The Anti-Social Network

This programme contains strong language.

-Hi. I'm Charley and Jane says that I should go and

-BLEEP

-myself because no-one else will.

Hi. I'm Carney and Ben said I am weird loser and should go die.

My name's Lani and Alex says everybody hates me and I should leave school.

I'm Gemma and Jodie thinks I don't fit in, and that I'm "fat-tastic".

-Hello. I'm Richard and Dick Bacon Boom thinks I'm a

-BLEEP

-and wants me to kill myself.

If you're on Twitter or Facebook, there's every chance you've seen a message just like one of those.

If not about you, then about someone you know.

In the last couple of years, there's been a massive explosion in online hate.

Bullies and so-called trolls using fake identities on social networking sites

to torment, harass and abuse.

And they do it the coward's way.

They're hiding behind a keyboard and a computer.

They have the freedom to say things you wouldn't normally say to somebody's face.

And that anonymity means there's no boundaries.

Someone can say something and you're like, God, that's below the belt!

There almost seems to be no belt now.

I've spent the last three months in the virtual world on the hunt for Britain's haters, including my own.

"I'm not a violent man but when I see Richard Bacon I want to stamp on his head."

I've discovered nasty, witless videos which mock the dead.

# LOL. You died # LOL, LOL, you died. LOL... #

I've talked to grieving families devastated by horrific images

and messages posted about their lost loved ones.

That's my son there that you've just...

I felt violated. They've got no right to do that. No right.

And the internet should be able to stop them from doing that.

It's a world where it's hard to know the truth.

You've written, "RIP mate. Remember when we went up to the park,

"got high and had anal sex in the trees and that was amazing.

"Missing you loads. RIP Big Mac." Did you write that?

And the dangers of the hunt are alarming.

If I were you, I would pursue some sort of intervention and advice from sort of police authorities.

That very premise is really unsettling.

A couple of years ago, a new word entered our vocabulary - trolling.

Trolls post vicious messages on social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Their sole purpose is to antagonise and attack everyone,

from grieving families to people in the public eye.

ANOUNCER: Now Richard Bacon, Monday to Thursdays, two till four.

Welcome. Welcome to the programme. It is delightful to be back.

'I've had a troll for two years.

'He first appeared when I began presenting a new show on BBC Radio 5 Live.'

I would have hated to have cut short, for example, the Help feature two Mondays ago...

'From the off, he made it clear he hated the show and he hated me. And that's fine.

'You expect criticism in my line of work and you know some people aren't going to like what you do.

'But this guy was particularly obsessive.'

I'd come home to find a barrage of abuse, mainly on Twitter.

He'd always post under a made-up nick name and currently calls himself Dick Bacon Boom.

He also set up a blog called I Hate Richard Bacon,

and there was this Facebook page with exactly the same name.

These are some of the older tweets that he sent me, ones the early days. It's just so weird.

"Did I mention I fucking hate Richard Bacon and that he should go and fuck himself?"

OK. He's sent me a tweet here.

-"On a scale of 1 to

-BLEEP,

-how much of a

-BLEEP

-is Richard Bacon?"

"Fuck, I was hoping to get back from my hols to discover Dick Bacon either sacked or dead.

"Neither it seems! Sad face! Boom!"

The fact that he was anonymously tweeting rude, crude and violent messages day after day,

month after month, didn't particularly bother me at first.

When you're a broadcaster, having people hate you goes with the territory.

But, increasingly, his posts became more personal and more strange.

He fantasised about me dying in a plane crash and my body being mangled in a car wreck.

One day, I actually got into a conversation with him on Twitter, which was a mistake.

I tried to rationalise with him, and he just sent me a load of abuse.

My wife tried to rationalise with him.

When he tweeted her and said, look at this fan site. She opened it and there was all this horrible stuff,

including fantasising over my death, she tried to rationalise with him as well

and he just sent her loads of really horrible personal abuse.

He also knows a lot about her.

I've never said what my mum's Twitter address is and he found it out.

As soon as he started drawing my family into his hatred, I asked Twitter to take down his account.

They did, but he just created another account under a different name.

As I tried to find out more about the problem,

I was alarmed to learn how many people suffer anonymous abuse online.

According to a new survey, more than a quarter of under-17 year olds have experienced cyberbullying.

And most disturbing of all are the reports of grieving families being targeted by trolls.

There's been such an epidemic of this over the last few months. You might have read about celebrities.

Kylie, for example, called the police after she got a load of abuse on Twitter.

And, more seriously, there are lots of kids now who are bullied online awfully,

and you get grieving families who set up tribute sites on Facebook to a relative of theirs who's died,

and often those sites will be flooded with the most vile and disgusting abuse.

And I want to know why there's been such an explosion of this kind of stuff,

what sort of kick the people that do the bullying get out of it, and what can be done about it.

To find out why Britain's haters have gone into overdrive

I want to hunt them down and ask them face-to-face.

As well as trying to track down my own troll,

I want to find out what drives the authors of the most abusive messages

to attack vulnerable people who they've never even met.

These so-called RIP Trolls post sick jokes,

defaced pictures and videos on internet memorial pages commemorating the dead.

# LOL. You died # LOL, LOL you died... #

I came across this video on Facebook set up to pay tribute to a young boy who had just died.

# LOL, You died # LOL, LOL you died... #

In the unlikely event you don't know, LOL is an abbreviation

for the phrase, "Laugh out loud".

It's hard to imagine how I'd feel if that was a friend of mine.

I had a friend who died earlier this year and there was a Facebook site set up for him

and if I had seen this on there, and also knowing his family would see this too,

I would feel aggressively angry about it.

Tom Mullaney's family know only too well how merciless online hating,

and RIP trolling in particular, can be.

Tom was 15, boisterous, spirited and energetic.

The very life and soul of his family.

He was fun-loving. He was always out and about with his friends. Never kept still for five minutes.

You always had to keep your eye on him because he had no fear of danger.

If he was on his BMX bike, you heard the screech of the tyre coming down the road.

The back gate would go bang, upstairs, on the computer.

If you were angry at him, you couldn't stay angry at him for long. He just made you smile.

It took only a dozen threatening messages posted on his Facebook page to pull Tom's world apart.

His parents had been out for the evening, but returned to find the house empty.

We went upstairs, the bedroom light was on, the computer was still on,

the television was still on and his chair was pushed away from the computer screen

as if he'd just pushed away in one of his moods.

-And his screen was still on.

-And his screen was still on.

When Tom's dad looked at the screen he saw it was open on his Facebook page.

Six or seven kids had posted threatening messages

about a fight Tom had been involved in that day at school.

Suddenly, something's gone wrong in Thomas' head and he has got really scared.

In my mind, he's got frightened, he's got scared and he doesn't know how to deal with this.

Tom's parents rang their son's mobile repeatedly, but there was no answer.

The next morning, the 15-year-old was still missing, and Tracy and Robert were frantic with worry.

Then they heard his mobile ringing at the bottom of the garden.

I just peeked behind the shed and I saw this figure

and I said to Thomas, "Come on, I'm late for work, get going", and then I walked away.

As soon as I looked back at the shed I...I knew there was something wrong.

There was... he wasn't standing on nothing and I just looked up and I saw the cord.

I just grabbed his little hand and I can still see it now.

And it was cold, it was clammy.

And I knew there was nothing I could have done then.

So I walked back and shook and...

..phoned the police and the ambulance.

I just run out the house trying to get down to Thomas to see him but Rob wouldn't let me go

and by which time the police were here.

As if that weren't enough for the family to endure, within days of his death,

Tom became the victim of RIP trolling.

Probably just to show my emotions as well.

His brother Ashley had set up a tribute site on Facebook for friends and family to post messages.

At first, it was a source of comfort to the Mullaneys.

But the site was soon desecrated by trolls who attacked en-masse,

posting defaced images of Tom and upsetting messages.

There's pictures of my brother decapitated, pictures of my brother hanging himself, just horrible stuff.

They took a photo of my brother, I think it was that one actually,

and just put a noose round it and, yeah, just horrible comments as well.

-Did you write back to some of them?

-I did.

I've put a post on there saying, "Look, just leave this page alone.

"You've got not right putting all these horrible comments and pictures. You didn't know my brother."

What did they say back to that?

They just took the mick out of it and said, your brother was a coward for committing suicide,

took an easy... cheated death and all that stuff.

You didn't know about internet trolling before this and your mum and dad didn't know about it.

What kind of impact did it have on them?

My mum was just disgusted and angry and my dad was the same.

It was just hard to see them really upset.

I just thought, those are our family pictures. Why have you done this?

That's my son there that you have just...

I felt violated. They've got no right to do that.

And the internet should be able to stop them from doing that.

The nasty comments could be quickly removed,

but taking down the defaced pictures was a laborious and upsetting process.

I can still see the caption.

I can still see the photograph.

I can still see the words.

It's imprinted on your brain.

Amongst the trolls targeting Tom Mullaney was someone calling themselves Damon Evans.

He posted this crude comment on Tom's Facebook page.

It kick-started a string of offensive jokes about Tom and his family.

I've managed to track down a YouTube account for a Damon Evans.

And I think he may be the person responsible for the post.

I've contacted him to see if he'll do an interview so I can try and begin to understand

what would motivate someone to post such vile, hurtful comments,

but he'll only meet me if I can convince him I am who I say I am.

In an e-mail he sent me, he defends trolling.

He says RIP sites are fine when friends and family post on them,

what he doesn't like is when people who didn't know the deceased post a nice message

he says those people are just trying to look nice.

He admits to a form of trolling himself, but says that his facebook site was cloned

and somebody nicked his identity and did some trolling.

That seems like quite a coincidence that he does trolling then someone would nick his identity

do some trolling with his name.

He's asked me to send him a message to his twitter account as proof of who I am.

Once he's convinced, he says he'll arrange a meeting.

In the meantime, I want to know what experts believe motivates Trolls to post messages on RIP sites.

Is it possible they just don't understand the consequences of their abuse?

Dr Emma Short is one of the country's leading experts in online harassment.

Well, I don't think they are necessarily thinking about the family watching it, to be honest.

It's just a joke.

Emma, is there a typical profile to these people that troll?

Well, it's very hard to say. It all depends on the motivation, why are they doing it?

Some people are doing it to intimidate, to frighten, to control

and other people are doing it purely for notoriety and to get their own following.

These platforms seem to encourage people

to abuse in a very extreme way, don't they?

Mmm, if you are someone who lives your life largely online, I think that margin begins to blur

and actually, it's just cyberspace, "It's a behaviour I'm engaging in,

"I like doing it, I'll send another message."

And the impact you're having, I think,

almost becomes irrelevant because the reward is the behaviour itself.

It feels good, you get nastier and nastier.

So is the troll who is relentlessly targeting me doing it for notoriety, attention,

or something more complex?

I tried to approach him online to find out, but that didn't work.

So, I want to unmask him.

If I find out his identity, perhaps I can contact him

in the real world, to get some answers.

The only name on his Twitter account refers to me,

there are no photos of him and no e-mail address.

IT expert Paul is going to give me some tips

on unmasking anonymous haters.

How hard is it to track down somebody who posts anonymously?

This guy that I'm dealing with, he's not given much away, has he?

Your hater doesn't leave many clues on his Twitter feed.

He's quite intelligent, he seems to know the technology quite well.

It's going to be a bit of a challenge.

-OK.

-So, what we need to do is maybe set up a trap.

Like a honey trap?

-A honey trap.

-A honey trap!

We need to tempt him out into the open, find his e-mail address

and when we find his e-mail address, then perhaps

we can find more details about him online or even find his IP address.

By searching for references to his Twitter feed and blog elsewhere,

Paul has managed to come up with some leads.

He's found a Facebook page which promotes links to both.

Above these postings is the name of the person who's put them up.

We've found this entry here, I don't know whether this person is your troll

but he's certainly promoting the troll's Tumblr account.

On this page, there's an online conversation which took place

back in 2010 when the three hate accounts first appeared.

Paul thinks the person who posted the links to promote these sites

could be the same person who set them up.

We can perhaps click on his name and find out more details about him.

So, in that Facebook conversation there

he put a link to the Tumblr account? That's why we're interested in him?

And that's why, yes, and I think that Tumblr account is connected to the Twitter account.

So, how does this guy know about the existence of that Tumblr account?

The Facebook site gives the name of our suspect.

With a bit of clever detective work,

Paul manages to find a matching e-mail account within minutes.

And that's confirmation that that is the right e-mail address.

Paul uses that address to then uncover a digital trail

which leads to his name, home town, as well other online accounts.

His Photobucket account, his Bebo account, his MySpace page.

I'm sure there's a load more as well.

But are we getting closer to unmasking my hater?

He's 43 years old.

It wouldn't surprise me if that was about the age of this troller

because he's a 5Live listener.

I never thought we were dealing with someone who's, say, 25.

No, no. The language used is quite well constructed.

You know, good language apart from the obvious bad words!

Good use of apostrophes, he's quite educated.

So, now we have an e-mail address for our 43-year-old suspect,

the next step is to get an e-mail for Dick Bacon Boom to see if they match.

If they do, we've hit the jackpot.

Paul's suggested I lure him into revealing his e-mail address,

'by pretending to be someone who hates me.

'But making contact with him could prove tricky.

'My hater hasn't tweeted lately.

'It seems to be my radio show which triggers his hatred.

'And I think he's gone quiet because I've just become a dad

'and taken some time off work.'

I'm back on the radio today for the first time in a fortnight.

I've been off because I've had a baby and I'm going to try and smoke him out.

Whenever I say anything ironically on Twitter

he simply doesn't see that, he takes it seriously,

so I'm going to say, "Back on the radio today

"with guests Jason Manford and Reginald D Hunter,

"I imagine every single person is delighted by this."

If he responds, I'll be one step closer to tracking him down.

As abusive as my troll is,

I think it goes with the territory of being a presenter.

But for the hundreds of thousands of victims of cyberbullying,

the threat seems much more personal and unexpected.

In recent months, the papers have been full of stories citing research

about just how widespread the problem is.

According to some of these studies,

the perpetrators don't really understand

how serious what they do actually is.

They don't, because they can't see the impact of what they're sending,

they fail to understand how much distress cyberbullying causes.

And also, the bullies will often post anonymously.

So, you see the abuse

you know it's someone you know because of the detail within it,

but you don't quite know who it is,

which I think is probably even more disturbing.

Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts is one of the few celebrities

to take this on, and draw attention to the damage online hate can do.

After writing about her own experience at the hands of bullies,

Nicola was inundated by tweets from victims desperate for her support.

It's hard to see kids, sort of tweeting,

saying, like, "I'm scared to go to school today," or,

"There's a group of girls in college just telling me to just kill myself."

It's almost like someone can say something and you're like, "God, that's below the belt."

There almost seems to be no belt now. People just say whatever they think.

Do you think these social media platforms make people exaggerate their opinions?

In others words, the bullying is worse because they're doing it to an audience to some extent?

Yeah, I do. And it's sort of like it's all about self ego, isn't it?

So, to say something nasty to somebody else

automatically elevates you to a higher place.

It's like feeding a side of society that really does not need to be fed.

# I feel like a yo, yo Yo, yo, yo-yo. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Carney Bonner is a former victim of cyberbullying

who now runs mentoring sessions to help others protect themselves against the bullies.

When we have our Q&A sessions,

we see that actually a lot more people than we think

either have been affected by cyberbullying or are being cyberbullied.

The statistics have come out that 1 in 3 people aged between 11 to 17

can be cyberbullied, with girls three times more likely.

It goes to school with you, it goes home with you,

it goes in the shower with you, it goes everywhere you go.

So, being a teenage girl means you're three times more likely

to be targeted than a boy.

Gemma, Charley and Lani have all been sent abusive posts online.

Lani, tell me a bit about how it affected you.

I had to actually go on medication for a while

and I would lock myself in my room

because I was so worried about everybody.

Do you think it seems more powerful because it's in writing

when you see something in words?

I think so because if it's, like, on your Facebook wall

or on Twitter, you keep seeing it and other people can see it as well.

And the person that bullied you, is it weird when you see them the next day?

I think it's really strange.

I had a case where someone had made a comment to me on Facebook,

I went into school the next day and they came up to me and gave me a hug.

Like, "It was meant to be a joke." And you're like, "Was it?" Cos you're not sure if they meant it.

There is a statistic, Lani, that says that girls aged 12 to 17

are three times more likely to be the victim of cyberbullying than boys.

Why do you think that might be?

I think girls seem more vulnerable to others, as men put on quite a strong front.

Sometimes internet bullies will say, "I'm just expressing an opinion."

What do you say to that?

You have to think of other people,

you have to think of what consequences your actions have.

And sometimes I think that people like this, A, realise

and, B, are they perfectly happy with the fact

that they might be tipping someone over the edge?

Often the bullies just don't know how vulnerable their victims are.

Remember 15-year-old Tom Mullaney who had no history of being bullied?

He took his own life after just one night of cyberbullying.

These words that are coming out of another 14-year-old's mouth

about "I'm going to beat you up,

"I'm gonna follow you, then I'm going to beat you up some more

"and when you get off the floor I'm going to beat you again".

And everybody else going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

If I don't do anything, they're going to think I'm a coward

or if I do anything I'm going to get into trouble.

I'm actually not going to stop punching you in your effed-up face.

'According to the family,

'six kids sent Tom threatening messages that night.

'Only one of them was cautioned by the police.

'Their words still haunt Tom's brother.'

"You come to school tomorrow and I'll beat you up in first lesson,

"second lesson, break time and lunch time, fourth lesson."

Do you think the people that wrote these messages in the first place

don't understand what they did?

I don't they understand what they've said pushed my brother over the top,

because they don't know what was going on in his personal life.

They've literally torn my family to pieces.

This house feels so empty without my brother.

-Yeah.

-And now he's not here it's just... It's too quiet.

Ashley told me his family's anger and grief was only deepened

by the vile pictures and comments that appeared on Tom's tribute page.

And I think I'm getting closer to meeting one of the people

'who I believe could be responsible for defiling Tom's memory.'

I'm about to call Damon Evans.

I've been talking to him on YouTube and Twitter over the last month.

Yeah, of course you can.

'And I think he may be responsible for posting this abuse

'on Tom Mullaney's RIP tribute page.'

OK, well, there you go, he has agreed to do an interview,

which is good news.

He sounds sincere.

I suppose because of the nature of what he does,

there's a bit of me, you know, it's not particularly rational,

so there's a bit of me that wonders whether he'll actually turn up.

We'll find out.

But first, I want to find out more about how trolls operate.

It's high-profile tragedies which make the news

that attract the most RIP Trolls.

'Nearly a thousand came to celebrate a magnificent young man...'

17-year-old Horatio Chapple died after being attacked

by a Polar Bear on a schools expedition to the arctic.

It made news around the world.

'But the 17-year-old never returned from his most ambitious adventure,

'he was killed by a polar bear on an expedition to Svalbard...'

After his death,

several tribute sites were set up to Horatio on Facebook.

One of them was by his family and others, anonymously, by his friends.

As is usually the case,

the vast majority of messages posted were comforting.

But then the trolls started to appear -

both on tribute pages to Horatio

and on pages dedicated to the polar bear that killed him.

Horatio's Godfather tried to protect the family from the vile messages.

It sort of snowballed into really horrendous comments

and postings from people saying, you know, just...

you know, unimaginable things. But including things like, you know,

obviously he shouldn't have been there, he deserved to die,

it's all his fault, to graphic pictures of dismembered bodies

and comments along with them and it was just unbelievable.

Harry set about scouring the tribute sites

and forwarding the good messages onto the family.

Unlike many websites, Facebook has clear rules to prevent trolls

harassing and intimidating others.

And it gives those who create tribute pages,

the tools to block and remove content.

But because some of the sites to Horatio were set up by others,

it was difficult for Harry to remove the abuse.

There probably isn't a simple way of stopping people from creating pages

in any circumstance. I think it would be great to have an official way

of creating an official tribute page that was through the Facebook system.

Frustrated at his inability to control Horatio's tribute sites,

Harry Cunliffe sent letters to five senior executives at Facebook

including the founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

I had no response at all from Facebook and I was really shocked,

I was really surprised. It makes no sense to me that a corporation

that size, that's become extremely wealthy,

that they wouldn't be taking responsibility

for dealing with urgent issues in an urgent manner.

Facebook say they have no record of receiving any

of the five registered letters Harry says he sent.

They say they remove offensive comments within 24 hours of them being reported.

But sometimes distasteful images and comments,

including this one, do not violate their rules,

as they're trying to strike a balance between censorship

and freedom of expression.

I've looked into the law and, whilst it defends the right to free speech,

it also says that sending grossly offensive messages can be illegal.

Facebook argue that freedom of speech and the right to criticise

make some offensive images and sick jokes on tribute sites acceptable.

But when I look at images like this, that we saw earlier,

and think about the devastating impact that must have had

on an already grieving family,

I do wonder if they're calling it right,

if they really are best placed to act as judge and jury

over what is and is not offensive.

'But what about the hunt for my own hater, Dick Bacon Boom?

'His messages go beyond criticism. He's fantasised about my death

'and has sent links full of abuse to my family.

'But he stopped tweeting when I took a couple of weeks off

'from my radio show for the birth of my son.

'So, I posted an antagonistic comment

'to see if it would get him tweeting again.'

So let's see if he's active.

He's changed his profile picture.

It's now a picture of me when I got beaten up about three years ago

with a busted nose and some bruises.

Oh, he's now mentioned my son.

I've got a son who's four weeks old.

"Oh you poor fucker @ArthurBacon!

-"Imagine having that

-BLEEP

-as your dad.

"#shitdads."

I mean...

Your reaction to it is quite strange.

I laugh cos it's so ridiculous.

For the record, my son does not have a Twitter account.

It does bother me.

How could that not bother you

when there's a theme of violence to it,

when he's mentioning my newborn son?

In the past, he's tweeted my wife and my mum,

but it also intrigues me

because I want to know...why?

Why he's doing this.

Why this utter obsession?

I want to know what he gets out of it

and I want to know what he's like.

I want to meet him. I want to talk to him.

Now he's back tweeting,

I want to lure him into revealing more details about himself.

And here we see on the computer...

When I met with IT expert Paul,

he said this was crucial to uncover who Dick Bacon Boom really is.

I want to see if his e-mail address matches with Paul's prime suspect.

'As Paul explained to me when we first met,

'getting my troll's e-mail address

'would unlock the key to information required to track him down.'

When we find his e-mail address,

then perhaps we can find more details about him online

or even find his IP address.

And what's an IP address?

An IP address is like a mobile phone number of the internet, if you like.

Everything on the internet has got its own number,

and those numbers trace back to an internet service provider

or possibly a place of work

and those are the details the police might use

to find out who's behind an internet posting.

'So, to get those extra details that Paul says I need,'

I'm going to try and get him to reveal his e-mail address

by pretending to be someone who has some compromising photos of me,

ones that I hope he'll want to see.

I'm going to write to Dick Bacon Boom,

"Love...

"your picture of Bacon..."

"My brother works in the same building as the twat..."

It's curiously enjoyable slagging yourself off in a Tweet.

"Works in the same building as the twat..."

"Got some great pics of him on his iPhone".

Then shall we see if he comes back and wants to look at them?

-Is that what we're doing?

-That's what we're doing.

-All right.

This is it. This is our honey trap.

Let's send it.

It's actually quite exciting.

I'm pretending to be a troll,

who hates ME.

And it turns out I'm not the only one pretending to be a troll.

It's also a trick used by self-appointed troll hunters -

people who spend hundreds of hours on the internet,

trying to track down and exposing the very worst of the online haters.

I've been sent information on over a dozen RIP trolls

who target tribute pages.

The troll hunter who sent me this information

goes by the name of Michael Fitzpatrick.

He started hunting trolls

three years ago, when he discovered a YouTube account

posting offensive and violent messages about murdered children.

He was incensed by it.

Michael has agreed to meet me, but because he fears for his safety

he won't show his face on camera. We've also disguised his voice.

'Using fake online profiles, Michael has gained access

'to private Facebook pages where the trolls gather

'to plan their attacks on RIP websites.'

Hello, Michael. How you doing?

'In the three years since he began his hunt

'he's discovered just how organised and vicious trolls can be.'

I can just say there were hundreds of them organising.

Some of them have said they trawl through the papers every day

to find out about a child who's died

and they'll look for an RIP page for a dead child.

If there's not one, they'll set one up themselves.

A lot of them have been bullied,

and ex-trolls have said to me that a lot of trolls

are getting their own back on society by doing this.

'According to Michael,

'RIP trolls are not just nasty, they're dangerous.

'If you annoy them, they'll steal your name and your photo

'and post vile and inflammatory messages on sensitive tribute sites

'using your identity.'

At some point, this could turn into something violent.

The only surprise to me is that nobody has been killed over this,

because I mean, they're playing on the rawest of human emotions.

It's only a matter of time before one of them gets killed

or even worse, an innocent person gets killed because of them.

And why are you doing this interview anonymously?

Because they could place my life and my family's life in danger.

I've seen them find troll hunters' names and addresses

and they've made loads of Facebook pages

saying they're paedophiles and they abuse children.

When I started this,

I thought it was all largely about mad people or irrational people

posting these crazy things on Facebook and Twitter

but the thing that really stood out to me about Michael

is that he says they're taking the names of real people

and posting abusive messages under their names on RIP sites

and endangering those people in real life.

And that's just made me realise that this is, this is all

a lot more serious than I thought it was when I began this hunt.

Which begs the question,

why are RIP trolls getting away with posting vile messages?

It's the 2003 Communications Act

which makes it illegal to post obscene offensive messages online.

You could be sentenced to up to six months in prison for doing so.

But only two trolls have been convicted in the UK using this Act.

According to academic Clare Hardaker,

getting enough evidence to bring a successful prosecution is tough.

Unfortunately, people are often really upset by these posts.

They don't want friends or family to see these things on a tribute page

so they delete it very quickly.

The police need evidence.

They need screenshots of these posts so they can take action.

Also, even if the police have the evidence,

trolls work very hard to keep themselves anonymous.

They'll use a range of different accounts, each other's accounts,

they'll even take over innocent people's accounts.

So even if the police track back to a person they think is a suspect,

they need to prove, did this person write this message at this time?

Colm Coss is one of the only two trolls to be prosecuted in the UK.

His arrest and conviction by Greater Manchester Police

gives a chilling insight into the mind of a troll

and the dangers they pose.

PC Julie Gerkhe was first alerted

when she received a dossier of information

showing RIP Facebook pages that Coss had attacked.

The person who had put the pack together had identified Colm Coss

as a troll, and explained what a troll was within the pack.

A lot of detective work went into that from somebody

who's technically policing the trolls

and trying to inform people of this troll.

It was the troll hunter I've met,

Michael Fitzpatrick, who compiled this dossier.

For the police, this was new territory.

The vile comments posted by Colm Coss on tribute sites

are too disturbing to repeat,

making obscene sexual references to the deceased.

A lot of it was on memorial sites for babies

and for people who had died in car crashes.

Coss, who is unemployed and in his 30s, was arrested

and brought in for questioning.

His police interviews give a real insight into the mind of a troll.

For example, he justified his actions by claiming

that many of the tributes on RIP pages are not from genuine mourners.

The pages are flooded with, "I never knew you or your family,

"I am devastated by your passing,"

and it's like, you what?

Just step back, you never knew this person.

So I find that quite...provoking. It's like that, "Well, OK,

"If you're going to write this inane baseless comment,

"I've got one of my own."

Colm Coss also admitted

to deliberately making his comments as shocking as possible.

Just purely provocative, it made me laugh.

And it's also just so over the top, in my eyes,

that anyone who takes it seriously must be quite a sensitive soul.

He wants to leave messages there to cause offence to people.

When he gets a notification that somebody's replied to it,

that's when he gets his buzz, that's his buzz.

In October 2010, Coss was convicted

for offences committed under the 2003 Communications Act

and was given an 18-week prison sentence.

But his short stint in prison

doesn't seem to have stopped Colm Coss trolling.

Michael Fitzpatrick, the troll hunter I met,

whose evidence helped convict Coss, has continued to keep tabs on him

and has discovered he's still posting abuse on the net.

-What's he trolling here, what's this?

-This is him in October.

He's on an RIP page for a young girl who got killed

in a stampede in a nightclub,

and he's written, "One mo dead nigger? Meh."

'So it seems that Colm Coss could still be a troll.

'Michael also showed me evidence

'of Coss posting messages on tribute pages using the name Karen Shaw.'

Because anyone can set up a site under anyone else's name,

how do you know that's really him?

'It's not just Michael's screen grabs

'which provide evidence Coss is still at it.

'Michael also said he confronted Coss in an online conversation.'

I asked him, was he trolling again?

And he says he was, he said it was him. He was doing it.

I asked him why, and he says because he's never going to stop

cos he loves it, and he's not scared of going back to jail again.

Just days after my meeting with Michael,

he spotted another racist post,

which he believes could be from Coss.

It was posted on a tribute page to Anuj Bidve,

a student who was murdered in Salford at the end of last year.

Here's what he says.

"How will of his children (56) and wives (24)

"and mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers

"get their Western Union money exchange funds now?

"You didn't think of that, did you?"

So that is what he would think is a joke, I guess.

It's got a streak of racism about it.

It appears to be him, it's posted under his name,

but who knows? This world is so odd.

But if it is him, then clearly prison hasn't put him off.

And I'd like to know what drives him on, really,

I'd like to ask him. He might not answer,

but I think it's time to go and meet Colm Coss.

We've written to Coss to see if he'll meet me,

so I can ask him if he's still posting nasty comments on RIP sites.

He's refused to take part in the programme

so I'm in Manchester looking for him.

Colm Coss has been spotted by a member of the production team

on a bike near an internet cafe three miles from the city centre.

Let's go.

Colm? Hey.

My name's Richard, from the BBC. How you doing?

-We wrote to you.

-Yes.

-All right if I ask you a few questions?

-Not really.

-We have evidence from Michael Fitzpatrick

-you've been trolling since you came out of prison.

-Allegations.

There's a difference between allegations and evidence.

You have allegations by him which he's made to myself.

-So you know about it?

-Yeah, I do.

You know this one here? Here's what I wanted to know, Colm.

You certainly trolled sites before you went to prison.

We have evidence, allegations you've done it since you went to prison.

The heart of what I want to know is really, why you do it.

Why do you troll?

I realise what you want to ask, but I've said I don't want to take part.

Before you went to prison...

-No...

-We know you went to prison.

-I don't wish to answer any questions.

-Why not?

Look, I don't have to. You're just, you know, a TV programme.

I don't have to take part.

-I'm not obliged to. I don't wish to.

-Just let me ask you this.

Is that you, Colm,

on the site for Anuj Bidve

-where you've written this comment here?

-Look...

-"How will all of his children..."

-I don't wish to be interrogated,

-by you or anyone.

-Do you deny that?

-Is that you or not?

-I don't wish to answer any questions

and you're just asking questions and I'm not going to.

That's OK, but I'm free to ask the questions, Colm.

-Did you troll under the name Karen Shaw?

-I'm free not to respond

and I am a little busy, so if you don't mind, I have to go.

Thank you very much, Richard. I do enjoy your Radio 5 show.

It's unsettling, door-stepping someone like that, I must say.

Well, he called them allegations, he didn't exactly deny them,

he has said to Michael Fitzpatrick on the telephone

that prison hasn't put him off trolling, so we know that much.

But as ever with this journey, it's a bit confusing

and it's complex and really rather dark.

Still, it's nice to meet a listener.

It's very frustrating to Greater Manchester Police

that Coss may still be trolling, but just underlines how difficult it is

for any force to monitor social networks,

gather evidence of trolling and track down the culprits.

We can't police Facebook and we're not going to try.

It's just too big, too vast, there's far too many people on it.

People have got to be aware of the dangers of putting things on Facebook

and police it themselves by making sure they've got tight control

of their own Facebook, or whatever, accounts on whatever sites,

so people can't make nasty remarks or steal their identity

and if you really must open an RIP site,

then think about the consequences

and try and put some kind of control over it

before you press the button and send it and make it a live document.

Even if you have got control over your own site,

there is no way of stopping trolls creating a page in your name.

Soon after meeting Colm Coss, I found someone had stolen my identity

to create a fake Facebook page

and their plan was to start trolling with it.

I sort of thought this would happen.

It's still a little bit unsettling when you see it,

but I'm glad this happened before we finished making this programme

because it illustrates how some trolls work.

When they want to get at someone, they take your real name,

set up an account and start abusing people using your name.

As my hunt has gone on,

there's hardly been a week when there hasn't been a story

about trolls posting horrible messages.

Yet the Government currently has no plans to get tough with trolls,

or with the social network sites

which make it so easy for them to post messages.

As for my own hater,

they've posted 255 more tweets about me since I started this hunt

and he's changed his profile picture to a newspaper photo of me,

taken when I was the victim of an assault.

But I still haven't tracked him down.

So far, I've tried to get him to give me his e-mail address

by pretending I'm a fellow hater,

and saying I have some compromising photos he might want to see.

But he hasn't taken the bait.

So now, I'm going to offer the pictures to him.

I am going to send him a link to a made-up blog

and tell him he can download the photos there

and see if that provokes a reaction.

I'm prepared to carry on

with my attempt to meet this guy and talk to him face-to-face,

but psychologist Emma is seriously concerned.

Clearly, you know, you as an individual embody something he...

he hates.

'She finds it alarming that my hater, Dick Bacon Boom,

'has plastered his Twitter page with pictures of me beaten up.'

This is a fixation upon you that has been long standing, obsessive.

It's nearly two years now.

Is there any chance that this could become anything other than

a man in a bedroom saying stupid things?

There will be warning behaviours if it were to happen, you know.

Some of those will be the escalation of violent images.

This is recent, that he's put this beaten-up profile picture on there.

Yeah, I mean, that's an escalation.

You know, that's going from somewhere, up.

Other warning behaviours might be him reporting having turned up,

you know, whereabouts you are.

What would you do about this if you were me?

If I was you, I would pursue some sort of intervention or advice

from, sort of, police authorities.

That very premise is really unsettling.

-What's the threat?

-It's hard to say.

I mean, he's clearly rehearsing,

thinking about replaying violence directed towards you.

-But there could be a physical threat. There could be?

-Yeah.

Is there any chance this could be someone I know?

There is quite a high possibility of that.

Our research indicates more than half of people who are cyber-stalked

end up finding out their stalker was someone they knew.

It'll end up like Scooby-Doo

where they unmask someone, "It was the janitor all along!"

I don't know any janitors, but that, to me...that's weird.

I don't think it will be, but... I don't know, that's....

-It's much worse if it's someone you know!

-Yes.

-Much worse.

The stuff Emma the psychologist said last night changed things a bit.

She talked about that picture escalating things,

about some trollers go from trolling to entering your real life

and that has unsettled me, that has been going round in my head

and now I'm in a quandary.

Do I go to the police? Which would be very dramatic,

he'd have the police turning up at his door.

It's not where I imagined this would go.

Or do I ignore her?

And I genuinely don't know what to do now.

While I consider whether to carry on the hunt for my own hater,

I'm about to come face-to-face with Damon Evans.

I've been messaging him through Twitter and on YouTube.

I want to meet him because I believe

he may have posted a message on Tom Mullaney's RIP page.

So we're set up in there.

Damon is only 20,

and in an e-mail exchange with me he's admitted to some trolling,

denied other trolling, has defended elements of it,

so let's just see what he's got to say for himself.

Let's see how this goes.

'So, after months of hunting online haters,

'I'm finally going to confront Damon Evans.'

-Damon? Richard.

-All right?

-How you doing? Thanks for doing this.

-It's all right.

Come through here, we're all set up.

'I'm going to challenge him

'about a message that was posted on Tom Mullaney's tribute page.

'I also want to know

'why he got into the murky world of trolling in the first place.'

It all started, I was just on Facebook when I was drunk

and it was a Susan Boyle page, and it was just Photoshopping pictures

and then putting them back on the page

and it was just all a bit of fun.

OK. And what were you doing with the pictures?

There was one, her singing with a microphone

-and just Photoshopping penises onto it.

-OK.

So is part of the motivation that

you're trying to make people laugh, I guess?

Yeah. Some people laugh, some people get annoyed by it.

It is addictive, sometimes, when you get people, erm...

going crazy at you and you find it quite funny,

and you can just keep pushing them and pushing them and pushing them.

-The people that are upset?

-Yeah.

It can be slightly addictive but...

'So what about the messages posted on Tom Mullaney's tribute site

'apparently in Damon's name?'

Here's some stuff, screen grabs of the Tom Mullaney tribute site.

Now that, look, that's your name.

That isn't me.

I did, I think I mentioned it in the message, my account was cloned

-and I have sent Facebook e-mails about that.

-Have you?

I think it was somebody that I'd trolled had cloned my account.

-When I trolled, I didn't use my real account.

-Didn't you?

-No, I had another name set up.

-What names did you use?

Er, I'm not even sure, to be honest. It was ages ago.

'Which is curious, because only days before meeting me,

'he did remember the names he used to troll -

'Ashton Steele and Martin Crooks.

'He made this admission

'in an online conversation with troll hunter Michael Fitzpatrick.'

'This is one of the offensive comments

'that Michael believes Damon posted on an RIP page

'using the Ashton Steele identity.'

There's another thing here.

This is a conversation in which you have written,

here's you admitting that Ashton Steele was one of the pseudonyms

-that you used online.

-Yes.

"So that was me, Ashton Steele."

So if we go here, this is an RIP site

to a teenager who died when he was 15 or 16.

And as Ashton Steele you've written,

"RIP mate, you were a great friend with an even greater cock.

"Remember when we went to the park,

"got high and had anal sex in the trees. That was amazing.

"I can't wait to be with you again buddy, miss you loads, RIP Big Mac."

-Did you write that?

-No.

-I have sorted that out.

-Have you?

-People know it's not me.

So you admit that you had a site under that name?

-Yes.

-And somebody else took that name?

-This is a different name.

Yeah, it was the person that was cloning me

but I'm not sure who that was.

-You've never seen that?

-No, I haven't. I've seen this one.

I've e-mailed Facebook, not much more I can do. I've been to the police.

Why would somebody

clone a site of yours that's not even under your real name?

Because I think it was somebody that I trolled previously.

But I thought you'd only trolled celebrities.

I'm not... I'm not sure. I messaged them

and they said that I trolled them previously.

But you are saying absolutely 100%

you have never trolled on an RIP site?

-100%.

-OK.

'A few days after I met him,

'Damon sent an e-mail admitting he had lied in the interview.

'He wrote that he had posted messages on RIP tribute sites,

'though he still denies posting messages about Tom Mullaney.'

He goes onto to say, "I regret trolling RIP pages

"and that's why I didn't admit it.

"It was years ago. I don't believe it was a good thing, if I'm honest.

"I believe some of the reactions I got were hilarious

"but I understand what I did was wrong, I stay clear of it now

"and like I say, I haven't done it in years and I'm now against it."

The fact that he uses the word "hilarious" does suggest

that he still doesn't fully understand the consequences of this.

'As my three-month hunt draws to a close,

'I've realised just how vulnerable we all are

'to people who choose to attack us online.

'Even when social network sites have rules,

'regulations and security tools,

'trolls seem to be able to bypass these measures at will.

'I believe it's time

'for the government to really get their head around this.

'And I think there's a gap

'between what the social networks find acceptable

'and what the rest of us think. Most importantly,

'families like the Chapples and the Mullaneys need more protection.'

What are the points in the year that are the most difficult,

when you really find yourself thinking about Thomas?

He's missed time and time again,

day in, day out, I miss him dreadfully.

Something for nothing.

This is where people have to realise, keep their mouth shut

If you've nothing nice to say,

don't say it at all. The internet's not the forum to put it.

If, like Tom, you find yourself a victim of cyberbullying,

the advice from the experts is, don't keep it to yourself.

My advice to someone who's being cyberbullied is, don't retaliate.

Just block them or just report them straight away

and go to your teachers or go to someone that's close to you.

'And if you find yourself a victim of trolling,'

'don't get into an argument with them.'

There's a phrase in computer language, "Don't feed the trolls."

Don't give them anything.

Cos if you respond, especially if you respond with,

you know, real observable emotion and upset,

you are giving them more material

with which to play and discuss and throw about.

-That's the reaction they want.

-Yep.

As for my own hater,

having taken advice, I'm told the nature and persistence of his abuse

goes beyond what is considered acceptable.

Which means it's time to leave the hunting to others.

So the advice I've been given by two experts is to go to the police.

They say there's a case there and that I should do it.

It's not the personal criticism, that's fine, you kind of expect it,

it's the stuff to my family, it's the violent imagery,

it's mentioning my baby, that kind of thing.

I didn't want to go to the police, it just seems very dramatic

but it's what they've both said very clearly,

so that is what I'm going to do

and hopefully that will put an end to it.

I may not have learnt the identity of my hater

but I have found out just how easy it is

for today's nasty bullies to hide behind a keyboard.

If you find yourself under attack, keep the evidence -

you may need it, if you have to go to the authorities.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd