Melanie Diggs Assignment 2

Melanie Diggs

21956066

September 28, 2013

            This past August, a mother daughter team from Colorado was found guilty for scamming suspects out of thousands of dollars by acting as military personal on internet dating sites.  Using the anonymity of the internet, the team eventually sparked relationships with their female victims.  The victims, eager to see and hear from their “significant other”, would send thousands of dollars in an attempt to communicate with them.  The money they were able to scam off innocent people was split between the duo and accomplices around the world.  They have been sentenced to 12 and 15 years in prison and 5 years of parole respectively.

            I feel like the cause of the disinhibition in this case is due to dissociative anonymity.  As John Suler explains in his article, with people being anonymous on the internet, they feel like their internet self is not a real representation of who they are; they are under the impression that their actions will not be connected to them in the real world.  This can be used in this situation.  Perhaps guarded by the anonymity of the internet, this team was able to pose as a marine without a second thought because they actually took on the role of the marine.  When online, they were the soldier.  They could have thought that their real life identity wouldn’t be affected nor associated with their online presence.  Unless someone could hack in to their computer, someone online would not be able to see their association to the fake names.  Their own physical identities are completely separate from their online presence.  But as in most cases, the duo was caught, again proving that online, interactive practices have real life consequences.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/tracy-vasseur-karen-sentenced_n_3839341.html

Oerjan Moy Assignment 2

Oerjan Moy

Assignment # 2: analysis of an online crime

This past September, a 16 year old boy was arrested for spreading rumors over the Internet. The crime involved posts that questioned if the police were doing a good job after a man fell and died from the upper floor of a karaoke club. The post was written on a popular messaging service and on a micro blog. The message was reposted 962 times and viewed thousands of times. This violated the new rumor regulations; if someone is spreading a rumor on the internet the person could be punished if it was reposted over 500 times or viewed more than 5,000 times. The boy was arrested for “seriously disrupted social order” because the boy post caused a few dozen unemployed people to gather at the scene of the death of the other man and started to chant slogans. This was also leading to traffic chaos, and a situation out of control.

The boy’s family has now retained a lawyer and vows to vigorously defend their son.

I think that the reason for the disinhibition was a “minization of status and authority”. When people, in this example the 16 year old boy are online and often are anonymous, it’s easier to say what they are thinking to an authority without consequences, especially in China. When the authority is minimized it’s easier to use the freedom of speech.

In this case the freedom of speech become too big and got too much attention. At the beginning when post was reposted under 500 times it wasn’t a crime. After the 500 it began to be too big for the Chinese government, and they made it a crime. The boy become a victim of a non-crime because the non-crime got too much attention and become a crime.

Link to article: http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-china-arrest-rumors-internet-20130921,0,2831881.story

Ole Martin Ellingboe Nilsen Assignment 2

Sociology 167 – Virtual communities & social media: Assignment 2 (virtual crimes)
Ole Martin Ellingboe Nilsen
U.C. Berkeley, fall 2013.

July, 2013: A Nigerian citizen and his Mumbai accomplice have been arrested in Mumbai, India for scamming an Indian businessman $240.000. The scam artist sent out emails, calling for financial partnership in an oil preparation business deal. The victim took the bait and responded to the proposal. The victim was later asked to deposit his “share” throughout different bank accounts in Mumbai. Eventually, the police tracked down the criminals by tracing the mobile phone towers the scammer used when contacting their victim. They confessed to the crime.
The article describes an incident of online crime where the offender and the victim had no personal, real-world, relationship to start off with. This type of fraud could be motivated by dissociative anonymity. Dissociative anonymity is a type of disinhibition where the participants involved hides behind aliases or fake names.  They want to hide their full identity, as well as their body language – which is the best indicator of whether someone is lying or not. This subjective sense of (partial) anonymity is enough to drive people to do things online which they would never have done in real life. This means that stealing money from people online is easier on you consciousness than doing the same thing face-to-face. You basically separate your online actions from the rest of your life. Thus, your actions cause little or no consequences to you. As in the case previously discussed, Nigerian actor Nkem Owoh states this well in his 2005 hit song “I Go Chop Your Dollar”, with the lyric equal to “419 scams is just a game: The scammer is the winner, the victim is the loser”.

References:
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/nigerian-held-in-mumbai-in-internet-fraud-case/article4866420.ece (Retrieved on October 1^st 2013).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cGCJEh02MI (Retrieved on October 1^st 2013).
Suler, John (2004). "The Online Disinhibition Effect". Cyber-Psychology & Behavior 7 (3): 321–326. [Retrieved from: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/1094931041291295 On October 1^st 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.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/450092/20130325/teenager-charged-hacking-children-s-phone-posting.htm

Eileen Zhao Assignment 2

Assignment #2: Analysis of an Online Crime

Eileen Zhao

“Man Duped $500K In Online Romance Scam”

September 30, 2013

CBS News

“Tony,” a middle-aged gay man from Vancouver, whose identity has been disguised, was duped out of half a million dollars after meeting a man on a dating site.  After communicating via the dating site and then on Yahoo Messenger for six weeks, Tony’s partner told him that he was going to Asia for business. Shortly thereafter, he claimed that officials there had frozen his assets and were demanding bribes, asking Tony for several loans which totaled closed to half a million dollars, of which included his retirement savings. Upon suspicion, Tony hired a private investigator who traced the scammers to two men linked to a company in London which uses fake identities to prey on those looking for love.  One of these men have since been arrested and could soon face charges in the near future.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/man-duped-500k-in-online-romance-scam-1.1870043

In this situation, I believe that the cause of the criminal’s disinhibition was most likely caused by dissociative anonymity. Under the guise of a fake identity, it allowed the criminal to hide his true identity and it also disconnected him from his actions online versus those he carried out in person. According to Suler, “when people have the opportunity to separate their actions online from their in-person lifestyle and identity…whatever they say or do can’t be directly linked to the rest of their lives.” The criminal knowingly worked at a company where his main purpose was to dupe victims and while he earned money from his position, he also used this money to fund this own personal life knowing that there is a distinction between his real life and his virtual life while in communication to potential victims.

This case would not best be an example of asynchronicity because “Tony” and his supposed partner,used Yahoo Messenger which is most commonly used for instant messaging so there would be no disconnection in time under this assumption. This situation would also not be an example of dissociative imagination because the criminal at hand worked for a company that focused on scamming people looking for love and so he knew that his actions on the internet were real with a result of scamming money.  Minimization of status and solipsister introjection would also not be best demonstrated in this example because the guise of a fake identity is centered on being anonymous and holding a virtual life, separate from your real one.   

Daniel Kulsvehagen Assignment 2

Daniel Kulsvehagen

Assignment 2 Soc 167

In August 2013 the Norwegian online newspaper Hardware.no taped the event of an online crime. The criminal(s) was part of a company in India that called people while scamming them online.

A person who called herself Michelle called and said she was from Microsoft and that Niklas Plikk's (the author of the article) computer was infected by a virus. Michelle then said she would help Niklas get rid of the virus by going through a few easy steps.

Niklas was to download software online that would gain Michelle acsess to Niklas' computer. After downloading the software, Michelle could acsess the computer and steal anything on it. They also ask for Niklas' credit card number and other passwords they might need.

I believe this crime was motivated by invisibility. No one knows who they are. They use Microsoft's name to hide themselves and to make them more trustworthy. As the phone they are calling from used a blocked number and that they never show themselves in person they can't be found. Although they do state their names on the phone, it is likely that these names are pseudonyms to further protect their real identity.

This article is in Norwegian, but the actual conversation in the article's film is in English.

http://www.hardware.no/artikler/her-prover-windows-svindlerne-a-lure-kredittkortet-fra-oss/136521

Jonathan McGowan Assignment 2

Jonathan McGowan

Assignment 2 Soc 167

As of September 27, 2013 a college freshman from Temecula, California by the name of Jared James Abrahams was arrested for an online “sextortion” scheme.  This case being particularly unique and applicable to this assignment because Abrahams has been diagnosed with autism.  The crime that ultimately got him caught was trying to extort sexual materials from the newly crowned Miss Teen USA, although it is reported that he had used the same technique multiple times in the past and had upwards of 100 slave computers at one point for hacking.  Abrahams would use malware to infect potential victims’ computers, and then activate their webcams and take pictures of them when they were changing. He would then threaten to release these photos to the public if his demands were not met, his demands usually being more inappropriate photos, especially considering many of the girls he manipulated were under age.  It is yet to be seen what verdict will be decided for Abrahams, but the crime itself is very serious since he compromised the privacy of minors worldwide, as well as hacked and infected many computers with illegal software.

There are many different things that contributed to the disinhibiting of Abrahams, this much at least is clear.  Dissociative anonymity as well as invisibility both played a role in Abrahams doing the things he did.  In the real world he was just another kid with below average ability to understand social dynamics and relationships, but online he could be anonymous and there were less strict boundaries affecting him.  Here he could do things that he could never get away with in the real world and no one would even know who had done it, yet alone suspect him of doing it. It was a place where he could act out, either because of his sexual tendencies, or just because it gave him some sort of power and control over someone else, thereby making him feel more in control of his own life.  This being said it can easily be seen that Abrahams was also disinhibited by minimization of status and authority.  He never would have acted like this had there been an authority watching, and beyond by learning to hack he even turned himself into an authority of sorts.  It can easily be seen that he viewed himself in this light by this quote, “I’ll tell you this right now, I do NOT have a heart!!! However I do stick to my deals! Also age doesn’t mean a thing to me!!!”  Overall, there were a variety of factors that led to the ultimate disinhibition of Abrahams, but it is obvious, that the online disinhibition affect played a major role, if for no other reason than the nature of this crime, and that Abrahams probably never would have done anything of this nature had it not been for the anonymity of the internet.

Link to New Article: http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20130927/miss-teen-usa-sextortion-case-autistic-college-freshman-held-in-global-online-scheme