Britain's First "Web-Rage" Attack

brown-eyed slug writes "The BBC is reporting what is claimed to be Britain's first "web-rage" attack. A man drove seventy miles to assault his victim with a pick-axe handle after they exchanged insults in a Yahoo! chat room." From the article: "Det Cons Christopher Creagh, of the Metropolitan Police, said: 'This is the first instance of a web-rage attack.' Det Sgt Jean-Marc Bazzoni, of Essex Police, added the case demonstrates the importance of protecting one's identity on the internet. 'Mr Jones had posted pictures of his family on the web and had chatted to Gibbons on an audio link,' he said. 'It demonstrates how easily other users can put two and two together and also shows how children could also find themselves in danger.'"

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Re:That is why.....

[udderly]

Four or five years ago, some clown on eBay ripped me off and I found him using only his first name and his eBay name, which meant a certain animal in French + a two-digit number, which I took to be his birth year. This year would have made him about 20 years old. I Googled the eBay name in English only sites and got a number of hits. On a discussion site, I found the same username with a university email address, which had a partial name. Interestingly enough, in the discussion group this guy used a certain phrase that, combined with his age, made me pretty sure that it was the same person. I Googled the university + partial name and got a few hits. One of them was the school newspaper and included a picture of the French Club with a listing of all of the names of the people in the photos.

I imagine he was very surprised when I emailed him a picture of himself at his university email addresss and demanded my money. Needless to say, I got my money back.

Re:That is why.....

[plopez]

only if he threaten to harm him. if he threatened to send a lawyer or collection agency or the police after him then no.

Why stop at the obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

With a little time and paitence, most anyone can get an address if they have an IP. Why give them that chance?

anoNet [anonet.org] gives you the opportunity to have as much anonymity as you want. It doesn't prevent someone from being a dumbass, but it does give that extra little bit to people that do want their privacy.

It is what the Internet was back before big brother stopped by.

Give it a chance, you may like it.

More detail

[tttonyyy]

Bah, when I submitted this story I linked to:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2409469, 00.html [timesonline.co.uk]

...where there is a lot more information on what happened than in the BBC article.

During the assault, Mr Jones's throat was cut from his Adam's apple to his ear, narrowly missing the jugular vein.

Web Rage

[sabaisabai]

(Please refrain from passing judgement on this, or calling me an idiot) I once dated this girl in another country. She had a boyfriend. I knew about that, but I didn't know him, so played some moral arithmetic to cancel everything out. One day he knocked on my door, having travelled from yet another country to come and find me. And he wasn't a happy camper. The moment I saw his face I knew what had happened. She'd left her email account open. My emails came from a domain registered by me. My home address was in the registration. Not smart at all. But hell can I empathise with this story. People on the Internet are real. Heck, I'm real, and a punch still hurts no matter what the techno-background of the story.

UK Nanny State

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

I suppose the UK will ban pick axe handles now. They've already banned certain kitchen knives and jsut about all guns. Next will be banning anger.