Harassment lawyer Yair Cohen has obtained permission to serve a harassment injunction on an internet troll through the social media app itself.
For years, victims of abuse on social media were told that an injunction had to be served by conventional means, in person or by post, which is impossible when the abuser is a faceless account. The only remedy offered to a victim of internet harassment was to quit Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, which was often the advice the police gave. That let the trolls get away with it: they could carry on harassing the same victim on another platform, or simply pick on other decent people for no reason at all.
The rules of court have allowed service by an “alternative method”, with the court’s permission, for some years (Civil Procedure Rules, Part 6, rules 6.15 and 6.27), and the courts had already permitted an injunction to be served through Twitter and through Facebook. Nobody had served one through Instagram. So last Friday I went to the High Court and obtained an injunction to stop one of those persistent trolling pests from abusing my clients. On this occasion the abuse was on Instagram: particularly horrible racial and sexual abuse, coupled with threats and mind games, directed at exceptionally decent people who had the courage to say no. My clients were not going to tolerate it any longer, and why should they?
His Honour Judge Nicol got it. He granted the injunction and gave permission to serve it through social media, or, to be more precise, directly to the troll’s Instagram account, which we did earlier today. The troll was not so brave this time and deleted the account straight away. I do not think my clients will hear from this person again; the troll, on the other hand, is very likely to hear from us.
Perhaps it is time internet trolls were punished for at least some of the abuse they inflict on decent people. Normal people like you and me have a right to mind our own business and to use the internet and social media without being harassed and abused. This is a hugely encouraging development. It places online trolls at risk of a powerful injunction served directly to the account they harass from, which, if breached, can result in imprisonment for contempt of court as well as for the harassment itself. Finding out who they are is no longer a big deal either, with the social media companies more co-operative than ever in helping lawyers protect their clients from harassment and abuse.
The Law Society Gazette profiled the case as a first (Online harassment injunction first, Lawyer in the news), and it is on this site as a key case: The case of DDF v YYZ.
What has changed since 2015
Service through the abuser’s own account is now the normal way an injunction reaches an anonymous harasser, and the courts grant it as a matter of course where the account is the only address the claimant has. In the sextortion cases of 2026 the High Court permitted service of its orders through the very Telegram and WhatsApp accounts that had carried the threats (The case of RXE v Daniel Ryan and others). The claim itself still rests on the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which gives the victim of a course of conduct a civil injunction and damages, and breach of the injunction is both a contempt of court and a criminal offence under section 3(6). Identifying the person behind the account is done by a disclosure order against the platform, and since the Online Safety Act 2023 every platform with UK users has had a statutory duty to run a reporting and complaints system and to remove illegal harassment once it knows of it, so the advice to “just leave Instagram” is no longer the answer from anyone. Harassment Lawyer UK, the firm’s harassment site, sets out the practical steps.
First published 9 June 2015. Reviewed and updated 28 September 2026.