BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – SURFING the internet and its online services is one of the most popular and addictive activity many people are now involved in. Websites such as Tagged.com, Hi5.com, Myspace.com and Facebook.com encourage socialisation, interacting with friends and finding old ones with whom you might have lost contact.
Facebook.com has over 400 million profiles and has become the most popular social website. It was created in September 2006 by Harvard University students.
It is available to anyone over the age of 13 who has a valid email address and they can add friends, send them messages and update their personal profiles to notify those friends about themselves.
Additionally, users can join networks organised by workplace, school, or college. The website has certainly become addictive to many persons, especially Kittitians and Nevisians, who visit it daily to upload photos, post something that is on their mind or comment on their friends’ photos and write on their ‘walls’.
However, although the profile is good for socialising and excellent for finding old friends and making new acquaintances, a growing number of fake profile users began surfacing recently.
Several persons have become victims of fake profiles that were created to scandalise and defame their character.
They do so maliciously by using the victims’ photos and add persons to the profile who they think are associated with the individual they target.
One of those victims included a 25-year-old woman, who said that someone stole her photos from her profile and created another about her.
“The profile carried my name and also my picture, and the person started to add people that knew me and were my friends and began making up things about me on the profile,” she said.
“They said I was a whore; I have sex with men for money. I support my boyfriend financially because that’s the only way I get to keep him, and all kinda things.
“It was obvious to me who it was. I wasn’t 100 percent sure but I suspected the person to be my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. She is that type of person and she was bitter after their break-up. At first I was ashamed and felt bad because I didn’t want anyone having that kind of impression of me.
But when I figured it was done out of jealousy and envy and who was behind it, I just paid it no mind. Facebook has this option about reporting fake profiles, so I got my friends to do it and after a week the profile was gone and things were back to normal.”
Kishana said she too was a victim of a fake profile.
“I was devastated! I felt so embarrassed and ashamed, and people were adding the person which made things worst. Why would they encourage the person by adding them? Even after they realised it was a fake profile they didn’t delete the person. I guess people like news.
I had no idea who created the profile because I wasn’t in anything with anyone. It took me a while to come to terms with it, and after a few talks with sensible people I was empowered and the fake profile didn’t bother me anymore,” she said.
Recently in St. Kitts, a fake profile by the name of “Its Gossip girl” was created on www.facebook.com which gossip about almost everything and everyone.
The profile was up for several weeks before Facebook Inc. finally disabled the account. However, the damage was already done as it targeted a lot of young women, especially those who attended the Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College.
The most obscene and degrading information was shared about the society’s young women, which included who were ‘gang-banged’, who loves to perform oral sex on various young boys or men, who were undercover homosexuals and who already had abortions.
What was even worse is the number of persons who commented on the statuses which appeared as if they encouraged the character assassination of the victims.
They did so by replying to these malicious posts with “lol” (laughing out loud), “lmao” (laughing my a.. off), “for real?”, “can’t believe she is like that” and “tory high”.
Sometimes the victims would even comment on the statuses on ‘Its Gossip girl’ and either threaten the persons or laugh it off.
One person, who commented on something that included information about her boyfriend cheating on her, said in what appeared to be a non-caring manner, “Well he all over the place.”
Another person, in a sarcastic tone, responded, “Please continue to post things that I don’t know about myself.”
The profile kept growing with fans and the drama intensified as fake profiles began emerging and posting information on the ‘Its Gossip girl’ page.
“You can say what you want,” said a teenager who added the profile to her account. “Gossip Girl to the world! It was sweet. And if there wasn’t some truth to it, it wouldn’t have been posted about the person. Everyone complaining but we forgetting one thing, most of the times these people are doing or were involved in these things,” the teenager continued.
When asked how she would have felt or what she would have done if something so misleading and scandalous was posted about her, she said it would not have bothered her.
“Once I know it ain’t true. Look right, I ain’t trying to please a soul, so whoever want make up things about me that’s their business; it wouldn’t bother me,” she said.
Many persons said that fake profiles were nothing new as some of them were created on Hi5, which had no privacy settings when it started out but has recently been upgraded to control who could view a person’s profile and photos.
Another popular trait is the circulation of photos of women on the internet who are involved in sexual acts or in the nude.
A number of females have been victims of such; in that they take personal pictures for their boyfriends and after the relationship ends, or rarely when the couple is still together, the photos begin to surface.
Even celebrities have been victims of nude photos and even videos of themselves circulating online, including Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Rihanna.
Although those photos and sex tapes might help the careers of the celebrities, it brings shame and embarrassment to ordinary people.
According to the Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) with responsibility for Crime, Joseph Liburd, anyone that creates falsified information about another which induces annoyance, abuse or insult is an offence.
“But you will have to find out who the person that is doing it is, otherwise we wouldn’t have anything to work on. Once someone makes a complaint, the police will help in investigating it and see if they can get to the root to it,” he said.
Liburd said that he heard about the ‘Gossip girl’ page and there have been cases where IP addresses have been provided by the internet company to help find the perpetrators.
“There have been in some cases where we were able to work with the internet provider and get the IP address, and called in suspects and talked to them about the situation although no arrests have been made to my knowledge, but they were warned and cautioned,” he said.
Assisting authorities with the IP addresses to help identify the perpetrator is not always easy, as there are policies in place by the websites.
In terms of photos and videos circulating, Liburd said women have to be more careful and should discontinue that behaviour.
“People need to be wise and sensible.
There is no need for people to be taking nude pictures. If you are with a boy it is likely that he will see you naked, so why take pictures with him naked? Its stupidness to the highest degree! If someone takes pictures in the nude they are taking a chance that the pics will be moved to somewhere else, and in this technological stage it can hit the web pages,” he said.
The ACP said that in some instances a civil case could be brought against the perpetrator. “It’s more of a civil matter that you can bring against the person. Yes, it’s wrong, because if I give you something in privacy it should remain in privacy. But I’m hoping that people would stop take these pictures,” he said.
One year ago, a Vogue cover girl sued Google in an attempt to unmask the blogger who trashed her as a "skank" and an "old hag".
According to nydailynews.com, Liskula Cohen, a blond beauty who has modelled for Giorgio Armani and Versace, was forcing Google to reveal who slammed her online as the "#1 skanky superstar" on a blog hosted by the search engine's subsidiary.
“It's petty, it's stupid and it's pathetic,” the website reported Cohen as saying. "And when I do find out who did this, at least I'll know who my enemies are."
The defamation suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, seek a court order compelling Google and its Blogger.com service to identify whoever led the vicious Internet assault against Cohen.
Her lawyer, Steven Wagner, conceded that it is not easy to identify bloggers who lob insults anonymously, as New York courts have generally declined to force them into the light.
