Police are investigating bomb threats made on Twitter against female journalists.
Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman, Independent columnist Grace Dent
and Europe editor of Time magazine Catherine Mayer all received the
tweet which Dent took a screen grab of and posted for her Twitter
followers to see.It was from anonymous user @98JU98U989, and said: "A BOMB HAS BEEN PLACED OUTSIDE YOUR HOME. IT WILL GO OFF AT EXACTLY 10.47PM ON A TIMER AND TRIGGER DESTROYING EVERYTHING".
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "We can confirm that the MPS has received allegations relating to bomb threats sent to a number of females on Twitter."
The spokesman said enquiries are continuing and so far there have been no arrests.
After receiving the threat, Freeman said on Twitter that she was calling the police, adding: "If it's illegal to threaten to bomb an airport, it's illegal to threaten to bomb me."
Dent described the threat as a "new low".
It comes as more than 100,000 people signed a petition calling on Twitter to beef up its procedures for dealing with abuse after a feminist campaigner and a female MP were targeted.
Caroline Criado-Perez and Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy have complained about receiving vicious tweets on the site in the past week.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said a 25-year-old man arrested by Northumbria Police on suspicion of harassment was released on bail.
Twitter has announced plans to include a button for reporting abuse within every tweet - something which is already available on its iPhone app.
But critics argue this does not go far enough and only directs users to the existing reporting form which, they claim, is too long and impractical.
Ms Criado-Perez, 29, said Twitter needed to "get a grip" on security after she received a barrage of abusive messages, as it emerged bosses were likely to face a grilling from MPs.
Twitter's head of safety, Del Harvey, told Sky News it has failed women who have faced rape threats.
She said: "I think that any time that someone feels we weren't responsive, or weren't reactive or we didn't care then, yes, we failed in that instance and we need to do better.
"And that's something that we have definitely had highlighted in terms of the need to educate people about what we've done and to get feedback on what we need to do better."
Source
Yahoo News
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