What is Defamation?
In this day and age people need to be wary about what they post on social media when they are attacking or criticising individuals or small business. A momentary lapse or ‘what the hell‘ can cause significant damage to someone’s reputation and lead to you being involved in defamation proceedings.
Even if you think it justified if the meaning or imputation this is carried by your post goes beyond the truth of a matter, you can find yourself in trouble.
Interestingly, some attackers still think they can hide behind an anonymous email account, usually a gmail account, and use the account to email defamatory publications to groups of people in a community or with a similar interest. It takes only a few Subpoenas to identify the creator of a gmail account and the IP address of the computer logged into gmail when a particular email is sent. Even if you using a work computer, your employer’s computer logs will show what each employee was doing at the relevant times.
When someone defames another person using an anonymous email account this is usually grounds to seek aggravated damages for defamation against the person.
Because people tend to be more liberal when they think their identify is concealed, it my view, thinking you can hide behind an anonymous email account is actually more dangerous then posting something on social media personally.
