A judge in Noord-Holland has ordered a man to destroy his pages on Facebook and Hyves and close down his blog, after he continually attacked his ex-partner on social media sites.

The man has been banned from using social media for one year, and if he fails to comply, his ex-partner has been given the green light to have his profiles removed.

The man was earlier ordered to stop harassing the woman and their children online. He had also ignored a banning order, the NRC reports.

The argument that social media profiles are private do not hold up, because the information can easily be found via search engines such as Google, the judge said.

The ruling was made last December but has only just been made public because the period for an appeal has now passed and the ruling is definitive, the NRC said.