Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
This doesn't have as much to do with the internet as they'd want you to think, I mean the guy drove 70 miles with an axe, obviously he wasn't stable to begin with.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
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.
Why is it creepy?
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.
Police report that this guy owns not just one, but several ax-handles! He's an ax-handle nut! I wish the ax-handle lobby would own up to the fact that these things are not just dangerous, but potentially DEADLY!
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.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.