February 25, 2010

People are very confused about privacy

According to CNet, Anthony Stancl ran an interesting scheme:

Stancle had been accused of creating a Facebook profile belonging to a nonexistent teenage girl and then, between approximately the spring of 2007 and November of 2008, using it to convince more than 30 of his male classmates to send in nude photos or videos of themselves.

Stancl then reportedly threatened to post the photos or videos on the Internet if they didn’t engage in some sort of sexual activity with him. At least seven of them have said they were coerced into sex acts, which Stancl documented with a cell phone camera.

Stancl’s victims were teenage boys focused on sex — not exactly the world’s clearest thinkers. Even so, I find it remarkable that multiple people would:

  1. Send nude photographs of themselves to a stranger.
  2. Be so concerned about those photographs getting published online that they would submit to sexual blackmail.
  3. Allow the results of their sexual blackmail to be photographed.

Literally — WTF??

Comments

2 Responses to “People are very confused about privacy”

  1. Avi on February 25th, 2010 6:10 pm

    Wow, that’s breathtakingly stupid. But I have a teenage son, and he was planning to do something equally idiotic a couple of years ago. So I can’t say I’m actually surprised.

  2. A new attitude toward online reputation? | Text Technologies on March 28th, 2010 6:15 pm

    […] People are very confused about privacy Categories: Search engine optimization (SEO), Social software and online media  Subscribe to our complete feed! […]

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