TWITTER and Facebook users will be given new rights to block anonymous accounts from seeing their posts in a crackdown on online trolls.
The move is one of a number of tough new curbs being imposed by ministers to stop cyber bullies spreading hate and bile online.
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Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries – who has been mocked online – wants to make it easier to stop Twitter trolls hiding behind the cloak of anonymity.
Under the radical shake-up, social media bosses will be given new abilities to track which accounts are anonymous.
Social media users will then be able to prevent anonymous accounts from engaging with them online.
There will also be a crackdown on ‘phoenix accounts’ – trolls who get shut down for posting sick abuse online but spring up under another name.
And tech bosses will be told they must hand over information quicker to cops who are investigating anonymous accounts suspected of breaking the law.
Currently, it can take many months for firms to hand over details to the authorities.
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Ministers reckon the new measures will help them track down sick trolls who abuse public figures, like the England footballers who received horrific racist slurs online after the Euros final.
Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka all had sick comments posted about them.
But ministers have decided against banning anonymous accounts online altogether, as they think it can be important for some vulnerable people to stay secret on the internet.
A government insider said: “It will give people the ability to protect themselves from anonymous trolls if they want to.”
Boris Johnson has been under massive pressure to toughen up the Online Safety Bill to prevent online trolls hiding behind anonymity.
The calls were renewed in the wake of the killing of Tory MP Sir David Amess last year.
Sir David’s close friend and parliamentary colleague Mark Francois urged the PM to pass a new ‘David’s Law’ to end anonymity online.
In an emotionally charged parliamentary debate last October, he told the PM: “In the last few years David had become increasingly concerned about what he called the toxic environment in which MPs, particularly female MPs, were having to operate in.
“He was appalled by what he called the vile misogynistic abuse which female MPs had to endure online and he told me very recently that he wanted something done about it.”
