You’ve got hate mail

Peter Walls has gained a certain celebrity status lately – but not the kind he would choose. Sunderland Housing Group’s chief executive has been hit with allegations of mismanagement and accusations about his personal life on an anonymous website. Walls claims the site even carries threats to his personal safety.

“It’s harassment,” he says. “It’s a pretty vile, horrendous and defamatory website that people contribute to anonymously.

One posting said I wasn’t safe in my car, even if I locked the doors. It is rubbish but it is bloody difficult to stop it.” Walls has tried to close down the site but says it’s been a time-consuming process that, so far at least, has met with limited success.

He isn’t alone in becoming the target of an internet hate campaign. The increasing ease and speed with which sites can be set up mean this most democratic of media is now a popular choice for local interest groups who want to have their say.

But where does free expression end and unfair and damaging accusation begin? And if you do decide enough is enough, how can you shut down a site that might be written or hosted on the other side of the world?

Walls says Sunderland has contacted two internet service providers and had the problem site shut down twice. But on both occasions, the website has merely opened up again under a different ISP. In the mean time, the association’s lawyers are preparing to take action against an individual suspected of devising some of the content, but efforts to trace the site’s organisers have largely failed.

Defamatory websites are not just unpleasant, they have the potential to do real damage. The Housing Corporation has now asked Sunderland for more information about some of the allegations made on the website about how the group acquires homes, the outcome of a tender process and alleged nepotism. But Walls is not worried about the corporation’s interest, and believes it may help to put the rumours to bed.

“We are quite content to cooperate because we’re confident there is nothing raised on the website that has any veracity.”

Knowsley council has also been on the receiving end of online invective. It too failed to trace those responsible and, even though one ISP closed down the website, that did not stop it for good. “It inconvenienced them but it didn’t block the site in any way,” says Steve Calendar, deputy director of corporate and customer services at Knowsley. But he adds that their efforts did have some effect, so that when the sites reopened, the content seemed to have been toned down. “It let them know that we wouldn’t just take it,” says Calendar.

Housing isn’t, of course, the only sector to have been targeted by online hate campaigns. Hamish Thompson, spokesman for electrical retailer Dixons, says the company comes across them “from time to time”. But he is philosophical about the problem. “It can actually be incredibly useful,” he says. “If customers are giving feedback about what you have done, it is useful market research.”

Thompson says Dixons usually only takes action if a website infringes a trademark, makes threats or is defamatory about a member of staff. “The internet is a great vehicle for free speech and we respect that. But when people overstep the line, we pursue them to whatever extent necessary. We might correspond with whoever’s responsible and there’s the possibility of court action.”

There are steps you can take to have websites shut down (see “How to fight back”, below), but sometimes the most robust response may be to just do nothing. When John McHale, chief executive of Knowsley Housing Trust, became the victim of anonymous online attacks, he decided it wasn’t worth worrying about.

“Some of the stuff on the website is actually quite funny – like a picture of me with my head in the toilet and covered in pigeon droppings. They’ve also superimposed my head on Hitler’s body. But our approach has been to ignore it. After all, there are millions of websites out there, so how many people are actually going to see this one?"