Wests Tigers captain Robbie Farah has called on police and politicians to act after he received a vile Twitter message about his deceased mother.

Farah confirmed he had contacted police over the matter and encouraged Prime Minister Julia Gillard to review social media laws, to stamp out so called 'Twitter trolls'.

"We all need to make a stand and get these scums off twitter. The laws are piss weak and people should be accountable for their comments," Farah wrote on his Twitter page.

The New South Wales Origin representative then sent Gillard a call to action: "we need @JuliaGillard to take some action and change these soft laws.people (sic) need to be accountable for their comments," he said.

The anonymous Twitter user sent distasteful references about Farah's mother Sonia, who passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer in June.

Farah retweeted the message to his more than 27,000 followers and contacted police before the offender's account was shut down on Sunday night.

He released the following statement on Monday afternoon.

"I was very shocked and appalled to receive this vile comment on my twitter account last night," Farah said.

"Whilst I'm all for banter on Twitter and people expressing their opinions, this was personal about my late mother who I am still grieving about.

"As a rugby league player, I understand people are going to have different opinions about me, my football club, or the weekend's results, and I accept that by putting myself on Twitter.

"I know I will get positive and negative messages and I need to be accountable for the way I respond to these comments.

"However the tweet I received last night clearly crossed the line and was personal abuse of the worst possible kind, not only to myself but my family.

"I understand NSW Police do have some powers to take action against people who post abusive comments online and I appreciate the efforts they are making.

"However I encourage the Federal Government to strengthen social media laws so that these cowards are made accountable for their actions and people can be protected from the kind of disgusting personal abuse that I have received."

New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell sent a message of support to Farah and confirmed the user's ISP address had already been tracked down, with police dealing with the matter.

''Shouldn't matter who target is - completely unacceptable. Will follow up & happy to work with Feds to stop it," O'Farrell tweeted.

"I noticed that last night in a very short amount of time, others on Twitter had identified his ISP address, which is the computer from which this person had sent the message from," O'Farrell told Triple M on Monday morning.

"So I imagine he is a bit nervous today and so he should be.''

The same user sent similar offensive messages to Canberra full-back Josh Dugan on Sunday.