Purge? WTF?! Yet another form of cyberbullying

Wow! Social media has spawned a new form of cyberbullying, and surprise, surprise, it tends to focus on females. Purge happened worldwide on Facebook between July 17 and 19, with supposedly anonymous posts saying whatever folks liked about anybody they wanted, tagging and posting images. I think it started as a promo for a new movie that was just being released, "The Purge: Anarchy." The Purge for some may have been about anarchy and fighting power, from a few posts I saw. But apparently it quickly turned into a misogynistic woman-bash, posting and trading nude images and videos. Instagram was involved in the Purge as well. The Guardian is on the story. Their story focuses on Twitter, and the use of images as "revenge porn" where exes post nude images of their former lovers on social media.

It is new enough as a term that it's hard to search for online, but you can find Instagram links and there is a Twitter hashtag #stopthepurge. I stumbled on this sad new phenomenon because a Taunton, Massachusetts 14 year old (girl, of course -- did you have to ask?) committed suicide this summer, apparently after something like a purge attack. See story here from the Patriot Ledger. There seem to be several local purge attacks that boiled along after the big Facebook one. There was a Brockton Purge, for instance (a small town south of Boston), and I found a reference to a Kansas City Purge as well.

Apparently, ex-boyfriends (ex-girlfriends, too, I suppose, though I haven't seen an example) who received nude images from women while still in a relationship take revenge by posting them after the relationship breaks up. Then they post the nude images widely, with ugly commentary. Classy move.

Too late to learn this important lesson: You are going to go through a number of relationships in your life, before you (hopefully) end in a long-term happy marriage. Don't hand out nude images to everybody you link up with along the way! You might think he's the ONE, but there is just no hurry to supply him with nude images (no matter what he says). If he is Mr. Right, he won't be badgering you for nude pix, honey!

There are a number of posts claiming different numbers of suicides, arrests, homicides connected with "The Purge." It is not clear how many, if any really happened. It is true, however, that many teen suicides have been connected to sexting, which is basically what much of the Purge harassment turned into. It's easy to say that a suicide in response to such public shaming is an over-reaction. But on the Internet, you cannot get the image back. Once it's out there, it's out of your control. And even if the first poster regrets his action and removes the post. Even if Facebook removes all the posts that can be found, these images proliferate and scatter beyond recall. That image really is out there, forever.

What a hateful, misogynistic thing.

Click Farms - diluting social media

The Associated Press did an investigative report on all those Facebook Likes and it turns out (I am Shocked! Shocked I tell you!) that they are not all genuine.

The Boston Globe has a nice version of the story. It does not seem to have run in many papers - I found lots of little "Five things to Know About Click Farms" but this is an in-depth story about the pervasive problem and how it undermines the value of Google Plus and Facebook Likes, Retweets and other methods that social medias have developed for users to how how much play either they, individually, or a particular bon mot are getting. And the story is interesting, not just to see what the various players are doing in the weapons race on each side to outwit each other, but to discover WHO is using click farms.

For instance, would you be interested to know that the U.S. Department of State dropped $630,000 in 2013 to boost its Facebook numbers? It stopped after an inspector general (thank you, thank you!) criticized this use of tax dollars. I mean, who are they competing against?!! It's not as though I can choose a different country's state department! Or maybe choose a different government agency to represent me to the world? Sheesh! Should we lay this at John Kerry's door or is this some individual agency wonk run amok? The result was that the U.S. Dept. of State was a fave in Cairo.*
Ta Da.


*(click on the LIKES and it will take you to a page that will analyze the numbers behind it. This week, for instance, the numbers dropped from a recent high Dec, 5 - 11. But the most people who "like" the DOS are in Washington, DC which seems more believable, unless there is a click farm there, too). The image is the Facebook page this day for Dept of State, showing the Likes.

Living Social Hack and AP Twitter Account Hacked

The website, LivingSocial, a daily deals site, was hacked late yesterday.  The original report came from AllThingsD.com, and includes the text of an e-mail the CEO sent to staff and now the public. No credit card data or merchant financial information was accessed, which must mean that they stored them on a separate server.  The cyberattack affected 50 million users (all users except those in Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and the Phillipines, which use different services with separate servers).  The attackers netted millions of user names, birthdates, e-mail and passwords.

The website now greets users with an announcement of the attack, and recommendation that users change their passwords.  The announcement notes that passwords are coded, and the CEO's e-mail says they have been "hashed and salted."  This mean they use an algorithm to code, or "hash" the passwords. Salting means that each user who uses the same password would have their password "hashed" into a different coded version.  However, those with passwords which are too easy may make it easy for the hackers to guess, since the hashing algorithm is known.  Hackers can use an online dictionary and a computer to try to guess multiple passwords in just a few seconds.  But because multiple passwords set to "password" would each have a different hashed version, the hackers will have to devote considerably more time to cracking passwords.

CNN Money Tech reports that a different cyberattack on the Twitter account of the Associated Press.  The hackers in that case planted a false report that President Obama had been injured in two explosions at the White House.   AP suspended their Twitter account, with an announcement that the report was false. However, the attack shows up security weaknesses with Twitter, which had been discussed for some time by security analysts with concern.  Apparently, unlike Facebook and Dropbox, among other sites which offer the option, Twitter does not yet require a "two-step authentication" process.

A two-step authentication, done properly, requires a combination of two out of three types of information:
1.  Who you are (physical ID for instance, or fingerprint scan or facial recognition now on many laptops)
2. What you have (a gadget that generates a code, or a one-time password provided in a list by the website for users, for instance),
3.  What you know (passwords, mother's maiden name for a security question, for example)

For instance, a good two-step authentication procedure might require not only your password, but also an individually created key, which might be stored only on a user's phone. The user sends the secret key along with their password.  A lower tech alternative to the gadget code is the list of passwords provided separately to users. A user would input one of the codes and mark it off the list.  When a user runs low on the number of provided by the website, they request a new list.  As long as the two items are received within a short time (approximately 30 seconds), the system will accept the combination log-in.  The CNN article notes that Twitter had advertised for engineers to develop a two-step security process, but apparently this has not yet been implemented.

Another hack previously compromised Fox News' Twitter account. In that case, the hacked tweet was that President Obama had been assassinated. The recent fake tweet actually caused a brief downturn in the stockmarket. According to the CNN report,  Twitter's response to these and various other hacks on corporate Twitter accounts has been to urge more care.  What they need is to implement better security.

The decoration for this post is from Wikipedia, which notes it was designed in the late 1990's by Dagmar D'Surreal, as a logo for the PhreakNIC annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Many thanks to my son, Joe McKenzie, for technical explanations made easy.

Twitter achieves granular tweet blocking & marks blocked tweets

From the Twitter blog:

As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

There’s more information in our Help pages, both on our Policy and about Your Account Settings.

One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can't. The Tweets must continue to flow.

If a tweet is withheld, the update note to the blog says that users will see an alert box that says “Tweet withheld” or “@Username withheld” in place of the affected Tweet or account. Tweets cannot be censored as they are entered, says the blog. There are simply too many. This will apparently only come up if Twitter is notified by a host country that there is problematic content that must be removed, and so a tweet will come down after the fact.

This is a timely development since it about one year after Twitter began to be so important in the Arab Spring efforts in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, some of which made efforts to globally block all tweets.