THE website Ask.fm, on which Hannah Smith, 14, received hate messages before she was found hanged, has provoked further controversy by claiming she posted many of the comments herself.

Ask.fm executives are understood to have said privately that the company has analysed the profiles of the senders of the bullying messages and concluded that Hannah had set up most of the anonymous identities herself and sent the vast majority of the messages.

“With the Hannah case, the company have looked at every identity — the IP addresses are trackable. She posted the anonymous things herself. The police has all that data,” a source claimed.

In private briefings last week, the company said “98%” of the messages had come from the same IP address as Hannah’s,