Britain's First "Web-Rage" Attack 399
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.'"
In other news ... (Score:3, Funny)
That is why..... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:That is why..... (Score:5, Funny)
Think you're a smart guy, eh? Why I oughtta.... never mind... don't know where you live...
Re:That is why..... (Score:4, Funny)
of 89 Newstraat,
De Bildt
NL 3732DJ
You never know what kind of freaks and stalkers and lunatics are roaming the net these days...
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Re:more info (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay class, this concludes today's example of Social Engineering.
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Re:That is why..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That is why..... (Score:5, Interesting)
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..... (Score:5, Insightful)
You could do exactly the same thing using paper resources if you had the time and patience. There were plenty of stalkers around before the internet reared it's head. I don't think there are really any more these days, simply a greater proportion of them doing it faster.
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This does not make doing it electronically un-creepy. In fact, I believe it confirs the creepiness factor. Instead of pointing out the importance of anonymity on the web, this should point out the importance of not being a wanker on the web. There are people who do not take kindly to being called names, and while it is correct to think they should not be so sensitive, the broken jaw that can result from insultin
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Someone, anyone, can find that given enough patience.
Sure it is creepy that people can do it with Google now, but private detectives have made a business out of this for a very long time. They never had a monopoly on being able to do it, and therefore Google does not break any monopoly on people who can find out where you live.
You're right. A lot of stuff on the internet now (cookie tracking etc.) is lauded as some kind of infringement of
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I've never heard that term before (though a quick Google search reveals that there is indeed such as thing), is it a US law? Either way, since this clown would have been facing mail/wire fraud charges, I don't think that he was in any position to call law enforcement. In the US, mail/wire fraud is a federal beef with possible huge jail terms.
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Wow... I'm gonna have to kill a lot of Koreans!
Note to the authorities: that was just a joke.
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Sanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sanity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sanity (Score:5, Funny)
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They got angry at each other from the net, and unfortunately one of the people was unstable. So yea, this has a lot to do with the net.....nobody is claim
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So does the highway.
Except blaming the highway is ridiculous.
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Re:Sanity (Score:5, Insightful)
"It demonstrates how easily other users can put two and two together and also shows how children could also find themselves in danger."
No, it demonstrate the importance of acting civilized and how people should stop acting like savages just because they are not in front of the person they are communicating with.
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I agree with your claim, but there are people out there who will go and try and kill other people w/o needing a reason - because they are mentally crazy....so when you give someone the name of a small town you live in, your name and your picture....well yea not that hard to find someone....Then there are the issues with kids (ch
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Yeah, because it's a reasonable assumption that someone will hunt you down and beat you with an axe handle for something you said in a chat room.
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(To avoid too much irony, I'll state that my
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Crap.
-Grym
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true, but the guy in the chat room wasn't getting all the signals that someone in person would have gotten. Email, IM, Chat rooms all lose subtext.
Of course it works both ways, maybe the guy that snapped wouldn't have been rubbed the wrong way if he had been getti
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Well, actually, it was a pick-axe _handle_ not an axe.
He was just going to throw the guy an unnecessarily savage beating, not chop him up. Chopping him up would have been a little overboard. . .
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Re:Sanity (Score:5, Funny)
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Shit, I know. Axes are dangerous to transport. They're likely to go off at any time.
or.. (Score:2)
Not the first case of Web Rage! (Score:2)
This has happened before, and not infrequently, and demonstrates that it's not the Internet at fault. Pharaceutical companies in the UK reguarly brief their employees not to wear their company ID badge off-campus, and to not leave identifying items on or about their vehicles, and coached not to leave personal information on the internet (e.g. full name) if using a company email address, for fear that the animal-rights crazies will damage person or
Children (Score:3, Insightful)
Fucking great, he pulled the "think of the children" line...expect politicians to get involved and new laws passed to "protect the children".
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Won't somebody please think of the children?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Won't someone think of the children? (Score:5, Insightful)
70 miles (Score:5, Funny)
You've got to hand to the guy for travelling 70 miles just to beat someone up.
I can't wait for news about someone travelling to the other side of the globe just to beat someone up because they kept fragging them / stealing their gold / beat them double perfect in Street Fighter...
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So what did you think Gulf War 2 was really all about? Apparently Saddam is pretty hot at Ultima Online
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I'm glad to hear you got your revenge, then.
I have mixed feelings about this... (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, I am happy that my TCP-enabled pickaxe handle may have a market.
Perhaps a debate is starting ... (Score:2)
I wonder what the argument was about, exactly.
Ax-handle control NOW! (Score:5, Funny)
Effective ax-handle control legislation is long overdue! Think of the children!
Re:Ax-handle control NOW! (Score:5, Funny)
Effective ax-handle control legislation is long overdue! Think of the children!
Look, nobody wants to take away axe handles from legitimate, country-side axe users. It's only the urban areas that don't need them. We just need to close all the loopholes at the farm shows and flea markets. The real problem, though, is the glorification of axe handle swinging in popular media. Because once people think it's OK to inappropriately use just one piece of wood, then our Home Depots and other lumber yards are no better than arms markets.
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Obscure [everything2.com] reference [google.com]?
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I do. In fact, I just loaned it to a friend yesterday. If you are trying to remove a shrubbery or building a patio, it beats the hell out of shovel alone!
You can have my pick-axe when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers...
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Ni!
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No one... but my god there's a scary amount of handles out there.
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AAAAAAHHH!!!! Military-grade weapons in civilian hands! Escalation! Arms race! Call the U.N.! Call China! Call Jimmy Carter! Somebody do something! AAAAHHHH!!!
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How many children are beaten to death by their parents every day? If those kids had guns, they'd still be alive today!
(Expecting a visit by a pickaxe-handle-wielding Web-raging gun control activist any minute now. Good thing I carry a gun.)
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And how many kids (and their families) are killed by drunk drivers? Or people wielding machetes?
Have you ever kept a very crazy guy with a pipe from beating down your back door in the middle of the night while your terrorized spouse frantically dials 911 for a long-delayed response? I have, with a gun. I couldn't have done the same thing by drinking a beer and then driving my car at him, but the beer/car combo is wildly more dangerous, and results in many more deaths
Are you MagnoliaFan? (Score:2)
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Re:Dog bites man (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who suffers from Psychosis, you are off on your terminology. The word you are looking for is not Psychotic, which describes Psychosis, but Psychopathic. Psychopathy is the condition that can be generally described as a lack of a conscience. A Psychopath doesn't care if they hurt other people. They have a lack of ability to empathise with the pain of others.
As a Psychotic person, myself, I know what is right and wrong. And I do care about whether my actions hurt people. It's just sometimes one can become rather extremely disconnected from reality.
For more information, check out Wikipedia.
Also of note is that Psychopathic behaviour is very often part of the condition known as Antisocial Personality Disorder, which, if memory serves, is commonly called Sociopathy.
Wikipedia Article on Psychosis [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia Article on Psychopathy [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia Article on Antisocial Personality Disorder [wikipedia.org]
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-Eric
So the south is sane huh? (Score:2)
And us yankees are up here are tilting our eyebrows at the fact that in the south you have people that are coming at you with a pick axe in the first place.
This is typical short sighted thinking. I'm not trying to start a yan
Psycho with a big heavy stick (Score:4, Insightful)
He's psychotic, what did you expect? [...] This is one reason why I plan to live in the South as long as I live in America. Most of the South is still relatively sane. Someone comes at you with any sort of axe, ice pick, knife, etc. you're going to be hard-pressed to find a jury that will convict you for blowing their head off.
If that story had taken place in the southern united states, the guy would have driven the 70 miles with his gun and blown the victim away when he opened the door.
When guns are illegal, only pickaxe handles are handy to psycho net ragers.
Not the first incident (Score:4, Informative)
Excellent... (Score:3, Insightful)
All events like this are bad in themselves... but the more it happens, the more people might stop and think for a second before they do their utmost to cut someone to shreds, safe behind the anonymity of the internets.
The attacker was clearly a dick, but then I've little doubt that the victim was too. No, it doesn't vindicate it, but it does give me a vicious, guilty little flinch of pleasure.
Note to flamers: the interweb is full of games for bored, vicious little pillocks. Don't play one-up in chat.
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these kinds of "rage" attacks are definitely on the increase
I thought media reporting of them was on the increase. I see no real evidence that significantly more attacks occur.
my impression is that in Britain, we seem to be the worst of any nation for this
Why, because we don't engage in multi-generational feuds, we don't just shoot people that annoy us, we don't engage in acts of destruction and violence that can't be traced? Those things all go on elsewhere for similar reasons.
look at the wider picture her
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Ag
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Absolutely it does.
Consider the school shootings in the U.S.
Technology is a double-edge sword
Bollocks (Score:5, Informative)
WRONG
http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page63.a
(And thats before taking Victorian London into account)
with binge drinking also increasing
LOL ! Getting shitfaced is obviously a new phenominon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Lane [wikipedia.org]
Even take violence at football games - yes, it's decreased here in the past 20 years but only because there are so many police
Nothing to do with the rise of MDMA in the late 80's & early 90's then?
http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v04n1/04122mdm.h
Stop reading the News of the Screws / Daily Hate and get a grip.
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I live in britain, and go out every weekend with a huge group of friends, none of us violent or get into that kind of state... we're amongst a rising increase of people who take drugs that increase our likeliness of being friendly with each other. All statistics show that we are on the increase.
Binge drinking in many areas is starting to decrease, where the new 24hour licensing is available, people
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I'm certain that advertising and the media is at the core of this -
What was the attacker getting out of this? Here's the real reasons:
o Lack of proportional punishment.
o Incresingly institutionalized perception that people are not responsible for their actions for psychological/environmental/genetic/whatever reasons.
o Criminal apologists.
o Society's abdication of the concept of shame.
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
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A more economical alternative is getting a post office box.
While neither approach above is full-proof, they tend to be good enough for many domain name registrants; primarily to reduce spam / junk calls.
Many whois privacy services will provide one's private details to others (talking individuals / business, etc) in various instances; getting court subpoena - even a forged one would probably work.
The stree
This just in... (Score:2)
-Rick
And how is this different from the real world? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the case demonstrates that the internet is no different than the real world. Trade insults with a guy you just met (online or not) and he may be a violent person that will come over to your house with his buddy and kick your ass. I'm glad he wasn't killed and I hope he'll completely recover but I don't have too much sympathy.
Too many people use the supposed anonymity of the internet as an excuse to be asshats. Always remember...the other guy could be a bigger asshat.
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I reserve the right to be a complete arsehole to people on the internet and believe that gives them no right at all to violently assault me.
It does give them the right to ignore me, say nasty things about me and potentially seek legal action against me. That'd be that personal responsibility thing we don't hear enough about.
Even if the other guy is a bigger 'asshat', he should stay within the law.
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http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 [penny-arcade.com]
Why stop at the obvious? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
First Incident of Web-Rage or... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, What's new?
New urban FACT (Score:3, Funny)
More detail (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2409469
Let's legitimize it (Score:2, Funny)
I blame violent video game legislation (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry not "rage" (Score:3, Insightful)
This more "web-assholishness" which does exist but has been documented more then enough times.
In conclusion rage != being really angry.
Though I must admit he certainly "went the distance".
Ban chat rooms and pick axes! (Score:3, Insightful)
How anyone can look at this violent crime, and not support chat-room-control and pick-axe control is proof that they are brainwashed by the chat room industry and the pick-axe industry!
Gun Control (Score:3, Insightful)
That aside, if it wasn't for the UK's stupid gun control laws he could have met the guy at the door with a 12 gauge rather than a kitchen knife.
UK Nanny State (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I blame Britain's gun control (Score:4, Insightful)
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