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Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

bloomberg.com

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Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#141

Post by stefs »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #112
Animats wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta was correct. "Exigent circumstances" to the 4th amendment warrant requirement did not apply, because there was no known potential victim at risk. So the cops needed to have a judge sign a warrant. Didn't take long.

Legally correct maybe, but morally?

that's a slippery slope and exactly why we have a legal framework. "give me hsbauauvhabzbs private messages because he might send CP and thus it's your moral duty!" can be applied to everything. "oh, we didn't find any CP but we now still have their private correspondence on file."

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#142

Post by stefs »

david-gpu wrote: post #126
anal_reactor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic rule of online safety is not to meet people from the internet IRL and even if, never to get into their cars. And yet, the business of calling strangers over the internet specifically to get into their cars somehow grew into a 200 billion dollar industry. Strange world, isn't it.

Because there is a corporate third party that can identify both the driver and the customer. Moreso the driver than the customer, but then again the driver can have cameras in the vehicle and doesn't carry cash like a taxi does, so they are not in any significant danger either.

online dating also depends on meeting people IRL. afaik, my okcupid profile was not tied to a real identity for most of the time.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#143

Post by marci »

jpsouth wrote: post #100
marci wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how the hell would a teacher have access to the image to forward to the parents? By accident? The teacher and the and the other teen have the same first or last name, or the next one in the contact list, or the autofill rearranged just before clicking, or just one missclick... there are so many ways it could have happened.

Then report it to the police, don’t forward a naked image of someone’s child to them? Not only is it likely distribution of CP, it’s also an insane thing to do. As Doreen said, she doesn’t want to see her lads nudes. I’m pretty sure my mother doesn’t want to see my knob either, who in their right mind would forward that to anywhere but law enforcement? Not to mention your absolute stretch of a scenario. Do kids typic…

The grand-parent (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40061547) :

> It’s more complicated than that. Due to a new law in Germany, a teacher getting to know that these images are floating around and forwarding them to the respective parent could be charged for distributing child porn.

I was only adressing how this hypothetical teacher could have had access to it, not what they should do about it, since you were making very strong suppositions about it.

> Do kids typically have their teachers phone numbers in their contacts? Have them added on Facebook? Follow them on Insta?

Is it that rare for some teacher (even in high school) to receive some of their students work online? And didn't the Covid situation with remote classes, Zoom, etc, made it possible for such a thing (students having some way of contacting their teachers online) to be way more common now than before?

Anyway, not sure anything I can say could change your mind.

Edit: About what should the teacher do in that case, this was my assumption, I may be wrong, but I think when @pflenker was mentionning this law, they only tried to put it in a scenario in relation with the thread were we could think that child pronography wasn't involved, similar to when @DoreenMichele was mentionning the fact that a teenager sharing (with consent) a nude with other teenagers should not be charged and labeled as CP.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#144

Post by analyte123 »

The victim's parents would technically have been guilty of a felony if this happened today, by failing to lock up the firearm and the minor causing injury to another, including their own self [1]. Michigan's safe storage law was not in effect in 2022, but the truth stands that guns really need to be locked up when there are teens around. For some reason the narrative has been on 6-year-olds accidentally picking up a gun, but that type of accidental child firearm death is absolutely dwarfed by teen firearm suicides.

[1] https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/-/media/Project/Websites/mdhh...

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#145

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

master-lincoln wrote: post #125
gttalbot wrote: post #46

Why would Facebook not just block messages from Nigeria to rando North American towns at this point? Shouldn't the network analysis required to detect this sort of crime ring be a slam-dunk at this point? I don't get how this is still even possible.

Why shouldn't people in Nigeria be able to communicate with people from random North American towns? Because there are some criminals in a geographical area you want to exclude the whole area? Why don't you demand a US-only internet instead?

Correct. Yet you can easily inform the end user, to get informed consent.

"NOTICE: The user appears to be in XXX, Nigeria. Beware of scams or impersonations by people hijacking your friend's accounts"

But Social media companies would never do this because it would destroy their so called "brand-trust"

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#146

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

hannofcart wrote: post #24

While my heart goes out to all the victims' families, what are platforms like Facebook supposed to do here? Are they supposed to monitor the content of the chats? Some would call that eavesdropping. The sad fact is that desperate people exist. And these desperate people are willing to do despicable things to make a buck.

You can easily inform the end user, so the conversation is transparent and the victim is giving implicit, informed consent.

"NOTICE: The user appears to be in XXX, Nigeria. The User's hometown and usual IP is XXX , USA. Beware of scams or impersonations by people hijacking your friend's accounts"

But Social media companies would never do this because it would destroy their so called "brand-trust"

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#147

Post by jpsouth »

marci wrote: post #143
jpsouth wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then report it to the police, don’t forward a naked image of someone’s child to them? Not only is it likely distribution of CP, it’s also an insane thing to do. As Doreen said, she doesn’t want to see her lads nudes. I’m pretty sure my mother doesn’t want to see my knob either, who in their right mind would forward that to anywhere but law enforcement? Not to mention your absolute stretch of a scenario. Do kids typic…

The grand-parent ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40061547 ) : > It’s more complicated than that. Due to a new law in Germany, a teacher getting to know that these images are floating around and forwarding them to the respective parent could be charged for distributing child porn. I was only adressing how this hypothetical teacher could have had access to it, not what they should do about it, since you were mak…

I'm quite confused how forwarding a naked picture of an underage person to literally anyone, except a dedicated law enforcement team, wouldn't have already been distributing it.

>Is it that rare for some teacher (even in high school) to receive some of their students work online?

It's been a while, but when I worked in the education sector we had systems for students to upload their work, get graded, feedback, reports etc. Yeah, you could upload .pngs and .jpgs but it's hardly 'the next contact in the list' or 'maybe they had the same first or last name' in those scenarios, you upload the work for specific classes/courses. Obviously that's a single system, I don't know the full scope of what schools use these days.

> Anyway, not sure anything I can say could change your mind.

No, nothing will change my mind that forwarding nude pictures of minors to literally anyone other than a law enforcement case handler is acceptable.

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#148

Post by mthoms »

andersa wrote: post #138
imtringued wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You go on a dating app, a girl responds with her nudes and you send yours. It turns out it was a guy looking to extort you.

> You go on a dating app, a girl responds with her nudes My first assumption would be the "girl" is a bot and the image generated by AI until proven otherwise, i.e. by meeting up at a public location and seeing it's a real person from my country. Am I too paranoid? It sure feels like the dead internet theory is just about to get real and we should act accordingly.

This (and your grandparent comment) seem like such an unhelpful line of commentary. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt but the vibe I get from those two comments is: "I wouldn't fall for it, therefore other people's kids should know better. It's so obvious!".

People who are exposed to this line of thinking will now be doubly ashamed if they fall for this, making them even less likely to ask for help.

There's a real world parallel in Search and Rescue operations that I'm personally familiar with: https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2021/01/17/shaming-those-who-n...

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#149

Post by mthoms »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #145
master-lincoln wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't people in Nigeria be able to communicate with people from random North American towns? Because there are some criminals in a geographical area you want to exclude the whole area? Why don't you demand a US-only internet instead?

Correct. Yet you can easily inform the end user, to get informed consent. "NOTICE: The user appears to be in XXX, Nigeria. Beware of scams or impersonations by people hijacking your friend's accounts" But Social media companies would never do this because it would destroy their so called "brand-trust"

This seems like a good idea. The other variation to cover would be "this person appears to be connecting from a known VPN... [insert further explanation/warning here]"

Re: Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide

#150

Post by marci »

jpsouth wrote: post #147
marci wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grand-parent ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40061547 ) : > It’s more complicated than that. Due to a new law in Germany, a teacher getting to know that these images are floating around and forwarding them to the respective parent could be charged for distributing child porn. I was only adressing how this hypothetical teacher could have had access to it, not what they should do about it, since you were mak…

I'm quite confused how forwarding a naked picture of an underage person to literally anyone, except a dedicated law enforcement team, wouldn't have already been distributing it. >Is it that rare for some teacher (even in high school) to receive some of their students work online? It's been a while, but when I worked in the education sector we had systems for students to upload their work, get graded, feedback, report…

> No, nothing will change my mind that forwarding nude pictures of minors to literally anyone other than a law enforcement case handler is acceptable.

Who made the case it was acceptable?

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