat in this car freezing cold and there's no sign of him?

As every minute slips by, we're arousing suspicion

and losing valuable time.

If Louise can't challenge her abuser,

it will be a waste of a 7,000-mile round trip for her

and I'll have blown my only opportunity to confront a troll.

-But just as we're about to call it a day...

-Say again?

RADIO CHATTER

The target! Go, go, go, go, go!

He's parking. He's parking.

Are you ready?

-Who are you?

-We're from the BBC.

-Oh, right.

-We understand that you've been targeting women online.

I've got one here that would like to talk to you.

-Hi, Alam, it's Louise Mensch.

-Oh, right.

You asked me to follow you and I have done.

-Would you like to have a chat?

-Is it really you?

-Yes, it is me.

-All right, well, pleased to meet you.

Would you like to explain why you've been sending me

pornographic images for a number of years?

Do you think sending pornographic pictures to women is

or is not pathetic?

-Well, it was to upset you and wind you up. Did it work?

-Why?

-No.

-You try to demean people.

-And it weren't pornographic.

-I think they were artistic.

-What would your mum think of it, Alam?

Have you got any sisters? Girlfriends?

To be honest, I don't really like women.

-Why do you not care?

-You don't like women? You don't like women?

Why don't you like women?

Porn, all it does is to get followers online.

-Do you think that's appropriate?

-For fun.

-Do you think that is appropriate?

-Yes.

Why do you send abuse to people? Why?

For fun. I'll tell you what, I want to get into civilian clothes.

We'll have a proper discussion about this, all right?

If you don't mind waiting here.

I'm glad that Louise has finally got the closure she's craved.

I'm just overjoyed that, after such a long wait,

I got the chance to confront him.

-He couldn't believe that you were here.

-He kept asking me...

He couldn't believe you were really here.

Yeah, he kept asking me if it was me, which goes to show,

since he's been sending me all these tweets for ever and ever, that

it's divorced from the real person.

He doesn't understand there is a person behind the Twitter account

and when that person turned up,

he had absolutely nothing to say for himself.

And I think it was really unbelievably important that

I got the chance to say that to him.

And now you will be able to delve into why he does that to women.

-Thank you.

-OK, leave it with me.

-I will do.

Hopefully you'll get your answers.

After months of meeting victims of online abuse,

I finally get to look an active troll in the eye.

Alam, who goes by the name Cruella180,

takes pride in his anonymity

and I want to start by asking why he hides behind his profile.

That's why I don't use my real name when I'm on Twitter.

But why don't you use your real name?

I don't want people knowing who I am, I'm like Zorro.

-Why?

-Zorro.

-Is it because of the tweets?

-All right.

How come superheroes always wear masks?

Clark Kent. It's the same thing.

If you're not using your real name, is that

because you're ashamed of what you're tweeting?

-No, no.

-Because you know you'll get into trouble?

No, Cruella180 is an online persona.

If you are a superhero, what is your mission?

All right, it's to destroy authority.

Do you ever see anonymous or groups of protesters,

right-wing or left-wing...? Cos I view them as the same.

You see them, they've always got their fingers up,

shouting abuse, "Scum, scum," whatever. It's the same thing.

You ever want to do that? The graffiti?

I mean, again, I'm doing the same thing.

But I do it online and I reach a lot more people.

I hope, anyway. And I hope it does a lot more damage, as well.

Do you consider yourself a troll, like an internet troll?

Well, actually, I've never considered myself a troll,

-but I've never threatened anybody online.

-OK.

I've never gone to a member of the public,

"I think you're scum. I'm going to come round and get you."

I've never done that. I've never threatened anybody,

but I've told people they're stupid.

Do you enjoy getting at people?

How does it make you feel when somebody blocks you?

-Well, I've got to them.

-And is that job done?

-It is.

-"Get in, another pint in the pub"?

It means I got to them, it means I got to them.

If they block me, I got to them.

And do you celebrate? What do you do?

-I just move on to someone else.

-You just move on to somebody else?

-Yeah.

I'm surprised by how completely unrepentant he is,

especially towards Louise.

-I wonder where his anger comes from.

-You know what?

I don't owe the world anything.

The world owes me.

And also, of course, I don't owe it an explanation.

I'll speak to you, but I don't owe you an explanation, either.

I think the whole world can go to hell.

I'm working class. I don't like white, middle-class people. Right?

White, middle-class English people.

And this country's obsessed with class.

And if you're of the wrong class, badly educated...

You know, they'd let you know what they think of you.

The more I listen to Alam talking about his online persona

and his real life, I realise he's blurred the lines between the two.

Why should somebody have to block you? Why can't you just not send it?

Because they probably won't pay me any attention if I don't.

Do you think about how people feel when you send them?

Again, it's not about them, it's about me.

Is that what it's all about? Getting followers?

-Yes, getting more followers.

-What's your goal? What would be your dream?

What would make you happy? How many followers?

If I got like a million followers or something like that,

-I would be very happy.

-Increasingly, I realise this troll has no idea

about the impact his online abuse has.

Cos I've never threatened anybody and I said

I've never gone to hurt anybody, except maybe, you know...

You don't want people killing themselves and stuff like that.

-But that's the thing...

-But no-one's ever killed themselves

-because of me.

-But I've been doing this now for over three months,

this journey.

I've met with a woman called Gabbi Dix

whose daughter did actually

kill herself because of messages online.

-Her 14-year-old daughter killed herself.

-Was it on Twitter?

Her 14-year-old daughter took her own life

because of online messages that were sent to her.

Does it ever concern you that your messages could be deeply

affecting someone?

I've never targeted a civilian. I say civilian.

I've always gone for famous people.

-But they're normal people, too.

-No, they're not.

I just can't stop laughing.

Really? When you're typing it you're laughing?

Yes, yes, because when the porn comes out... Especially the porn.

Why do you use porn? I don't quite understand this.

HE LAUGHS Tell me why you use porn.

It's actually soft porn, not hard porn. I've never done hard porn.

I don't think I have, anyway.

If you read it online and saw the porn, would you have followed me?

-No, why would I?

-Would you have retweeted it?

Because that's what happened with Louise Mensch.

-She retweets it, so...

-Yeah, no, she blocked me.

I don't know what tweet I sent her, but she retweeted it

and then blocked me. And I've got Louise Mensch saying,

-"You're pathetic."

-HE LAUGHS

-Right.

-I can just imagine her saying it, as well.

And, of course, when I stopped laughing,

I thought I'd start on her.

She brought herself to my attention, that's what she did.

-But you don't think you'll ever stop doing it?

-No, it'll go in waves.

There will be someone new, there's always someone new.

Do you think anything would make you stop?

No. No, it's freedom of speech in the end.

I don't know if I can say my age, but I'm in my 40s, all right?

And what do I get? Nothing.

I've probably reached the pinnacle of my career,

if you can call it that,

pay my mortgage off in about seven years or whatever.

What do I get? Nothing.

I've destroyed people's reputations online, which is what I do.

Everything's online these days.

If you type in Cruella180, things come up. Because it's power.

As Alam leaves, I know that nothing I say

will make someone like him change.

I'm happy I've got to confront a troll

and help in some way to get closure for Louise.

But the truth is that online abuse for the victims is very real.

Anybody that's doing this,

I personally think, are not happy in their life.

You've only got to look at Stuart or Cruella. We've all

turned to the internet when we were at an unhappy point in our lives.

You know, it's how you use these tools

and how you communicate that makes the real difference.

We need to take responsibility for our own actions.

You can't blame the social network inside if you're the one

sending death threats or rape threats to someone online.

Twitter might be facilitating that,

but they didn't type the message and hit the enter key.

I think one of the main things that I've learned from this journey

is that you shouldn't fear the trolls.

It is not about you, it is all about them

and they do not care how you feel.

Cyber abuse is very real.

We need to take responsibility for what we say on social media.

Because, ultimately, the online and offline worlds are the same thing.