'Facebook-link' crime reports rise

Reports of crimes allegedly involving Facebook have increased by 346% in less than a year in one police force, it was disclosed.

Incidents of abuse or other crimes allegedly involving the social networking site reported to Nottinghamshire Police rose sharply between April 2009 and February this year.

The force recorded 13 such reports between April 2008 and March 2009, it said. In the following 11-month period, this number leapt to 58.

This led to six people being charged with offences, compared with three the previous year.

Harassment was the crime most frequently reported to involve Facebook in the past year, accounting for 36 of the 58 alleged incidents, Detective Sergeant Harry Parsonage said.

DS Parsonage, who manages the force’s e-crime unit, said: “For crime that involves communication, Facebook is just a method of communication. Essentially Facebook is no different from any other part of the internet.”

Users of the site are becoming increasingly careful and making sure they adjust their privacy settings to prevent strangers from seeing their profiles, he said.

However, in the past year it has been cited as a factor in a case of actual bodily harm, four cases of harassment and one other crime in Notts, all of which were prosecuted.

DS Parsonage said: “We don’t know what part Facebook played in each offence. All we know is at some point within each crime there is some mention of Facebook.”

A spokeswoman for the site said it was no surprise that it was being mentioned in reports of crimes, given its huge growth in users in the past 20 months.

Source: Press Association