Police are ramping up efforts to crackdown on the increasing numbers of social media trolls.

There has been a string of recent incidents where anonymous internet users have launched nasty attacks, particularly on high profile Twitter users.

NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Peter Barrie says it can have devastating consequences.

"It can make people feel unsafe or feel threatened. Or it has a negative impact psychologically and they start to feel depressed," he said.

Australian cricket coach Mickey Arthur has become the latest high profile Twitter user to delete his account after being targeted.

Police are seeing an increase in requests from victims to crack down on trolls.

Assistant Commissioner Barrie says officers are becoming more proactive on social media and they want websites like Twitter and Facebook to hand over the details of online trolls.

"We would encourage industry to work with police as much as possible, particularly when someone's safety is at risk, or an offence has been committed," he said.

But social media analyst Anthony Mason says the industry is not always cooperative.

"Social media sites do withhold a lot of information that is requested of them by government authorities and I'd suggest the majority of that withheld information is the stuff that is more sensitive and could harm the contributing users more," he said.

Twitter declined the ABC's request for an interview, but it says globally over the past six months it has partially or fully complied with 63 per cent of government requests - either for information or for Twitter to remove content from its site.

The advice for those who are subjected to abuse on any website is to ignore it.

They should take a photo of the offending message, possibly to use as evidence later, and then block the person who sent it.

"It is very easy to block people on Facebook and Twitter," internet expert Ross Dawson said.

"If you don't like what they're saying you can block them. You don't have to see it."

Failing that, the experts say to call the police.