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Myspace Lost Tons of Music and Data

If you are above the age of 30, it is more than likely that you had a Myspace account. Myspace was “the place to be” before Facebook came along. The question is: Do you know what happened to your Myspace account? Did you abandon it when you converted to Facebook? Or is it still floating around out there in cyberspace?

Chances are you never planned to go back to Myspace, but if you did, your plans have been altered. That may not necessarily be a bad thing if you posted embarrassing pictures or posts that may not be regarded highly by your current employers. A quick scan of social-media chatter reveals plenty of people expressing relief that their Myspace histories had been deleted. Snapchat and Instagram Stories have become popular for a reason — they let users post without worrying about adding skeletons to their closets. In an age when old tweets constantly resurface out of context and you can be canceled at a moment’s notice for anything you might have done at any point in your posting history, the obliteration of one’s Myspace history may come as a relief.

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But for those who used Myspace as a career launch site – such as numerous musicians and artists – the latest announcement has been rather upsetting. Myspace just recently revealed it lost 12 years’ worth of music uploaded to its site, following a server migration error — a loss potentially amounting to 50 million songs. The Los Angeles-based company, which was once a leading music-sharing platform, announced that content uploaded to its site from its inception in 2003 up until 2015 may no longer be accessible.

“As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace,” the company said in a statement on its website. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The site is credited with helping launch the careers of numerous international artists, including Kate Nash, Arctic Monkeys and Calvin Harris, who were discovered on the platform.

Steven Battelle, the former lead vocalist of British rock band LostAlone, expressed sadness at the data loss and said the platform played a pivotal role in the establishment of his group. “This makes me really sad, so much of the start of my band came from the exposure and community Mspace had,” he wrote on Twitter. “I still think it was the best platform for artists / bands. Just music and people who loved the music commenting on it.”

Generally speaking, big, mainstream data handlers like Myspace should be able to reliably store your data. They usually create backups and redundancies spread across multiple server farms. They should be able to revert after something like a failed server migration. If the website is going to make your data inaccessible by, say, ceasing operation, they should give you advance warning and the option to export your data. It should tell you proactively when there is a catastrophic screw-up. Myspace did none of these things, even though, even in its modern form, it almost certainly had the resources to do so.

Myspace has been in decline for years, unable to compete with other leading social media and music-sharing platforms including Facebook and YouTube, despite multiple redesigns of the site. In 2009, the platform employed approximately 1,600 people. It now has a staff of 150, according to the company website.

The Myspace debacle should be a lesson to younger people whose life revolves around social media: if it really truly matters, save it on a backup drive.

The Government Turns to Social Media for Social Security Fraud

Playing outside with your grandchildren, casting a fishing line or running a marathon can seem like harmless, healthy fun. But physical activity could lead to denial of Social Security disability benefits if your activity shows up on Facebook or Instagram. Is it fair for the government to go through your social media? On the other hand, is it fair for you to apply for benefits if you can do these activities?

These are all questions the Social Security Administration is weighing, as Acting Social Security Commissioner Nancy A. Berryhill has told Congress in written explanations over the last week. Facebook and other social media feeds are already being reviewed if agency investigators suspect someone is fraudulently collecting benefits and they are looking for corroboration, the agency said in the documents it gave to lawmakers. But now the agency is “evaluating how social media could be used by disability adjudicators in assessing the consistency and supportability of evidence in a claimant’s case file,” Berryhill said in the submission to Congress.

The idea has drawn praise as well as criticism — praise because more attention to people’s social media could cut down on fraud, some say. Fraud and abuse do exist in the program, and it should be weeded out to protect taxpayers and legitimate claimants.

The Pros

Mark Hinkle, acting press officer for the SSA, notes that the agency uses data analytics and predictive modeling to detect fraud, and has created new groups dedicated to detection and prevention. Asked to comment on plans for expanded use of social media to detect fraud, he confirmed that SSA investigative units already use social media, and that the agency has “studied strategies of other agencies and private entities to determine how social media might be used to evaluate disability applications.”

The Social Security Administration said that in December, 8.5 million people of all ages received a total of $10.5 billion in disability benefits, with an average monthly sum of $1,234. It said 68 percent of the private-sector workforce has no long-term disability insurance.

The risk of disability rises with age, and people are twice as likely to collect disability benefits at age 50 as at age 40 — and twice as likely at age 60 compared to age 50, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington think tank.

“Social media can provide valuable evidence to support or deny individuals’ disability claims,” Rachel Greszler, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, wrote last year. “For example, a disability claimant may say that she is unable to leave her home, while her social media pictures show her out and about regularly.”

In one case, a 57-year-old Louisiana man pleaded guilty last month to theft of government funds. He had received $2,177 a month in benefits — a total of $242,000 — while employed by companies that did demolition work and job site cleaning. He also operated heavy construction equipment. He told federal investigators that the companies had been registered in the names of family members, rather than his own name, “so y’all wouldn’t find out about it,” according to court records.

In its latest financial report, Social Security estimated that it made $3.4 billion in overpayments to disability insurance beneficiaries in 2017, in part because of their failure to report work activities. The program has been “riddled with problems, including fraud and abuse,” said Greszler. When people who can work collect benefits, she said, “it drains the system for those who truly cannot work and support themselves.”

The Cons

Advocates for people with disabilities say the use of social media in this way would be dangerous because photos posted there do not always provide reliable evidence of a person’s current condition. Someone may not want to upload a picture or video that shares how he or she deals with a disability on a daily basis.

Social media reviews could also delay the time it takes for applicants who are already out of work to be approved. “This proposal starts with the discriminatory assumption that people with disabilities do nothing socially in the community, or have lives, so that anything the person does on social media can be classified as some form of fraud,” said Eric Buehlmann, deputy executive director of public policy at the National Disability Rights Network, a nonprofit membership advocacy group. He told AARP that methods to detect fraud already exist. If the Social Security Administration “is interested in rooting out fraud,” Beuhlmann said, “spying on people’s social media accounts is not the way to do it.”

“It may be difficult to tell when a photograph was taken,” said Lisa D. Ekman, a lawyer who is the chairwoman of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, a coalition of advocacy groups. “Just because someone posted a photograph of them golfing or going fishing in February of 2019 does not mean that the activity occurred in 2019.”

Program statistics do not support the allegation that SSDI is riddled with fraud and abuse. In the government’s fiscal-year 2018, the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reported about $98 million in recoveries, fines, settlements/judgments, and restitution as a result of Social Security fraud investigations. The OIG states that most the recovered funds were from recipients of SSDI and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a means-tested welfare program for low-income seniors, blind and disabled people.

That sounds like big money. But in fiscal 2018, the SSA paid out $197 billion to beneficiaries of SSDI and SSI. And keep in mind that the recovered $98 million was for benefits paid out over several years, not just in 2018. SSA data shows that the rate of overpayments for all its programs was well under 1% of benefit payouts in each of the last three fiscal years – and not all improper payments are fraud.

More often, overpayments occur due to administrative delays at the SSA in making adjustments to benefit amounts due to errors and paperwork snafus. A federal government list of programs at highest risk for making improper payments compiled by the Office of Management and Budget does not even mention Social Security.

Greszler has readily acknowledged that fraud rates are low. “Outright fraud is actually a pretty small component of the program’s problems,” she said. “Most people perceive fraud as a big issue but what they might consider fraud – people receiving benefits when they have the ability to work – is often just abuse of the system by taking advantage of certain rules and structures that allow people who can perform some work to nevertheless receive benefits.”

What constitutes abuse of the rules? An example, she said, would be claiming SSDI and receiving unemployment benefits at the same time, or claiming based on the argument that a disability prevents a worker from performing certain types of jobs, Greszler and other SSDI critics often point to the rise of SSDI applications and award grants coincident with the rise of unemployment during the Great Recession as evidence of abuse.

Do You Speak Emoji?

Emojis are now a part of our culture and are being used as a way to communicate everything from emotions to soliciting drugs. Marketers are going as far as to mine emojis in social media the same way they mine data; to determine the emotion behind a brand. Some speculate it will morph into a language in and of itself. This is certainly true among criminals and drug dealers as we have seen first hand in our social media investigations. As we dig deeper into this subject, it is important to establish some baseline knowledge.

Let’s start with some history.

The most current statistics I have found on Emojis shows that there are now 2,623 official unicode emojis. Each day 5 BILLION emojis are used in Facebook Messenger alone and 60 million are used daily in Facebook.

Emojis were first used in Japan (the country where it originated) somewhere around 1997. In 1999 Shigetaka Kurita created the first widely-used set of emoji.

Emoji usage in marketing messages has rapidly increased at an annual growth rate of over 775 percent.

Can Emojis Be Used In Court?

We will be hearing much more on this subject, no doubt. Currently, this has been looked at by several law professors as well as attorneys and law enforcement. What if emojis have multiple meanings? How can one be sure it was meant for criminal purposes?

Between 2004 and 2019, there was an exponential rise in emoji and emoticon references in US court opinions, with over 30 percent of all cases appearing in 2018, according to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman, who has been tracking all of the references to “emoji” and “emoticon” that show up in US court opinions. So far, the emoji and emoticons have rarely been important enough to sway the direction of a case, but as they become more common, the ambiguity in how emoji are displayed and what we interpret emoji to mean could become a larger issue for courts to contend with.

Still, it’s rare for cases to turn on the interpretations of emoji. “They show up as evidence, the courts have to acknowledge their existence, but often they’re immaterial,” Goldman says. “That’s why many judges decide to say ‘emoji omitted’ because they don’t think it’s relevant to the case at all.” But emoji are a critical part of communication, and in cases where transcripts of online communication are being read to the jury, they need to be characterized as well instead of being skipped over. “You could imagine if you got a winky face following the text sentence, you’re going to read that sentence very differently than without the winky face,” he says.
The Verge: Emoji are showing up in court cases exponentially, and courts aren’t prepared

For now Emojis can be used by investigators through investigative consultants and software platforms as a “tip” that there may be something illegal going on. Like anything in social media, it is a piece of a larger puzzle, but one in which needs to be understood.

The Dark Web: What’s New?

Even if you haven’t heard of the term “dark web”, you can probably discern that it’s not a great place to be.

This anonymous, virtually untraceable area of the internet makes it ripe for illegal activity.

When you surf the internet, you’re just scratching the surface. “Only about 5% of the internet is actually indexed by search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing,”said Justin Yapp, a PhD student studying cyber security. The other 95% is the “deep web,” with most of the internet unreachable for search engines.

The dark web is an even smaller and more hidden chunk and requires special software — like Tor, which stands for “the onion router.” The name comes from the layers of encryption, which are like the layers of an onion. The information bounces from computer to computer around the world, peeling off encrypted layers until it reaches its destination. It’s anonymous and virtually untraceable — even for law enforcement. “There’s a lot of illegal activity that goes on,” Yapp said. The dark web is notorious for drugs, weapons, child porn and for selling stolen personal information.

Here’s what you should know about dark web websites:

There is bad stuff, and crackdowns means it’s harder to trust

Many dark web marketplaces for drugs and hacking services featured corporate-level customer service and customer reviews, making navigating simpler and safer for newbies. But now that law enforcement has begun to crack down, the experience is more dangerous. “The whole idea of this dark net marketplace, where people are able to review drugs that they’re buying from vendors and get up on a forum and say, ‘Yes, this is real’ or ‘No, this actually hurt me’—that’s been curtailed now that dark marketplaces have been taken offline,” says Radware’s Smith. There are still sites where drugs are reviewed, says Smith, but they have to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Also, many dark web drug manufacturers will also purchase pill presses and dyes, and create dangerous look-a-like drugs. “One of the more recent scares that I could cite would be Red Devil Xanax,” he said. “These were sold as some super Xanax bars, when in reality, they were nothing but horrible drugs designed to hurt you.”

Smith says that some traditional drug cartels make use of the dark web networks for distribution, “it takes away the middleman and allows the cartels to send from their own warehouses and distribute it if they want to. You know how there are lots of local IPA microbreweries?” he says. “We also have a lot of local micro-laboratories. In every city, there’s probably at least one kid that’s gotten smart and knows how to order drugs on the dark net, and make a small amount of drugs to sell to his local network.”

Not everything is for sale on the dark web

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about drugs here for a reason. Smith calls narcotics “the physical cornerstone” of the dark web; “cybercrime—selling exploits and vulnerabilities, web application attacks—that’s the digital cornerstone. Basically, I’d say a majority of the dark net is actually just drugs and kids talking about little crimes on forums.”

Some of the scarier sounding stuff you hear about being for sale is often just rumors. Firearms, for instance: as Smith puts it, “it would be easier for a criminal to purchase a gun in real life versus the internet. Going to the dark net is adding an extra step that isn’t necessary in the process. When you’re dealing with real criminals, they’re going to know someone that’s selling a gun.”

Some sites seem perfectly innocent

Matt Wilson, chief information security advisor at BTB Security, says “there is a tame/lame side to the dark web that would probably surprise most people. You can exchange some cooking recipes—with video!—send email, or read a book. People use the dark web for these benign things for a variety of reasons: a sense of community, avoiding surveillance or tracking of internet habits, or just to do something in a different way.”

Of course, not everything is so innocent, or else it wouldn’t be found on the dark web. Still, “you can’t just fire up your Tor browser and request 10,000 credit card records, or passwords to your neighbor’s webcam,” says Mukul Kumar, CISO and VP ofCyber Practice at Cavirin. “Most of the verified ‘sensitive’ data is only available to those that have been vetted or invited to certain groups.”

“There are alot of countries that block social media,” Yapp said. Even journalists working to spread content in countries where information is restricted, like China, use the dark web. “I would not recommend anybody go and try it unless they know what they’re doing,” Yapp said.

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Teacher Sex Crimes & Social Media

While there are many positives to the use of social media, there are just as many negatives. The rise in teacher performed sex acts has brought to light what advocates say is a life-threatening issue to children across the country.

Just recently, Cleveland County deputies arrested 25-year-old Emma Costner after they accused the former math teacher of performing sex acts with a 17-year-old student.

“This is a school safety issue that’s ignored,” Terri Miller, president of the Nevada-based group, Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct and Exploitation, said. “In 2016, there were 540 reports, and it spiked last year in 2017 to 698 reports.”

What is causing the sudden increase?

Experts believe one reason for this dramatic rise is social media, which makes it easier for teachers and students to communicate through text messages, Facebook and apps like Snapchat. Miller said parents should monitor their children’s phones and social media profiles and know what apps they are using at all times.

“Because you just don’t know who’s going to climb in bed with your children through that technology,” Miller said.

According to the most recent data from a nationwide survey of 8th- to 11th-grade students asking about incidents of unwanted sexual attention at school, nearly 7%, or about 3.5 million students, report having physical sexual contact from an adult, most commonly a teacher or coach, in their school (Shakeshaft, 2004). These students describe unwanted touching on breasts, buttocks, and genitals; forced kissing and hugging; oral/genital contact; and vaginal and anal intercourse.

Reports of educator misconduct that doesn’t include touching a student, but rather sharing pornography, sexual talk, sexual exhibitionism, or masturbation raised the proportion to about 10%, or nearly 4.5 million students (Shakeshaft, 2004).

What are the warning signs of educator sexual misconduct?

The phrase “educator sexual misconduct” was coined about a decade ago and envelops a range of inappropriate to criminal sexual behaviors that include verbal, visual, and physical misconduct. While some behavior is not criminal, all of the behaviors are unacceptable when directed by an adult, especially a school-based authority figure, toward a student.

What is most alarming is that education and programs to stop sexual abuse are directed toward children, asking them to do what adults will not — report the incidents. While children need to learn risky situation identification and refusal skills, it should not be their responsibility to ensure schools are safe places for all students. That falls on teachers and administrators.

Educators can prevent much of the sexual misconduct in schools if they know how to recognize and respond to suspicious patterns and if administrators enforce an environment of high expectations for behavior. Law enforcement recommends parents have frequent, proactive conversations with their kids about the dangers of being online. It’s one of the only ways that are effective to prevent a child from becoming a child victim because once the predator is engaged with the child, it almost is never reported– even if a sexual assault occurs.

“The child rarely reports to the parent or law enforcement, Hey I’ve been sending nude photos or I’ve been sexting with these people and now they’re extorting me or this person wants to meet me, is that a good idea?” Agent Neville said.

Agent Neville continued by saying law enforcement typically only learns of child sexual assault incidents because of parents stumble upon what has been happening. If that never happens, though, the assault will likely go unreported.