An estranged dad was able to rebuild his relationship with his kids after tracking down a Facebook cyber bully.
Darren Jamieson had not spoken to his three children for around five years following a bitter divorce from their mum but by chance he was able to step up and reconnect.
The 46-year-old was randomly contacted by his ex asking if he knew anything about the social media platform.
Someone had set up a fake profile of their son Robbie, who was around 12 at the time, and was sending abusive and "obscene" messages to fellow pupils at his school.
Teachers had been alerted but the boy - who has Asperger’s Syndrome - didn’t even have Facebook.
Darren, from Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, runs a digital marketing firm and his team was well-equipped to discover who was behind the profile.
He told the Mirror: “I thought, I can do this. My first thought was very bad, it was good, great, brilliant, I can help with this, this is in my wheelhouse.
“I can definitely do this, this is my opportunity. As it turned out, it was. It was something I threw myself into, got one of my developers at my company and said ‘how can we get around this?’”
The profile was private and didn’t show up in searches, so Darren got a list of all of Robbie’s classmates.
He created a spreadsheet and went through their friends lists and was able to find the fake profile.
The first option was to simply report it to Facebook, but he knew the best end result there was it would be deleted and then another one could be set up in its place.
Instead, one of Darren’s staff coded a ‘capture script’ so that all a person needed to do was land on a particular page and it would scrape all the information from whatever device they were using.
This meant it could potentially pull the mobile number, IP address, the operating system, the browser and other user information.
Darren created a fake profile of his own and sent a message to the one of his son claiming if they clicked the link they would get plenty of photos of Robbie to use.
He said they clicked on it within about three minutes.
The data collected showed almost everything, down to the make of the phone - an Alcatel OT-800, which he'd never heard of.
However, it didn’t reveal their name or mobile number.
At the time, Facebook ran a service called Imposter Account Information Request in which as long as it could be proved a profile was a fake, the platform would provide details on who created it.
Darren said: “I still can’t believe to this day that Facebook gave us this…Facebook sent us a three or four page PDF showing all the dates and times that people had logged into this fake account.
“And it gave us all the IP addresses that they used to login. And it gave us the mobile phone [and number] used to verify the account and the email address they used to set it up.
“We had everything.”
Darren handed all of this information to the school and the culprit was suspended.
But Robbie found it hard to accept that they were allowed back just a couple of weeks later.
What’s worse, it was a girl who he thought he was friends with, who had been to his house.
“In the end he had to be moved to a different school, which is a bit tragic - he’s the victim but he’s the one who has to be moved,” said Darren.
But slowly it allowed him to get back into his children’s lives.
After uncovering the bully, Darren’s ex contacted him again and said Robbie and his other children, Kira and Miley, wanted to see him.
Darren travelled down to Newport, South Wales, where they were living, and alongside their mum he met them in a park.
“It was the first time I’d seen them in four or five years. They didn’t seem sure who I was," he explained.
“We essentially played for half an hour in a park throwing a ball back and forth and it was all very weird, very strange.”
He said Miley, who was around seven or eight, “was like a completely different person” having been a toddler when he last saw him.
“They were keeping their distance from me so the ball game was a good idea because it allowed you to throw something over a distance but they weren’t coming, I didn’t get a hug because they didn’t know who I was," he said.
“That was really difficult.”
Driving the two or three-hour journey home he said felt “horrific” because he didn’t know if that would be it.
But a few weeks later they arranged another meeting.
“Eventually I started taking them out for lunch without the ex wife,” Darren explained.
“It just got better and better from there.”
Robbie is now 21 and is living with his sister Kira, 20, in Liverpool, while Miley, 18, lives in Newport.
Darren said he can’t believe he has his children back in his life and is so close with them.
“It started slow but I don’t think I would have this relationship now had this not happened,” he said.
Their relationship had been soured by the divorce and it had resulted in Darren stepping back but he said he always hoped he could do something to prove his worth.
Referring to the day he got the call from his ex about the cyber bullying, he said: “I thought if I can do this, and show them I’m there for them…
“I never expected it to but secretly I hoped it would happen. I never thought I would have the relationship with them I have now.
"Everything has turned out great in the end but it’s just a shame that I’ve lost all of that time - I get quite annoyed when I think about it.
"I genuinely didn’t think I’d ever see them again."
