Targeted: Nicola Gibbions was bombarded with 50 messages
Sofia Isabella was fast asleep when her mobile phone buzzed into life. To be woken in the early hours by a string of missed calls and messages is alarming enough, but when the 21-year-old student saw who was trying to get in contact — and why — her blood ran cold.
It was the driver who’d delivered her regular Tesco shop to her home in Clapham, South London, earlier that day.
Now he was bombarding her with vile, sinister sexual messages detailing all the things he wanted to do to her. They were so explicitly graphic they are unprintable.
No wonder Sofia was terrified. This man —this stranger — knew where she lived. He’d probably worked out she lived alone. He also had her mobile. For all she knew he could be downstairs right now.
‘When he’d delivered my shopping I thought he was a bit over familiar. He seemed very keen to come inside and carry the bags for me. But until my phone woke me I hadn’t thought any more about it. I replied saying I was going to go to the police.’
Shopping online has become an integral part of our daily routine, with 95 per cent of Brits using the convenience of the internet to run their lives, whether it is to order taxis, takeaways, clothing, furniture or — like Sofia and one in ten of us — the weekly supermarket shop.
But while we’re keen on the convenience, few of us consider the implications of strangers having access to this vast amount of personal information, such as phone numbers, while also knowing our addresses and very often our tastes, lifestyles — whether we work at home or live alone — and spending habits, too. We routinely trust companies with information we would never usually hand out to a stranger — often without knowing exactly who will end up with our personal details.
Disturbingly, it seems that what happened to Sofia in December 2015 is far from an isolated case. Women are increasingly coming forward to complain about being subjected to sexual harassment by delivery drivers.
Some of the creepy messages sent by delivery drivers. They know your phone number, your address, when you’re at home – and if you live alone
Earlier this month, the case of jewellery designer Michelle Midwinter made headlines when it emerged a Just Eat takeaway driver sent her inappropriate messages.
Mother-of-one Michelle, 33, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, first received a WhatsApp message on her mobile phone asking if she had a boyfriend, soon after her meal was delivered. When she asked who was contacting her, he replied: ‘A fan. I’m the guy who delivered your meal. Sorry.’
He then ended the messages with a distinctly creepy: ‘Good night baby see you next time when I get your meal,’ before adding an emoji of a lipstick kiss.
Inappropriate? Most definitely. She was also very scared. Yet the attitude of Just Eat (which acts as an intermediary for local restaurants who deliver the food) when she complained was more worrying still. Initially, they told Michelle they didn’t have a complaints department before offering her a paltry £5 voucher — quickly doubled to a £10 voucher.
When she posted the exchange on Twitter, hundreds of women came forward with similar stories of serious sexual harassment.
One wrote: ‘It wasn’t even my delivery driver who’d sent the messages, he passed my number onto another driver at the restaurant!’
Nicola Gibbions, 31, was harassed by a Just Eat delivery driver. She received around 50 text messages and calls from the driver after she ordered a takeaway meal in August last year
While another said: ‘I had a furniture guy that came to the house find me on Facebook (was 16 at the time).
‘He started asking me a bunch of very weird sexual questions. Ended up blocking him. Had my name, address, number and managed to find my social media.’
When incidents like this happen it can be difficult to establish exactly who should take responsibility, let alone the identity of a perpetrator.
In any case, women are often reluctant to complain because, as the men know their addresses, they feel vulnerable to reprisals.
Michelle, for example, says she complained to Just Eat rather than the restaurant as ‘this guy has my name, address, and phone number and if he ended up getting fired over this, who knows what he would do with my information as he clearly had no qualms over using it in the first place’.
Following the public outcry over her story, Just Eat apologised to Michelle and issued a statement saying they were ‘deeply concerned’ and the driver involved ‘acted in a way that does not represent Just Eat and our core values’, adding: ‘We have again reminded all our restaurant partners of our standards and expectations with regards to data protection and we continually review our policies and practices to ensure they are robust.’
Still, many women, like Sofia, feel the problem is not being taken seriously enough.
She did contact Tesco to complain the day after her ordeal but says she didn’t hear back.
She then went to the police, but says she felt her concerns were brushed off, with the officer telling her to come back if the driver got in touch again.
‘I was shocked by the blase attitude. It felt like they were telling me to just wait to be raped. This was not normal behaviour. This man had abused his position.’
Sofia says she phoned Tesco five more times, but, after receiving no response, followed up in the modern way — by posting the text messages on a social media page.
As with Michelle, many women offered their support, telling her it had happened to them too. ‘At this point Tesco got in touch and offered me a refund on my shop,’ Sofia says. ‘I felt this was a disgrace. I felt like I was being ignored, like this was behaviour that women should just put up with.’
Sofia, who is attractive, petite and dark haired, adds: ‘Not that it matters, but when I answered the door, I wasn’t wearing make- up, I was wearing a scruffy tracksuit. I didn’t do anything to encourage that behaviour. It was completely unsolicited and wrong.’
She believes phone numbers should be masked so drivers can’t see them, as well as harsher punishments for employees who behave so appallingly.
Eventually, the driver was investigated by police, the outcome of which is unknown, and it emerged he worked for an agency that had been subcontracted by Tesco to do deliveries.
A Tesco spokesman said: ‘This behaviour is completely unacceptable. We took immediate action to ensure this agency driver will never work for Tesco again.’
When it comes to the law, it’s clear; using personal information for a purpose other than what it was intended for, is illegal.
A spokesman for the Information Commissioner’s Office, the body responsible for safeguarding privacy, explains: ‘The law says if you consent to give your data for a specific purpose to enable a parcel to be delivered, or for an organisation to provide a service, that’s legal.
‘If they use your personal data for a purpose other than the reason you agreed to give them your number, that’s where problems come in. It’s a criminal offence under Section 55 of the Data Protection Act.
‘It’s a crime if you didn’t give consent for them to call you up to ask you out on a date.
‘We can take both civil and/or criminal enforcement action, depending on the particular circumstances of the incident.’
Yet because many companies outsource their deliveries to agencies — as happened with Sofia’s Tesco delivery — and these agencies often have high staff turnover rates, a retailer’s accountability to their customer can be very blurred.
While, most delivery drivers should, as an industry standard, have had criminal record checks and have identity checks, it’s easy for them to move from one ‘gig’ to the next without having to explain to the next firm that hires them why they left their previous job. Furthermore, many companies have a clause which allows them to ‘substitute’ out their work — if the driver who’s registered with the firm can’t do a job, he can ask a friend or acquaintance to do it.
Nicola didn’t complain because of fear of reprisals, but thinks she had a lucky escape. ‘I felt vulnerable because I was in my house alone. It was a violation of my privacy’
Nicola Gibbions, 31, is another woman who says she was harassed by a Just Eat delivery driver.
She received around 50 text messages and calls from the driver after she ordered a takeaway meal in August last year.
‘He started telling me he thought I was beautiful and couldn’t believe I didn’t have a boyfriend. He asked me to go out for a drink with him.’
Nicola, a carer from Chesterfield in Derbyshire, admits she was initially flattered by the attention and replied.
‘But over the next few days, he got more insistent. He would text me and call if I didn’t respond immediately. I started to feel uncomfortable. Something just felt wrong about it all.’
Then, finally, he messaged Nicola asking if he could come round one night. ‘I said no, but he was persistent, he wouldn’t leave it. I didn’t go out with him or invite him round as alarm bells started to ring, I just stopped replying.
‘He knew my address so I tried to be polite. He kept calling but after a few days he did get the message.’
Nicola didn’t complain because of fear of reprisals, but thinks she had a lucky escape. ‘I felt vulnerable because I was in my house alone. It was a violation of my privacy.’
Communications consultant Annie Psarra, 26, is another left deeply shaken — in her case after an experience with a pizza delivery driver who came to her home in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in October 2015.
She says: ‘After a long day at work, I ordered a pizza to my flat.
‘The guy who turned up was overly chatty.
‘He started to ask whether I had lived there long and then whether I lived alone. I said it was none of his business.
‘He then started asking whether I had a boyfriend, and he didn’t understand why a pretty girl like me would be single. I just wanted to pay him and run away. Then, as I took my pizza from him, he reached down and stroked my arm. I was terrified.
‘He knew where I lived. I lived alone and had no friends or family in the area as I’d just moved. I felt really shaken up.’
The next day, Annie complained to Pizza Hut, who she ordered the pizza from, but says she received a generic letter saying they would look into it. She never heard from them again.
A spokesman for Pizza Hut Delivery said: ‘We are very disappointed to hear of Ms Psarra’s experience in 2015. The safety and wellbeing of our guests is a priority for us and we do not condone this behaviour.
‘We can confirm that our current team members were not employed by Pizza Hut at that time.
‘We would like to reassure our customers that we take any allegation of this nature extremely seriously and are committed to investigating any such complaint in full.’
Although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of women being harassed, not many cases end up in court.
One of the few to do so, is delivery driver Barry Weston, 27, from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, who was convicted of sexual assault in June 2016 after trying to hug and kiss a woman when dropping off a parcel that February, and then bombarding her with messages.
He was ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for five years, given a two-year restraining order and a three-year community order.
But, worryingly, at the time of his trial at North Staffordshire Justice Centre, he was still working for the courier company — which wasn’t named in court — where he was described as a ‘trusted and valued member of the team’. It is not known if he is still working for the company.
Ewa Luger, an expert on data governance and privacy at the University of Edinburgh, said that concerns about this sort of behaviour are entirely understandable, given the amount of data that many of us share online.
Additionally, could there also be an assumption that because a woman may share so much information about herself online, or perhaps have a glamorous profile photo, that she is fair game?
‘The internet gives you the ability to find all kinds of stuff about anyone and target them.’
Furthermore, it doesn’t remove the fact that as our reliance on online services increases, so do the risks of inviting strangers to deliver them to your home.
And, as all these disturbing encounters show, at what cost to our privacy and safety?