Fred Scarf
Carolina Picchio commited suicide on January 5, 2013 after being cyberbullied on Facebook by her ex-boyfriend and his friends.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/31/world/europe/italy-facebook-suicide/index.html
One of the causes of this suicide would be dissociative
anonymity. Carolina’s ex-boyfriend and his friends tried to hurt her online, as
opposed to in person. They used the Internet to act in a way they wouldn’t be
in person. They posted a video and assaulted her on the internet, which then
affected her life online.
Sarah Zou
Bitcoins can be stolen, just like any other currency.
However, it can be much more difficult to recover. The anonymous nature of the
bitcoin world paired with little to no legal enforcement to track thieves and
the nonreversible transactions make bit coin users more vulnerable. IP addresses can lead to the hacker, but a
skilled hacker would make the IP address untraceable. Since bitcoins can be
exchanged to hold value in the real economy, stealing bitcoins is an illegal
crime. This is an ongoing epidemic that has recently been on the rise because
of the increased popularity and exchange rate of bitcoins.
Arguments from John Suler’s The Online Disinhibition Effect can be seen in this crime, namely anonymity.
As a skilled hacker, the thief untraceable. Being anonymous means it is almost
impossible for them to get caught for their actions. His or her online life as
the thief doesn’t have to be reflected in his or her offline life. As stated by
Suler, ”in a process of dissociation, they don’t
have to own their behavior by acknowledging it within the full context of an
integrated online/offline identity” (Suler 322) There is
only monetary benefit and no disapproval or penalization from society.
Similarly, the invisibility provided by the Internet “gives people the courage to go places and do things that they
otherwise wouldn’t” –steal large sums of money (Suler 322). Instead of putting themselves in physical danger to rob a bank, for example, a hacker can work from the comfort and privacy of their own home, under an invisibility cloak.
Crystal Chan
John Anthony Borell, III who is linked to the hacker group Anonymous has been charged with two counts of computer intrusion by the federal court of Salt Lake City, Utah. Borell hacked into the Salt Lake City police department’s website server and website which contained confidential information on police cases. Borell faces the possibility of serving 10 years in jail and paying a fine of $10,000 for each count that is against him. The rest of the article describes the hacker group Anonymous and their recent hacking projects on federal agencies, including the FBI.
The most likely motivation for Borell to commit these crimes is due to dissociative anonymity, which is the sense of anonymity that a person has between his/her online behaviors versus behaviors outside of the internet. Borell was associated with Anonymous and must have felt that he was a faceless hacker among a larger crowd of hackers. He did not think that the government would be able to track him through the computer system since he felt like he did not have an identity and was hidden in the masses of Anonymous. However, he was wrong because there is a link between online and offline behaviors, and thus he must face the consequences of hacking in Utah’s police database.
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/
Emily Idell
http://america.aljazeera.com/
Summary: 12-year-old Floridian girl, Rebecca Ann Sedwick, committed suicide after being cyber-bullied by more than a dozen girls. Sedwick jumped to her death after being “absolutely terrorized on social media,” with messages saying “go kill yourself” and “why are you still alive?” Before her death, Sedwick searched for many suicide related questions online. She told a boy she had met online from North Carolina of her plan hours before her death. Sedwick had been active on a social media site based outside of the US in which you can ask people questions anonymously.
These over a dozen girls who terrorized Rebecca online were motivated by the disinhibition concept of invisibility. These girls terrorized Rebecca online, in a forum in which they were able to remain anonymous. They were not being seen by Rebecca or even heard out loud. It was a text base terrorization that caused real-world consequences in this case. Rebecca could no longer take it and committed suicide because of these girls.
The most likely cause of
disinhibition for this crime is invisibility. In this kind of disinhibition,
individuals take advantage of the fact that they cannot be seen. in th process
of dissociation, they believe that they cannot be caught for their actions.
They therefore have the courage to do or say things no matter how bad the
consequences may be. Even if the identity of the person may be known, the fact
that they cannot be physically seen enhances the disinhibition feeling (Suler
322). The criminal in this case was using this invisibility to make threats to
the woman. The fact that he could not be seen physically gave the man courage to
scare the woman because this ensured some kind of protection for him. Anonymity
also makes the criminal to believe that they will get away with a crime and so
they end up using threatening and abusive language on social networks.
The victim may also have become the victim due to the fact that she was also disinhibited. The woman is a journalist who was running campaigns against one of the most important issues in Britain, which is the image on banknotes. Using the internet for her campaigns produced the minimization of status or authority disinhibition effect (Suler 324). While online, individuals are considered equal and have the courage to say what they really think even in front of an authority figure. Online communication makes individuals feel like they are communicating with peers with minimized authority. By speaking out on one of the main debates in the country, the woman became a target for those who were opposing this issue.
Rannals, Lee . "Manchester Man Arrested For Sending Abusive Tweets." 30 July 2013. 4 October 2013 .
Suler, John. "The Online Disinhibition Effect." Cyber Psychology and Behavior 7.3 (2004): 321-326.
Mimisioluwa Oloye
Britt Vonk
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/08/30/internet-dating-scam-mother-and-daughter-crime-duo-jailed/
Internet dating scam – mother and daughter crime duo jailed
Karen and Tracy Vasseur, from Colorado, US, were sentenced for 27 years total after fooling victims into thinking that they were members of the US military and that they needed money. They have collected a total of 1.1 million dollars from 374 people. Their idea was to find vulnerable people on dating sites or social networks and create a relationship with them. They would tell them they were part of the US military, serving in Afghanistan. After establishing this relationship, they would tell their victims that they were in need of money for travelling back to the U.S, retrieving property and other expenses.
The main cause of the criminal’s disinhibition was likely motivated by dissociative anonymity. Both scammers and the victims communicated only through not-in-person devices and therefore the scammers were able to create an identity that would attract the victim. The scammers constructed a character by telling the victims stories about their life was in Afghanistan, and after gaining the victim’s trust, they would start asking to send money. Because the scammer has not been questioned, there is no evidence of revealing the truths. However, whether true or not, the scammers identified themselves as being part of US military, in Afghanistan, and kept their real world, in-person identity hidden. If the scammers did not get tracked down and arrested, they would not have any real-world consequences.
STEPHANIE MADLENE KARLSSON
In June 2013 two Swedish girls, at the age of 15 and 16, were sentenced to community service and fined $85,000 after using the image sharing app Instagram to spread offensive information and rumors about other teenagers. The Instagram account used by the two girls posted pictures of young men and women (mostly women) calling them sluts and accusing them of a sexually promiscuous lifestyle, while encouraging their followers to give them tips about who to post about. Promising that the tips would be completely anonymous. The account quickly got thousands of followers before it was shut down.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Online behavior can in many ways wary from how we interact and behave in daily, face-to-face, life. In his article The Online Disinhibition Effect John Suler (2004) list six reasons to why peoples online behavior changes and becomes disinhibited. The internet allows us to hide some aspects of our selves while exposing others. In the case of the Instagram riots in Sweden I firmly believe that the actions of the two young girls can be explained using three aspects of the online Disinhibition Effect.
Suler (2004) lists Dissociative Anonymity as one of the main reasons of the Disinhibition effect. People have a tendency of separating their online actions with their real-life actions and identity, and therefore are more likely to act out. Anonymity was key for the girls while using publishing as a means for oversharing to hurt the people whom they were posting about. The anonymity provided by the internet made it possible for the girls to “speak out” and act in a way that would not be socially acceptable in the real world. By the use of a username that had no connection to their real names and an extra cellphone, the girls managed to mask their real identities from other users and their victims. Because of the many reports filed against the account, Instagram decided to help the Swedish police by releasing the IP number of the phone used and thereby eliminating their anonymity. By ruining their anonymity their actions soon got real-life consequences.
An online persona can easily become an isolated character that has no real-life consequences; the internet becomes a “make-believe dimension”. This is described by Suler (2004) as Dissociative Imagination. Even though this is often associated with online gaming, I still feel that it explains some of the behaviors of the two young girls. They created an online person/account that they believed would not have any consequences in their real lives. The girls stated that they had no idea on how popular the account would become and how they quickly lost control over their initial idea. Still, they kept it going as it (initially) did not reflect on their real lives. I believe that the girls got so caught up in what that were doing, and fueled by the attention that they received, that they at some point lost track with what this would mean in the real world. This account did not necessarily reflect how they were like, or how they were perceived offline.
Lastly, I strongly believe that Minimization of Status and Authority in explaining the two girls online behavior. For young teenagers authority figures are present everywhere; at school, at home etc. Being a young adult can be frustrating for a lot of teenagers as you get categorized somewhere in-between a child and an adult. Expected to show respect for authority but never be the (legitimate) authority, or get the same type of respectful treatment from the authority figures. The constant presence of authority in teenagers life’s reinforces behaviors that are socially acceptable e.g. no bulling in schools. On the internet, and social media in particular, the players from your real life are often the same but the power authority has been unleashed which enables people to act out without fear for real life consequences.
Crystal Chan
John Anthony Borell, III who is linked to the hacker group Anonymous has been charged with two counts of computer intrusion by the federal court of Salt Lake City, Utah. Borell hacked into the Salt Lake City police department’s website server and website which contained confidential information on police cases. Borell faces the possibility of serving 10 years in jail and paying a fine of $10,000 for each count that is against him. The rest of the article describes the hacker group Anonymous and their recent hacking projects on federal agencies, including the FBI.
The most likely motivation for Borell to commit these crimes is due to dissociative anonymity, which is the sense of anonymity that a person has between his/her online behaviors versus behaviors outside of the internet. Borell was associated with Anonymous and must have felt that he was a faceless hacker among a larger crowd of hackers. He did not think that the government would be able to track him through the computer system since he felt like he did not have an identity and was hidden in the masses of Anonymous. However, he was wrong because there is a link between online and offline behaviors, and thus he must face the consequences of hacking in Utah’s police database.
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/
Emily Idell
http://america.aljazeera.com/
Summary: 12-year-old Floridian girl, Rebecca Ann Sedwick, committed suicide after being cyber-bullied by more than a dozen girls. Sedwick jumped to her death after being “absolutely terrorized on social media,” with messages saying “go kill yourself” and “why are you still alive?” Before her death, Sedwick searched for many suicide related questions online. She told a boy she had met online from North Carolina of her plan hours before her death. Sedwick had been active on a social media site based outside of the US in which you can ask people questions anonymously.
These over a dozen girls who terrorized Rebecca online were motivated by the disinhibition concept of invisibility. These girls terrorized Rebecca online, in a forum in which they were able to remain anonymous. They were not being seen by Rebecca or even heard out loud. It was a text base terrorization that caused real-world consequences in this case. Rebecca could no longer take it and committed suicide because of these girls.
YoungKI Jang
a man in Manchester who
was arrested for sending abusive tweets to a female activist campaigning to get
a woman to replace Charles Darwin on British banknotes. The man sent a twitter
message threatening to kill and rape Caroline Criado-Perez (Rannals).
<http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112909839/rape-tweets-result-in-arrest-uk-073013/>
The victim may also have become the victim due to the fact that she was also disinhibited. The woman is a journalist who was running campaigns against one of the most important issues in Britain, which is the image on banknotes. Using the internet for her campaigns produced the minimization of status or authority disinhibition effect (Suler 324). While online, individuals are considered equal and have the courage to say what they really think even in front of an authority figure. Online communication makes individuals feel like they are communicating with peers with minimized authority. By speaking out on one of the main debates in the country, the woman became a target for those who were opposing this issue.
Rannals, Lee . "Manchester Man Arrested For Sending Abusive Tweets." 30 July 2013. 4 October 2013 .
Suler, John. "The Online Disinhibition Effect." Cyber Psychology and Behavior 7.3 (2004): 321-326.
Nikola Radnovic
Ross Ulbricht was arrested in San
Francisco on Tuesday because of illegal activity related to a website he
created - “The Silk Road”. This website, being around for about two and a half
years, was a marketplace for narcotics and other illicit goods, that ensured
that the users browsing it stay anonymous and outside the reach of Internet
traffic monitoring. FBI approximates that the website had about $1.2 billion in
sales, however, it has been shutdown yesterday.
Ulbricht
was most likely motivated by his libertarian ideas and wanted to make an online
marketplace like no other, where people can freely browse and buy specific
illegal goods. His motivation was deeper, he wanted to get people to stand up
for their rights and fight for them. He wanted to be a leader of these changes
and take the fame and power that came with it.
Mimisioluwa Oloye
About a week ago, the news reported that the newly crowned Miss Teen USA was a victim of the online internet crime of invasion of privacy. Her computer was hacked and the criminal got into her webcam. He would then take pictures of her changing or coming out of her bathroom after she has taken a shower, some pictures dated back to when she was in high school. She was surprised to discover that her perpetrator is someone she went to school with in the past. Though she is not his only victim, he said he’s done this about 150 times and more than 30 of the people he has done it to are his slaves. He was arrested on August 26th 2013 for “allegedly taking nude images of the women using their own webcams, and then blackmailing them to send more explicit material”.
Article: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/
The most likely cause for this event is the fact that the criminal couldn’t be seen or identified by his victims. Believing that all of his victims are not computer experts, otherwise he would have been exposed prior to this incident, the criminal was able to conceal his identity and demand that they listen to him or he would upload their pictures on the internet . This could identify under invisibility or dissociative anonymity because he was invisible while taking the pictures, but he contacted the victims, which made him anonymous. The victim in this article was not a victim of disinhibition because she was not actively online when the pictures were taken.
Britt Vonk
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/08/30/internet-dating-scam-mother-and-daughter-crime-duo-jailed/
Internet dating scam – mother and daughter crime duo jailed
Karen and Tracy Vasseur, from Colorado, US, were sentenced for 27 years total after fooling victims into thinking that they were members of the US military and that they needed money. They have collected a total of 1.1 million dollars from 374 people. Their idea was to find vulnerable people on dating sites or social networks and create a relationship with them. They would tell them they were part of the US military, serving in Afghanistan. After establishing this relationship, they would tell their victims that they were in need of money for travelling back to the U.S, retrieving property and other expenses.
The main cause of the criminal’s disinhibition was likely motivated by dissociative anonymity. Both scammers and the victims communicated only through not-in-person devices and therefore the scammers were able to create an identity that would attract the victim. The scammers constructed a character by telling the victims stories about their life was in Afghanistan, and after gaining the victim’s trust, they would start asking to send money. Because the scammer has not been questioned, there is no evidence of revealing the truths. However, whether true or not, the scammers identified themselves as being part of US military, in Afghanistan, and kept their real world, in-person identity hidden. If the scammers did not get tracked down and arrested, they would not have any real-world consequences.
Jennifer Lee
In the article “Wisconsin man indicted in Anonymous attack of Koch Industries,” Matt Perce tells the story of a man who may face time in Federal prison for hacking a Koch website during a pro-union protest. This anonymous hacker targeted the website so that it responded slowly or unavailable to users of the website. This man is now charged with one count conspiracy to damage a protected computer and one count of damaging a protected computer. The maximum prison sentence is five years and a $250,000 fine. There is a clear disinhibition effect that the Wisconsin man must have felt by breaking the law and hacking Koch Industries, in specific dissociative anonymity. Dissociative anonymity is when online users feel that other people do not know who they are so they are free from social standards. People feel separate and unaccountable for their actions online and they also feel less vulnerable. This explains why the man may have had the idea to even hack because there is no face to his name. He probably thought that he would not be caught or face any responsibility because of the anonymity behind the computer.
STEPHANIE MADLENE KARLSSON
In June 2013 two Swedish girls, at the age of 15 and 16, were sentenced to community service and fined $85,000 after using the image sharing app Instagram to spread offensive information and rumors about other teenagers. The Instagram account used by the two girls posted pictures of young men and women (mostly women) calling them sluts and accusing them of a sexually promiscuous lifestyle, while encouraging their followers to give them tips about who to post about. Promising that the tips would be completely anonymous. The account quickly got thousands of followers before it was shut down.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Online behavior can in many ways wary from how we interact and behave in daily, face-to-face, life. In his article The Online Disinhibition Effect John Suler (2004) list six reasons to why peoples online behavior changes and becomes disinhibited. The internet allows us to hide some aspects of our selves while exposing others. In the case of the Instagram riots in Sweden I firmly believe that the actions of the two young girls can be explained using three aspects of the online Disinhibition Effect.
Suler (2004) lists Dissociative Anonymity as one of the main reasons of the Disinhibition effect. People have a tendency of separating their online actions with their real-life actions and identity, and therefore are more likely to act out. Anonymity was key for the girls while using publishing as a means for oversharing to hurt the people whom they were posting about. The anonymity provided by the internet made it possible for the girls to “speak out” and act in a way that would not be socially acceptable in the real world. By the use of a username that had no connection to their real names and an extra cellphone, the girls managed to mask their real identities from other users and their victims. Because of the many reports filed against the account, Instagram decided to help the Swedish police by releasing the IP number of the phone used and thereby eliminating their anonymity. By ruining their anonymity their actions soon got real-life consequences.
An online persona can easily become an isolated character that has no real-life consequences; the internet becomes a “make-believe dimension”. This is described by Suler (2004) as Dissociative Imagination. Even though this is often associated with online gaming, I still feel that it explains some of the behaviors of the two young girls. They created an online person/account that they believed would not have any consequences in their real lives. The girls stated that they had no idea on how popular the account would become and how they quickly lost control over their initial idea. Still, they kept it going as it (initially) did not reflect on their real lives. I believe that the girls got so caught up in what that were doing, and fueled by the attention that they received, that they at some point lost track with what this would mean in the real world. This account did not necessarily reflect how they were like, or how they were perceived offline.
Lastly, I strongly believe that Minimization of Status and Authority in explaining the two girls online behavior. For young teenagers authority figures are present everywhere; at school, at home etc. Being a young adult can be frustrating for a lot of teenagers as you get categorized somewhere in-between a child and an adult. Expected to show respect for authority but never be the (legitimate) authority, or get the same type of respectful treatment from the authority figures. The constant presence of authority in teenagers life’s reinforces behaviors that are socially acceptable e.g. no bulling in schools. On the internet, and social media in particular, the players from your real life are often the same but the power authority has been unleashed which enables people to act out without fear for real life consequences.
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