Friday, October 4, 2013

Lena Kardos Assignment 2

Lena Kardos
21699958

Assignment 2

In March of 2013, a 17-year-old, Michael Cook, was arrested for hacking into students’ (the youngest being 14 years old) phones, stealing photos of them and putting them on child pornography sites. He did this through sending a text message to his victims. The message included a link that, when clicked on, would install malware on their phones, which gave Cook complete access to the information stored on their phones, including social network accounts and photos. Cook used the alias of Maxi Focus Photography and did all of this from his home computer. He was arrested on eight counts of cruelty to children and one count of sexually exploiting children.

One of the reasons Cook did this was because of dissociative anonymity. Using the alias of Maxi Focus Photography, he must have felt that his actions and consequences would be less attached to him, Michael Cook.  He was able to hide behind his computer during the whole process. He did not need to talk face-to-face with any of his victims. He was anonymous. His motive for committing this crime was not explained in the news article; however, dissociative anonymity had a great role in why he actually went through with the act.


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