Cybercrime and Sock Puppet

Previous blog, I was talking about hacktivists and while cybercrime is so common, there are still a lot of ethical hackers who are protecting the network system against crimes. I thought these crimes were the only cause of cyber-attack until now.

Consumers generate personal data every time they go online. Sometimes they knowingly provide it to third parties – but sometimes without realising (Warner, 2011).

This information can easily be available to hackers, moreover it allows for total control and surveillance over user’s information, resulting in a situation of stolen identity. “The law does not keep pace with industry developments or consumers‟ expectations” (Warner, 2011)

The internet is known as river of copies, holding infinitive data that is kept in the cyber world not ever being deleted. The internet doesn’t like deletion; data wants to be free. Hacker has the ultimate decision if newly found information should be distributed or not, or to use it for their personal advantage as a distributed network.

If online personas can be hacked, individual’s credit card, passports, and credentials can easily be stolen as well, which can create an ugly world of cybercrime. Never-ending!!

Cybercrime is defined as crimes committed on the internet using the computer as either a tool or a targeted victim (Aghatise, 2014).

The term Sock puppets refers to false online personas who are equipped to seem like real people while entering online discussion through blogs, message boards, chats, and more. With a false persona, a user could discredit opponents, or create the semblance of consensus (Mitew, 2017).
Back in 2011, The Guardian reported The US military to be “developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda”.

It’s blows my mind, thinking how many debates and conversation I have read so far are completely authentic and completely veracious.

I am not able to come to a final thought, has it ever happened that one sock puppet is interacting online with another, without being aware of each other. Comment down below about what you think.

Signing out,

Khan Sultana Nazish

References:

Aghatise, J. (2014). Cybercrime definition. [ebook] ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joseph_Aghatise/publication/265350281_Cybercrime_definition/links/5409af300cf2822fb73b5a2f/Cybercrime-definition.pdf [Accessed 18 Nov. 2017].

Cobain, I. (2011). Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks [Accessed 18 Nov. 2017].

Mitew, T. (2017). Dark Fiber: hackers, botnets, cyberwar. Available at https://prezi.com/iiied2_aa8tc/dark-fiber-hackers-botnets-cyberwar/ /span>

Warner, B. (2011). Online personal data: the consumer perspective. [ebook] Communications Consumer Panel. Available at: https://www.communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk/Online%20personal%20data%20final%20240511.pdf [Accessed 18 Nov. 2017].