Opinion: The Growing Threat of Online Intimidation

It has opened doors, created connections and given independent voices opportunities that would once have been unimaginable. But there is another side to that accessibility: the people who use it to manipulate, intimidate and threaten others, often from behind a screen and an anonymous identity.

I've recently experienced this first-hand.

As my writing has reached increasingly international audiences, I've received unsolicited messages from people claiming to admire my work. Some were flattering, others suspicious. Initially, I treated many of them with amusement. I've even enjoyed responding, challenging the senders and occasionally turning their own games back on them.

That changed when I received a threatening email containing deeply disturbing threats of violence. More concerning still was discovering that the same or very similar communication had also been sent to people associated with my literary work, including Nottingham City of Literature and an academic based in Vienna.

What had started as an oddity of internet life had become something much more serious.

The matter was reported to Nottinghamshire Police, and I also contacted Derbyshire Constabulary after being directed there through 101. I began researching similar experiences reported by other authors, particularly discussions on Goodreads, where people described receiving threatening messages with striking similarities to those I had encountered. I passed this research to Nottinghamshire Police as potential background and investigative leads.

I want to be careful here: similarities between accounts do not establish that the same individual or group is responsible. But they do raise questions that deserve attention.

Anonymous email services can make it difficult to establish who is behind a communication. When activity appears to cross international borders, the challenges become greater still. Police forces have their own jurisdictions and investigative limitations; the internet, of course, recognises none of those boundaries.

Derbyshire Constabulary also indicated that it had encountered comparable manipulative tactics in a different context, involving young people being persuaded to send photographs and subsequently blackmailed. That is not evidence of a connection with the threats against authors, but it illustrates how online manipulation can take different and damaging forms.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect is how easily this behaviour can be dismissed at first. An unwanted message can look like spam. A suspicious approach can seem laughable. But intimidation can escalate, and the consequences extend beyond the person directly targeted to colleagues, friends and professional contacts.

Anonymity has legitimate purposes online. It can protect privacy and allow people to speak freely. But when it becomes a shield for threats and coercion, we need to ask how individuals can be better protected and how these incidents can be investigated effectively.

I haven't set out to become an investigator. I'm a writer. But when something happens, I believe in asking questions, looking for evidence and refusing to be intimidated into silence.

The internet has given us extraordinary opportunities to connect. We should not allow those opportunities to become a hiding place for people who seek to frighten others.