Tag: online impersonation

The Growing Threat of Online Harassment

Online harassment has become a significant issue in today’s digital age, affecting people across various platforms and communities. According to Pew Research, 41% of Americans have personally experienced some form of online harassment. The study was published in 2021, although I am sure that number has increased over the last few years. Online harassment refers to abusive behavior conducted through digital platforms with the intent to harm, intimidate, or otherwise distress an individual or group. It encompasses a wide range of harmful activities facilitated by the internet, including social media, messaging apps, forums, and other online communication tools.

Types of Online Harassment

Online harassment can take many forms, each with its own methods and impact. Here are the main types of online harassment:

1. Cyberbullying
  • Definition: Repeated, deliberate harm inflicted through electronic means.
  • Examples: Sending threatening messages, spreading rumors online, posting hurtful comments or images.
2. Trolling
  • Definition: Intentionally provoking or upsetting people online to elicit emotional responses.
  • Examples: Posting inflammatory comments in forums, making offensive jokes, or derailing conversations with disruptive remarks.
3. Doxxing
  • Definition: Publishing private or identifying information about an individual without their consent.
  • Examples: Sharing someone’s home address, phone number, or personal photographs.
4. Swatting
  • Definition: Making false reports to emergency services to have them dispatched to someone’s address.
  • Examples: Reporting a fake hostage situation or bomb threat, leading to police SWAT teams being sent to the victim’s home.
5. Hate Speech
  • Definition: Online communication that demeans individuals or groups based on attributes like race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.
  • Examples: Racist slurs, anti-Semitic comments, sexist remarks, and homophobic language.
6. Sexual Harassment
  • Definition: Unwanted sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.
  • Examples: Sending unsolicited explicit images, making sexually suggestive comments, or stalking someone online.
7. Impersonation
  • Definition: Pretending to be someone else online to deceive others.
  • Examples: Creating fake profiles, sending messages under another person’s name, or posting as someone else to damage their reputation.
8. Cyberstalking
  • Definition: The use of the internet or other electronic means to stalk or harass an individual, group, or organization.
  • Examples: Repeatedly sending threatening emails, monitoring someone’s online activities, or using social media to track someone’s whereabouts.
9. Flaming
  • Definition: Posting hostile and insulting messages online, often in forums or social media platforms.
  • Examples: Aggressive and heated arguments, personal attacks, or profanity-laden tirades.
10. Catfishing
  • Definition: Creating a fake online persona to deceive others, typically for romantic or financial gain.
  • Examples: Pretending to be someone else on dating sites, forming online relationships under false pretenses, or soliciting money under a false identity.
11. Mobbing
  • Definition: Collective harassment by a group targeting an individual.
  • Examples: Coordinated attacks or campaigns against someone on social media, mass reporting of someone’s account to get them banned.
12. Outing
  • Definition: Publicly revealing someone’s private, sensitive, or embarrassing information without their consent.
  • Examples: Disclosing someone’s sexual orientation, sharing private messages or images, or revealing someone’s medical condition.
13. Online Shaming
  • Definition: Publicly humiliating someone online for their behavior or actions.
  • Examples: Viral posts calling out someone’s behavior, mass sharing of embarrassing videos, or targeted hashtag campaigns.
14. Gaslighting
  • Definition: Manipulating someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.
  • Examples: Denying previous online interactions, altering messages or posts to make someone doubt their memory, or spreading false information to discredit someone.

Understanding these various forms of online harassment is crucial for recognizing and combating them effectively.

The first place to start is to document everything should this happen to you or to a client of yours. Hire us to do a deep dive. Even the most skilled at this can mess up and it sometimes is found in the smallest little detail. We can help!

Fake Profiles & Online Impersonation

When watching my local news the other evening, I heard of a case that really surprised me. A Town Commissioner of a small town in North Carolina, disagreed with his fellow board members over a specific topic. So much so, that he decided to create a fake Facebook profile and use it to harrass and argue with residents. Later, he admitted using a Charlotte area businessman’s real name & real profile picture. The surprising part of this is that we expect this from scammers, but not someone who would be sitting on a board of a city or town. It seems that these days, anything is possible. Being proactive is a must.

Online Impersonation Tricks

  1. Facebook Marketplace: Fake ads on the site have become a real problem. Some of the ads look like they are from legitimate businesses such as Home Depot, Lowes, etc.. They make the post look very real, using lots of pictures. The Better Business Bureau says the fake ads are common and they get thousands of complaints each year. “Impersonation is one of the key factors of what scammers love to do,” Sarah Wetzel of the BBB said. “They love to impersonate those well-known companies because that way they already have a foot in the door with the consumers.”
Source: Digital Information World

2. Rental Scams: Scammers ( who operate anywhere in the world ) can advertise a fake rental online. Next, they add a sense of urgency to attempt to get a deposit on the property. They will use excuses as to why they can not meet you in person. They also make sure to tell you that several people are looking at the property. Nationally, over 230 rental scams have been reported this year, up from the same time last year. Victims report losing an average of $550.

Better Business Bureau offers these tips:

  • Do an online search for the landlord’s email and phone number. If the same ad is listed in other cities, that’s a red flag.
  • If you can’t see the property in person, try to find someone you trust to go and confirm the unit is what’s being advertised online.
  • Don’t fall for deals that are too good to be true. If a unit is well below market rate or promising extra amenities than normal, it could be a red flag.
  • Be wary of required payments through cash transfer apps. Peer to peer apps are meant to be used with people you know.

Use the Better Business Bureau’s scam tracker as a tool to both report and prevent scam.

3. Catfishing: When someone creates a fake identity online for the purpose of starting a relationship. They then use this as a way to gain interest and confidence so they can scam the person out of money. Social Catfish is a software company that works to help people who believe they have been the victim of catfishing. It is one of the many software platforms we use at eChatter when conducting online research. They also have a great reverse image tool within the platform.

Impersonation of a Business

This is sometimes called Domain Spoofing. When done correctly, it can damage a business’ reputation while scamming consumers who fall for their pitch. All while impersonating the business. Two of the most common ways is cybersquatting and typosquatting.

  • Cybersquatting: Scammers use already established business websites and copy them to look just like the real website. They then sell counterfeit products.
  • Typosquatting: Scammers register a domain name similar to that of the legitimate business. They purposely use typo errors to change it but at first glance, people take it as the legitimate company’s website. This is sometimes used to redirect someone to a competitor’s website or try to collect ad revenue.

This just scratches the surface of the many ways scammers use the web and social media. It is a subject we will continue to write about in the future, so check back often for updates.