The tragic death of a woman in Italy has sparked a debate about web privacy and online abuse.

Tiziana Cantone committed suicide a year after a sex tape featuring her, which was allegedly uploaded by her ex-boyfriend, went viral on the internet. The video is estimated to have been viewed by more than a million internet users worldwide.

Catone had battled for months to have the video, along with any references to it, removed from search engines, blogs, and social media websites.  She was requesting for a "right to be forgotten."

Catone's tragic death has added steam to the searing issue of web privacy and online abuse. Despite the fact that Cantone's video was taken down from the internet, her nightmare went on because she has turned into a derisive joke online which no one could seem to forget.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said that "As a government, there's not a lot that we can do [because] it's mainly a cultural battle - also a social and political battle. Our commitment is try to do everything we can... Violence against women is not an ineradicable phenomenon."

The issue has become so rife that different countries are finding ways to deal with it. China, for instance, has the most sophisticated online censorship apparatus on earth but appears to still be slow in reacting to the surge of online abuse.

In the United Kingdom, legislators have started to tackle the issue of online abuse after cases of revenge pornography released online increased. In 2015, revenge pornography, which entails sharing of private sexual videos and/or photos without consent, was tagged as a criminal offense in the country.