Imagine a situation where you are being harassed. Someone is putting your name into the addresses of thousands of pornographic websites. Searches for your name lead people to the pornographic websites with your name and descriptions designed to damage your reputation attached to them. The harasser hides behind the anonymity of the internet. You make a complaint to the police and to service providers but they take no action and do not reveal who is responsible let alone do anything to stop the harassment. You could bring a private prosecution for
harassment and seek a
restraining order on conviction, but how do you bring a claim against a defendant whose name you do not know? That was the problem before the High Court in
MKR v Cloudflare Ltd and others [2026] EWHC 2452 (KB), handed down on 24 September 2026. The court ordered three businesses – Mesh Digital, 123-Reg Limited, and Host Europe Limited – involved in registering or hosting the sites to provide information that might identify the operator. The decision illustrates an important civil procedure, a Norwich Pharmacal order, which can assist the investigation into an online harassment campaign.
What is a Norwich Pharmacal order?
A Norwich Pharmacal Order is essentially a way to obtain evidence to enable a claimant to take legal action against another person. There is a four part test that must be satisfied if the claimant is to successfully obtain the information he wants for his court proceedings: (i) The applicant has to demonstrate a good arguable case that a form of legally recognised wrong has been committed against them by a person (the Arguable Wrong Condition); (ii) The respondent to the application must be mixed up in so as to have facilitated the wrongdoing (the Mixed Up In Condition); (iii) The respondent to the application must be able, or likely to be able, to provide the information or documents necessary to enable the ultimate wrongdoer to be pursued (the Possession Condition); (iv) Requiring disclosure from the respondent is an appropriate and proportionate response in all the circumstances of the case, bearing in mind the exceptional but flexible nature of the jurisdiction (the Overall Justice Condition). In
MKR, the judge found a good arguable case of harassment and defamation. The alleged use of the claimant’s name, the search results and the pattern across many domains were substantial evidence for that preliminary threshold. They were not a trial finding that the allegations were true. The court then looked at each service provider’s connection with the domains and the records it might actually possess. The order against three UK businesses covered various categories of information. Disclosure was directed within seven days.
Why is disclosure taken so seriously by the courts?
There are many good and lawful reasons for a person to be anonymous on the internet, but beyond that it is simply nobody else’s business who is running an account on social media if they are not doing anything illegal. Therefore, the courts need to be persuaded that there is a very good reason to remove a person’s anonymity. Where an order is granted, the information obtained must only be used for the purpose for which the order was made, including pursuing proceedings and reporting matters to law enforcement. That matters when highly personal records might otherwise travel further than the investigation requires. It is worth mentioning costs at this point too. The courts do take this seriously and they recognise that the people on the receiving end of these orders have typically done nothing wrong themselves. Therefore, if you are making a Norwich Pharmacal application you should expect to pay the other side’s legal costs whether you win or lose. If you have experienced harassment you can
contactChetwode Criminal Defence Solicitors can advise you how to go about taking action to put a stop to online harassment investigation on disclosure, attribution and the evidence that may fairly be relied upon.
