What do we mean when we talk about online abuse?

Online abuse is a catch-all term that covers a range of digital actions and behaviours. You, your colleagues, those you commission or the organisation you work for may find yourselves the victims of one or more of these.

As these are relatively recent phenomena, the terminology around them is also still evolving. In 2022, the Victims Commissioner report ‘The Impact of Online Abuse: Hearing the Victims’ Voice’ listed the following as examples of online abuse:

Common Terms

• Brigading – encouraging others to harass someone.
• Cyber bullying – sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content to someone with the intent to embarrass or humiliate them.
• Cyber flashing – being sent unsolicited obscene images.
• Cyber stalking – a form of harassment which can involve persistent and frequent unwanted contact, or interference in someone’s life.
• Doxing – the publishing of private or identifying information about you without your consent.
• Grooming – building an emotional connection with a child / vulnerable person to gain their trust for the purposes of sexual abuse or sexual exploitation.
• Intimate Image Abuse – the sharing of intimate images taken with or without someone’s consent and shared without their consent or knowledge (often referred to as ‘revenge porn’ or image based sexual abuse).
• Online coercive behaviour – monitoring someone via online communication tools or spyware.
• Online harassment – repeated attempts to impose unwanted communications or contact in a manner that could be expected to cause distress or fear.
• Online impersonation – where someone creates a fake profile pretending to be the victim, with the intent to cause then distress.
• Fakeporn – where pornographic images are digitally manipulated so it looks like the films or images are of someone else.
• Trolling – a form of baiting online which involves sending abusive and hurtful comments across all social media platforms.
• Upskirting – an intrusive practice, which typically involves someone taking a picture under another person’s clothing without their knowledge.
• Virtual mobbing – when a number of individuals use social media or messaging to make comments to or about someone.

The UK government adopts the legal principle that what is illegal offline is also illegal online. The Online Safety Act (2023) contains a new set of laws that protect children and adults online, which aims to make the UK the safest place in the world to be a child online and to give people more control over the types of content they want to see.