Parents Corner Archives

Illegal Drug Sales & Social Media

Social Media companies are still being challenged for not doing enough when it comes to selling drugs on their platforms. Snap Chat, Instagram, Tik Tok and others have been sited for not doing enough to curb illegal drug sales on their sites. Parents, in particular, are passionate about this issue. With the rise of Fentanyl, the online sales of fake pills that include the synthetic opioid is staggering. The dealers use social media to advertise to young people. So even if a young person isn’t interested in mining social media for a drug of choice, the dealers come to them.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a warning back in September 2021, warning about the increase. Anne Milgram, the DEA Administrator, called out two apps that were very popular with teens and young adults: Snapchat and TikTok. She was quoted in the Washington Post that they were not doing enough to combat sales. But will the request go unnoticed?

This has been occurring for years on several social platforms. Many of the platform executives have said they are doing all they can on their end. Companies have hired extra moderators, using artificial – intelligence algorithms to flag unwanted posts. To date it continues to be an issue as many young people are dying from this type of drug.

To date, more than 93,000 people died of drug overdoses in the US in 2020. This is an increase of 30% from 2019.
CDC

The Advertising of Illegal Drugs to teens and young adults.

The Organization for Social Media Safety, ran an informal test and found they were able to connect with drug dealers on multiple social media sites in under three minutes.

Volteface commissioned Survation in January 2019 to conduct a nationally representative poll of 2,006, 16 to 24 year olds. The research was conducted on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Fake profiles were set up and researchers did not communicate with any social media users. Key findings were as followed:

One in four young people (24%) reported they see illicit drugs advertised for sale on social media.
Of those who reported seeing illicit drugs for sale on social media:

56% saw drugs being advertised on Snapchat, 55% on Instagram and 47% on Facebook.

63% saw Cannabis being advertised – making it the most seen drug advertised for sale. Cocaine was the second drug most seen advertised (26%), followed by MDMA/Ecstasy (24%), Xanax (20%), Nitrous Oxide (17%) and Codeine/Lean (16%).

Encryption and VPN technology makes it difficult to trace dealers. There is also a lack of information sharing between police and social media platforms. All of this makes it very hard to get this off social media.

Searching for Drugs Online: (American Addiction Centers: Drug Abuse.com )

Think it is hard to find illegal drugs in social media? You might be very surprised to discover that people are selling drugs in the most blatant fashion. In fact, even their user names make it obvious! With user names like “ihavedrugs4sale”, and drug-riddled posts/pictures, the dealers make it quite obvious. The study revealed that the most popular items included marijuana, prescription drugs, painkillers, xanax, molly (mdma) and lean (codeine syrup mixture). Example below of items found in social media:

This year a Santa Monica teen, named Sammy Berman Chapman asked his dad for a cheeseburger and went to his bedroom. An hour later his mother found him dead on the floor.

Sammy was killed by a Xanax pill laced with fentanyl, which is a synthetic opioid 50 times as powerful as heroin. The culprit: a drug dealer on Snapchat and, from the parents’ perspective, the company Snap itself, which they said was not doing enough to protect young users like Sammy. They went to the company for answers on how this could happen. Snapchat’s rep stated:

“Continuing to significantly improve our operational work to eradicate drug dealers from Snapchat, along with raising awareness of the dangers of fentanyl and other illicit drugs, will be a long term effort for us — we will keep working to do better and help keep our community safe,” said a Snapchat spokesperson.

It is an uphill battle, but one that is worth fighting for.

Using Tinder for Robbery

Take a look at any police log and the dating app Tinder is sure to make an appearance. Most likely in regard to luring suspects to meet at a specific location and then rob them. Earlier this year, it was reported that 6 people lured through Tinder were robbed at gunpoint in Fresno, California. They asked people they met on Tinder to come to specific locations where the group would lie in wait and rob the victims at gunpoint.

In Chicago, two 18-year-olds “terrorized” two men looking for a Tinder date hookup who instead were attacked from behind, beaten, kidnapped and robbed in a Chicago neighborhood. A girl, 17, was also accused in the attacks, charged with driving a car during a criminal trespass to a vehicle, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated vehicular hijacking and aggravated robbery.

With over 6.5 million monthly downloads in May 2021, Tinder is the most downloaded dating application in the world.

How Detectives Use Location Spoofing in Tinder

The first thing a Detective must do is to create a fake Tinder account. It is important to target the location where the criminal activity is taking place. They then throw out the bait and wait for someone to respond.They then put undercover police out to see if someone tries to rob them. Dangerous work, but very effective when a certain area seems to be targeted over and over again.

Creating a Fake Profile

One question we get a lot is how can you search dating apps to find a cheating spouse. Short answer, there is no way to do this effectively. You must have an account. Let’s take Tinder as an example.

To begin you need to sign up using Google, Facebook or a telephone number. Tinder is one site that doesn’t seem to mind using Google Voice Numbers. If you have one already set up, this is an easy way to get signed up. Next, you will receive your verification code. Once you log in it will want to know your location. Next, you will need to modify your profile. This gives you the opportunity to match the profile of someone your client’s spouse may be interested in. Use a profile pic generator to create a fictitious person (https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com).This is something that is AI generated and can not be found in a reverse image search.

Tinder should give you a different set of results based on your location. It isn’t easy to search even with an account set up. It may help you to identify a person who has a profile on the app. Most times, this is what your client may be looking for.

Sounds like a lot of work, right? It is a lot of work and you may or may not find what you are looking for. If you do find your suspect, then not only do you know he/she is on the site, but you can use the image to conduct a reverse image search to determine if it is being used anywhere else online.

Selling Drugs in Social Media

With all of the troubling events in our world today, social media seems to be more focused on the Election, COVID-19, Protests and Riots. Not much attention is given these days to selling drugs in social media. However, it is still happening and many police departments are having a hard time keeping up.

Salt Lake City news outlet, (KUTV) actually reported that if your child is on Snapchat, there’s a good chance they are seeing ads from drug dealers. Several 8th grader’s say they see the ads almost daily.

“Like yesterday, this person added me and they were selling Xanax,” said the eighth-grader.
Drug dealers are called “plugs” on social media, sometimes using a plug emoji to describe them.
Some plugs “quick add” people on Snapchat, which categorizes users by zip code.
(reported by KUTV Salt Lake City)

The Dealers Don’t Hide

Just a week ago, we performed a search on a suspect for a client. While combing through the suspect’s social media posts, it became quite obvious she was dealing. She made no secret of it and actually announced she was ready to make a run, and asked if anyone needed anything. Of course, her Facebook page didn’t reveal her real name. She used an alias but we were able to tie it to her name due to many public photos she included of herself. It is not always as secretive as one might think.

Instagram’s Selling of Drugs

A quick search for “#Zannies (a Xanax slang) provided over 4,000 results. They don’t hide it either. The photo below is just one example of what is out there.

Drugs and social media just seem to go hand in hand. In a post we wrote over a year ago, titled, “Buying Drugs on Instagram: It’s easier than you think”, we outlined why this is so easy to get away with.

The problem is Instagram’s algorithms can’t distinguish the context the hashtags are used in. And if a user then follows a dealer using the hashtags, Instagram’s algorithms then suggest that user follow more drug dealers. In the course of one day over 50 Instagram dealer accounts were found simply be searching for different hashtags like #weed4sale.

Most dealer profiles have a bunch or “product” photos displaying their inventory and their contact information is in the bio or comments section. While some bravely post their mobile number, most use a messaging app called Kik and others. No phone numbers or personal info is exchanged here, only user to user messaging.

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How to Clean Up your Digital Footprint

We live in a world where we feel the need to share everything…pictures, job status, when and where we are going on vacation, where we ate dinner…and the list goes on and on. So much of our personal information is available to the public, and that’s not a good thing. Between Facebook and Google’s data collection policies and the rise in identity theft, now would be a great time to clean up your digital footprint. You’re probably saying to yourself, “I use strong and unique passwords. I mark sketchy emails as spam. I lookout for phishing emails. I’ve got Cybersecurity 101 down pat.” But with new threats popping up all the time, there are more in depth steps you can take to protect yourself. And the most important one of all: Clean up your digital footprint.

Most people have old email accounts floating around, forgotten flash drives in a drawer, and years of downloads taking up space on a computer. Believe it or not, holding on to accounts and files that you don’t want any more needlessly exposes you to all sorts of risks. Your devices can be lost or stolen (or hacked), and big companies can suffer data breaches that incidentally expose your information. So the less there is out there, the better off you are. “The physical presence of data is so small that sometimes we don’t think about it as being clutter,” says Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance. “But we accumulate massive amounts of it, and some of it can be harmful if it gets lost or stolen.”

Here are some tips from experts on how to clean up your online data and improve your privacy:

1. Delete or Deactivate your Online Accounts

Think about all the shopping, entertainment and social media websites that you’ve registered an account on. Big ones like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are easy to remember (or they instantly log you in with a saved password), but the chances are that you won’t be able to remember every single account you’ve ever created. To delete most accounts, go to your account settings and look for an option to deactivate, cancel or remove your account. Most of the time it won’t be easy to find because they don’t want you to leave. They may even offer you an incentive to remain a member.

2. Cancel those App Accounts

Now that you’ve deleted your online accounts, time to delete your app accounts. Look for apps on your phone and tablet, streaming devices, gaming consoles, and computer that you don’t use anymore and shut them down. Do you still have an account with a messaging app you used once two years ago? Why is that calorie-counting app from 2014 still on your phone? Cancel and delete. That type of exposure is an unnecessary risk. But just because you deleted if off your phone, doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. Make sure you clean out and close your account with the app developer so it retains the smallest amount of data possible about you. Closing an account doesn’t mean that a company deletes all your data or eliminates the basic things it knows about you, but it keeps the account from staying active and potentially continuing to collect data.

3. Email Accounts

The most important account to consider is your email, the central data hub of your online life. Your email account is a valuable prize for a hacker, because it contains information about tons of other people (friends, family members, coworkers) in addition to yourself. Deleting emails you no longer need and exporting old emails you still want to the cloud or a hard drive is a smart way to reduce what would be compromised if your email was ever hacked. Virtually all email services offer ways to export your messages and other account data so you hold it locally and can delete it from the company’s servers. And don’t forget to delete old email accounts that you no longer use.

4. Destroy Old Devices

First, let’s address the physical devices. Destroy old CDs, flash drives, and external hard drives you don’t need anymore. Also consider old PCs, gaming consoles, and smart home gadgets…just make sure you back up anything you want from those devices before wiping them. Next, sort through your computer desktop and clean out your documents folder. Eliminating old PDFs of credit card statements or medical forms that you no longer need will go a long way toward keeping you safer.

We’re not telling you to part with data that is personally meaningful or useful, the goal is to pare down what you have so if your data is ever compromised, hackers aren’t able to easily access names, birthdays, and Social Security numbers. “When we talk about security, we often talk about protecting our own things,” Kaiser says. “But in reality, in the digital world we actually do sit on large amounts of information about other people, and that’s something to consider with decluttering and storing data more securely.”

5. Survey the Scene

Take a step back and try to think of anything you might be forgetting. Most email systems have search features allowing you to comb through your old messages. You can bulk-delete everything from before a certain date or everything from a particular contact. You should also regularly search your email for the last four digits of your Social Security number and delete any messages it appears in. “Think of the information you have saved,” the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team notes. “Is there banking or credit card account information? Tax returns? Passwords? Medical or other personal data? Personal photos? Sensitive corporate information? Depending on what kind of information an attacker can find, he or she may be able to use it maliciously.”

Privacy Tips

Now that you’ve cleaned up your online data, here are a few tips to help maximize your privacy in the future:

Instead of WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, consider using an encrypted open-source messenger app such as Signal or Telegram.
Delete unnecessary accounts and think carefully about making new ones
Use encrypted email services like Protonmail and Disroot instead of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft email
Ideally, use Mozilla Firefox or Brave as your web browser instead of Chrome
Use privacy add-ons with your browser including HTTPS Everywhere, Self Destructing Cookies, Ghostery and Privacy Badger
Don’t use simple passwords and never use the same password for every website

How Online Data & AI Help Fight Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is rampant in our country, but not often mentioned. It happens in the shadows, on the dark web, is hard to track, and tough to talk about.

The crime of human trafficking—defined by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as modern-day slavery that “involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act—is notoriously difficult to prosecute. Victims, who are mostly women and children, often lack legal documentation and many fear reprisals if they go to authorities. Therefore perpetrators go to great lengths to conceal their behavior by laundering money and keeping their operations quiet.

Recently, law enforcement agencies and organizations that help victims of human trafficking have begun using artificial intelligence tools to overcome this lack of visibility. By sorting through data and recognizing patterns faster than any human could, AI tools are helping activists and investigators crack down on buyers of sex, identify trafficking victims and follow illicit money trails.

“Imagine the techniques that Google and Facebook are using to make a profit—understanding people, the way they connect, what their interests are, what they might buy or the activities they engage in,” says Dan Lopresti, professor and chair of the department of science and engineering at Lehigh University’s P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. “We can apply those same techniques—data mining, text mining, what’s called graph mining—AI that’s being used for legitimate and really profitable purposes, to track these illicit behaviors.”

Lopresti is involved with the Regional Intelligence and Investigation Center (RIIC) in Allentown, PA. Launched in 2013, the RIIC has “revolutionized” the way area police departments “analyze and share collected data to solve crimes,” according to the office of Lehigh County District Attorney James Martin.

Lopresti, who is an expert in document analysis and pattern recognition, is working with RIIC Director Julia Kocis, prosecutors, law enforcement officials and other Rossin College computer science and engineering faculty members to help overcome the challenges of turning vast amounts of data, primarily from police incident reports, into something useable, despite limited resources.

“If an expert sits down and reads enough of these, he or she will find a common thread—this person is related to this place, which is related to this activity, which is related to this other person,” he says. “The trouble is, they’ve got millions of these reports and just don’t have enough time to read through them. We’re developing natural language techniques, text mining and data mining techniques that are oriented to processing lots of data to identify patterns of behavior that would reflect illegal activities related to human trafficking.”

Because human trafficking is a $150 billion-per-year criminal industry, many companies are joining the fight and helping out. IBM worked with the STOP THE TRAFFIK (STT) coalition to develop a new cloud-hosted data hub that allows financial institutions to run AI and machine learning tools against their data sets to detect “specific human trafficking terms and incidents.” AI also allows the data hub to take in open-source data — including thousands of news feeds each day — to help analysts more easily identify the characteristics of human trafficking incidents.

Entrepreneur Josh McAfee, a former law enforcement officer and loss-prevention executive, is the founder and CEO of McAfee Institute, a Peoria, Illinois-based business that trains corporations and law enforcement agencies to battle cybercrime and fraud. But what brings him the most satisfaction is locating victims of human trafficking.

Since 2011, his company has helped bring back about 1,900 human-trafficking victims, 1,000 of them children.

He now teaches a course on human trafficking to an average of 150 to 200 people a month. “We’re developing leaders in the classroom, so they can go out and utilize our techniques within their organizations. It multiplies our success and enables us to make a huge impact,” says McAfee. “Growing up, I always had a passion for law enforcement. I wanted to get out there and fight crime, get the bad guys–you know, help people. That’s why I became a law enforcement officer right out of college. To be able to do this kind of work in my business is everything to me. It’s what I was born to do.”