IP address errors lead to wrongful arrests

Nigel Lang says his life was ruined by a typo.

Wrongly arrested in 2011 by South Yorkshire Police, in the UK, for allegedly sharing images of child abuse, the police refused to tell him how the error had been made. Lang spent 6 years fighting to find out how he’d been erroneously pushed into a nightmare. Police said too much time had passed to figure it out, but after Lang hired a solicitor, they managed to cough up the truth.

The truth being that a mistyped IP address had been traced to his partner. It was off by one digit. Lang filed a complaint of racism and sexism – he’s a black man, and his partner’s a white woman – but the complaint was dismissed.