FaceBooked

Cambridgeshire police have announced an incredible 7,400% rise in the number of crimes involving Facebook over the past three years.

Chiefs admitted that there have been 1,640 facebook related crimes reported since January, compared with just 22 in 2007 when the first ever facebook crime was reported.

The figure would no doubt be higher if police included “facebook rape” or “frape”, a crime rife among Cam’s students.

Bex Xiao, a 2^nd year Nat Sci student, told The Tab, “If you’re not careful you could easily get fraped once a week”.

“The worst that ever happened to me was inappropriate private messages sent to people and deleting the evidence after so I wouldn’t find out until they replied.”

However, the facebook crimes police deal with are more serious than rouge messages. They range from pedo’s and perverts using the website to groom their targets, to people using Facebook to threaten, intimidate or bully users.

Detective Sergeant Darren Cooper, of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, said many of the crimes involve kids bullying others over the website.

However, the website has also been linked to 255 incidents of domestic violence, 426 reports of malicious nuisance and 210 of anti-social behaviour in Cambridge this year.

Cops also admitted to using the site to track down criminals who have jumped bail at least four times.

A spokesman for Cambridgeshire Constabulary said, “Facebook is an emerging mode of communication which due to its popularity and for a variety of reasons has come more and more into contact with police work.”

Facebook crime is not just a Cambridge phenomenon. In April Nottinghamshire Police reported a 364 per cent increase of crimes allegedly involving Facebook in less than a year.

Facebook has faced criticism of its privacy policy since it began, and it came under renewed pressure last month after a man was convicted of murdering a teenager he groomed via the site.

Anyone who suspects users of grooming, phishing or any other inappropriate behaviour can use the ClickCEOP button, available as a Facebook ‘app’, to report users, or report them directly to Facebook itself.