Stopping an abusive Twitter account

[jaminben]

Hi,

 

A student has created an abusive twitter account using images of staff members, making accusations and bad language.

 

What's the quickest way to get this feed shutdown... I've been looking at twitter's site but going round in circles and my Google foo skills are letting me down atm.

 

Thanks

 

Ben

[tommej]

https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169998-reporting-abusive-behavior#

 

Should help.

[jaminben]

Thanks for the link but that still takes me to a page which is for reporting individual tweets... I want to shut the whole Twitter feed down.

 

I suppose I could report each individual tweet but that would take a long time.

[hawc]

Post it here then we all can report it. This has worked before.

[6Foot2]

We had a similar situation recently. I was asked to investigate but before I could get fully involved the account was already shut down by other action.

 

I will investigate what was done to make this happen and post again.

[Novalee]

Get the students to talk - I imagine the easiest way is to get the student who created it to shut it down. Someone will know who started it.

[6Foot2]

OK. I have checked. It turns out that the account was closed down by the account creator before we took any action [word got around I guess?]

 

I was told to forward the following advice: Get copies of whatever you can before you lose access to it. Our offender is expecting some serious consequences from his actions and printed proof of what he has done will add to his discomfort.

[jaminben]

Ok... I've reported what I can to Twitter, news is travelling the grape-vine and I've printed off what's been said.

 

We'll see what happens next.

[AngryTechnician]

Unfortunately they are only open 10am-4pm, but if it's still there tomorrow, give the Helpline - Safer Internet Centre a ring.

[jaminben]

Thanks, I'll try that tomorrow.

[Ephelyon]

If you consider it an e-safety or safeguarding issue, you may be able to go through your LADO too. If it's a constant occurrence I'd think about taking it to CEOP as it's potentially a child who could get into a lot of trouble. Even a child being abusive is at risk, in this case risk of consequences that they don't need at that age.

 

We had this once where a bunch of kids decided they were going to join Anonymous and created abusive Twitter and YouTube channels to that effect. Knowing what could happen if a local cell got to hear of them, we got the Police involved and were able to prove the identity of the ringleader by matching the number to which the YouTube account's password reset text was sent to a list of numbers freely given by a willing informant (pupil) who'd been hovering on the edge of the debacle.

 

(In case that sounds dodgy, it's funny what can legitimately become fair game once it becomes a law enforcement issue.)

Edited March 27, 2014 by Ephelyon

[jaminben]

All sorted... it got removed by the student.

 

Thanks for everyones help.

[IrritableTech]

All sorted... it got removed by the student.

 

Thanks for everyones help.

 

Often the quickest and easiest method.

 

Just to add to @AngryTechnician's suggestion of The Professionals Online Safety Helpline (Helpline - Safer Internet Centre). It really is a fantastic service. They have connections to most of the big social networks and some great advice. I do wish more schools knew of them.

[tech_guy]

We had a problem with an abusive account just recently - it was pretty straightforward to track the perpetrator down (an ex-student) and the Police are involved due to the nature of some of the comments made. Twitter were useless in terms of being able to contact them and get the account closed. Thankfully for us the perpetrator realised how serious it all was and closed the account themselves in an attempt to throw us off the scent but by then it was too late.

 

Get screenshots of everything as evidence.

 

In our case during the incident, the perpetrator was at times tweeting comments, then deleting them minutes later but we managed to get screenshots of virtually everything as evidence.