UK courts are facing a growing challenge over the enforcement of privacy orders after a number of Twitter users deployed the social media site to thwart injunctions.

Comments posted on the site over the weekend claimed to identify a number of celebrities and footballers allegedly using controversial injunctions in an attempt to prevent the press from revealing details of their private lives. One public figure cited on the site has already used their own Twitter account to deny that they have taken out such an injunction.

The episode is the latest in a series of attempts by users of the popular micro-blogging site to name celebrities alleged to have obtained privacy injunctions amid a growing campaign in the media against what is claimed to be judge-made privacy law.

Several MPs have recently spoken out against the measures, which are increasingly being used by celebrities to protect their privacy, with some calling for Parliament to introduce its own privacy law to provide clearer guidelines about the use of injunctions.

Much domestic privacy law is derived from the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically article eight, which grants a right to a private family life.

Commenting on the Twitter debate, Davenport Lyons defamation and privacy partner Robin Shaw said: "The news today that a Twitter user has used the service to reveal supposed details of celebrities' private lives that were hidden by superinjunctions or anonymity orders demonstrates, as with the internet, that these kinds of court orders can never be guaranteed to achieve their purpose of stopping a member of the public finding out about what they are meant to be gagged from knowing."

Reynolds Porter Chamberlain media partner Keith Mathieson added: "There is no doubt that social media such as Twitter poses significant challenges to the courts which are trying to uphold privacy measures. It is very difficult to predict how the courts will react to social media that is intent on undermining their decisions, but I believe that they will continue to attempt to uphold the principle of the privacy cases."

News of the Twitter leaks comes with the European Court of Human Rights expected to this week rule on a landmark privacy case involving former Formula 1 boss Max Mosley (pictured), who argues that the media should be required give advance notice to individuals before writing stories affecting their private lives.

Meanwhile, a report by Lord Neuberger is due to be published later this month looking at so-called superinjunctions, which ban reporting not just the name of individuals involved but also the existence of the injunction itself.

See this Thursday's Legal Week for an extended focus on defamation and privacy law. For more analysis, see Breaching so-called 'superinjunctions' on Twitter: is this how low we've sunk?