Internet vigilantism

Internet vigilantism is the phenomenon of vigilantic acts taken through the Internet (the communication network or its service providers) or carried out using applications (World Wide Web, e-mail) that depend on the Internet. The term encompasses vigilantism against scams, crimes, and non-Internet related behavior.

Some have suggested that the internet's lack of central control has prompted a tendency towards vigilante reactions against certain behaviors in the same way that they have prompted those behaviors to occur in the first place.

Methods

The following are methods of Internet vigilantism that have been used or proposed for use:

Scam baiting

Main article: Scam baiting

Scam baiting is the practice of feigning interest in a scam in order to manipulate the scammer behind it. The purpose of scam baiting might be to waste the scammers' time, embarrass him or her, cause them to reveal information which can be passed on to legal authorities in the hope that they will be prosecuted, get them to spend money, or simply to amuse the baiter.

Scam baiting emerged in response to e-mail based frauds such as the common Nigerian 419 scam. Many websites publish transcripts of correspondences between baiters and scammers, and also publish their "trophies" online, which include videos and images scam baiters have obtained from scammers.

Public shaming

The social networking tools of the World Wide Web have been used as a tool to easily and widely publicize instances of perceived anti-social behavior.

David Furlow, chairman of the Media, Privacy and Defamation Committee of the American Bar Association, has identified the potential privacy concerns raised by websites facilitating the distribution of information that is not part of the public record (documents filed with a government agency), and has said that such websites "just [give] a forum to people whose statements may not reflect truth."

Notable examples

YouTube cat abuse incident

A video of a young male physically abusing a cat was posted on YouTube. After 30,000 views, YouTube removed the video and blocked the hosting account. Anonymous members investigated, identifying the individual as Kenny Glenn and reported him to local law enforcement. Two minors were arrested on charges of cruelty to animals.

Dog Poop Girl

In 2005 in South Korea, bloggers targeted a woman who refused to clean up when her dog defecated on the floor of a Seoul subway car, labeling her "dog poop girl" (rough translation into English). Another commuter had taken a photograph of the woman and her dog, and posted it on a popular Korean website. Within days, she had been identified by internet vigilantes, and much of her personal information was exposed on the World Wide Web in an attempt to punish her for the offense. The story received mainstream attention when it was widely reported in South Korean media, and was discussed in Korean communities in the United States as well. The public humiliation led the woman to quit her university, according to reports.

The reaction by Korean citizens to the incident prompted several Korean newspapers to run editorials voicing concern over Internet vigilantism. One paper quoted Daniel Solove as saying that the woman was the victim of a "cyber-posse, tracking down norm violators and branding them with digital Scarlet Letters." Another called it an "Internet witch-hunt," and went on to say that "the Internet is turning the whole society into a kangaroo court."

Evan Guttman and the Stolen Sidekick

Other notable instances also include the case of Evan Guttman and his friend's stolen Sidekick II smartphone, and the case of Jesse McPherson and his stolen Xbox 360, Powerbook, and TV.

Amir Massoud Tofangsazan

Amir Tofangsazan is a resident of Barnet, United Kingdom of Iranian origin who is alleged to have defrauded Thomas Sawyer, an eBay buyer also in the UK. In an example of Internet vigilantism, Sawyer erected a satirical blog and popularized it in order to shame Tofangsazan into refunding his money and apologizing. The Blogger username he used is laptopguy.

Sawyer allegedly received, although two months late, a laptop of lower specifications than those advertised. Furthermore, the appliance was allegedly not operable even with the new charger it required. Sawyer was eventually able to recover data stored on the hard disk of the laptop, upon which it is claimed that he discovered numerous items of personal and financial information relating to Amir and his family, as well as pornography (including images depicting foot fetishism and male homosexuality), and what appear to be camera phone images of the legs of women on the London Underground. He was also able to gain access to Amir's email, and mass-mail contacts in his address book with instructions on how to access a blog featuring the aforementioned photos and information.

In October 2009, Tofangsazan was convicted of defrauding the Financial Times and was sentenced to two years in jail.

Zhang Ya & Sichuan Earthquake

In 2008, a girl called Zhang Ya (张雅) from Liaoning province, Northeast China, posted a 4 minute video of herself complaining about the amount of attention the Sichuan earthquake victims were receiving on television. An intense response from Internet vigilantes resulted in the girl's personal details (even including her blood type) being made available online, as well as dozens of abusive video responses on Chinese websites and blogs. The girl was taken into police custody for three days as protection from vigilante death threats.

Stephen Fowler and Wife Swap

Stephen Fowler, an English expatriate and venture capitalist businessman, gained notoriety after his performance on ABC's Wife Swap (originally aired Friday January 30, 2009) when his wife exchanged positions in his family with a woman from Missouri for a two-week period. In response to her rule changes (standard procedure for the second week in the show) he insulted his guest and, in doing so, groups including the lower classes, soldiers, and the overweight. Several websites were made in protest against his behaviour, such as StephenFowlerSucks.com. After the show, and after watching the Wife Swap video, his wife, a professional life coach, reported that she had encouraged him to attend professional behaviour counselling. Businesses with only tangential connection to Fowler publicly disclaimed any association with him due to the negative publicity. He resigned positions on the boards of two environmental charities to avoid attracting negative press.

Cyclist abuser Incident

In 2008, Patrick Pogan, a rookie police officer, body-slamming Christopher Long , a free-spirited cyclist, surfaced on the Internet. The altercation happened when members of Critical Mass conducted a bicycling advocacy event at Time Square. The officer claimed the cyclist had veered into him, and so the biker was charged with assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

The video went viral on the internet and after being viewed for over 2 million times. The charges against the cyclist were later dropped and Pogan was found to be guilty and was convicted for lying about confrontation with cyclist.

Vigilante group torments Mother

In 2009, a Facebook group was started, accusing a single mother for the death of a 13 month old child in her foster care. It was the Mother's, then-common-law husband who pleaded guilty to manslaughter and the mother was not accused of any wrongdoing.

The Facebook group identifies the mother, her ex-husband which is a violation of all laws. The group which was started to stop child murderers, does not explain how it plans to accomplish the goal. Instead the group discusses only this particular incident and has many posts directly attacking the mother and accusing her.

Distributed denial of service

Main article: DDoS

A DDoS attack can be used to take down malicious websites, such as those being used for phishing or drive-by downloads. Thousands of people generate traffic to a website, flooding it such that it goes over quota or simply can't serve that many requests in a timely manner.

Counter-terrorism

Shannen Rossmiller is an American judge, serving in Montana, who has a controversial role as a vigilante online terrorist-hunter, posing as militant anti-American Muslim radicals online, hoping to attract the eye of those with similar mindsets.

Anti-pedophile internet vigilantism

Perverted Justice is a well-known example of an anti-pedophile organization that aims to expose and convict adults who, using email or web sites, solicit minors in order to commit child sexual abuse. They often collaborate with television crews. Some freely hosted blogs claim to expose real or potential child sex offenders.

Another initiative, Predator Hunter, headed by Wendell Kreuth, aims to track down and expose the pornography-related activities of alleged 'sexual predators'. In 2002, Kreuth disclosed details of his activities in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio.

Members of the subculture "Anonymous" have also been credited for seeking out pedophiles and collaborating with law enforcement. They describe themselves as a collection of individuals united by ideas. They left a mark with the arrest of Canadian pedophile, Chris Forcand.

In the UK, the Internet Watch Foundation cooperate with ISPs to filter access to certain internet sites. As an unelected body with no accountability, transparency or appeal mechanism they fulfil many of the requirements of vigilantism. In particular, the punishment the IWF use (restricting access to domains via a proxy) is technically poor and results in damage to organisations and individuals unconnected with the object of their disapproval.

Anti-racism activism

Few online use tactics similar to anti-pedophile activists to combat racism, harassing and destroying racist groups on MySpace and other social web services.

Identity theft activism

Main article: Identity theft

Organizations similar to vigilante action against pedophiles also target ID theft. Posing as ID thieves, they gather stolen personal information such as "dumps" (the raw encoded information contained on a payment or identification card's magnetic stripe, microchip or transponder), bank account numbers and login information, social security numbers, etc. They then pass this information on to the associated banks, to credit monitoring companies, or to law enforcement.

Other groups specialize in the removal of phishing websites, fake banks, and fraudulent online storefronts, a practice known as "site-killing". Artists Against 419 is a web site specializing in the removal of fake bank websites. Such groups often use tactics like DDoS attacks on the offending website, with the aim of drawing attention to the site by its hosting service or rapid consumption of the site's monthly bandwidth allowance. The Artists Against 419 always argued their tools were not a denial-of-service attack. At any rate they abandoned such tactics some time ago.

Profit

Some companies engage in internet vigilantism for profit. One such example is MediaDefender, a company which used methods such as entrapment, P2P poisoning, and DDoS attacks.

Political activism

See also: Patriot hacking

Groups may engage in internet vigilantism to spread a political message, or to exert nationalism. One example is the Heart China phenomenon which occurred within the People's Republic of China and various overseas Chinese diaspora communities. Chinese netizens were outraged by events such as protests during the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay and claims of biased reporting from western media, and so blogs, forums and websites throughout the Chinese-speaking world were filled with nationalistic sentiment. One website, Anti-CNN, claimed that media such as CNN and BBC reported selectively regarding the 2008 Tibetan unrest and provided a one-sided argument. The Anti-CNN website provided screenshots of news reports with alleged evidence of media bias. Additionally, statistics show that more than one million MSN Messenger users added "(L)China" to the beginning of their display name prior to the torch relay incident in Paris, in protest to the Tibetan independence movement and in support of victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Chinese hackers also claim to have hacked the websites of CNN and Carrefour (a French shopping chain, allegedly supporting Tibetan independence), while websites and forums gave tutorials on how to launch a DDoS attack specifically on the CNN website.

Real crime vigilantes

Some people form themselves into vigilante groups aiming (overtly) to "investigate" high profile cases, but in reality often their (covert) goal is to harass those people associated in some way with the crime, but against whom no successful case has been made in the courts. Recent cases include the death of JonBenét Ramsey in the USA and the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann in the UK. Operators of these sites may be counting on the limited purview of libel laws on the Internet in order to make allegations against people that might otherwise pursue defamation cases against them were the allegations published via other media.

Anti-Software Piracy Internet Vigilantism

An example cited on the tech news site securityfocus.com by Kevin Poulsen illustrates how two coders implemented and distributed a program that disguised itself as activation key generators and cracks for illegal software circulating on peer-to-peer file sharing sites. The duo researched software that was popular on these file sharing sites and tagged their code with their names. As soon as the software was executed, it displayed a large message, “Bad Pirate! So, you think you can steal from software companies do you? That's called theft, don't worry your secret is safe with me. Go thou and sin no more." The software then called back to a central server and logged the file name under which it was executed, amount of time the message was displayed on the downloader’s computer screen and their IP address. The information gathered was then re-posted onto a public website showing the downloader’s IP address and country of origin. The program also had a unique ID embedded into each downloaded copy of it for tracking purposes to keep track of how it traversed the different networks.

Legislative framework

In 2002 in the United States, Representative Howard Berman proposed the Peer to Peer Piracy Prevention Act, which would have protected copyright holders from liability for taking measures to prevent the distribution, reproduction or display of their copyrighted works on peer to peer computer networks. Berman stated that the legislation would have given copyright holders "both carrots and sticks" and said that "copyright owners should be free to use reasonable, limited self-help measures to thwart P2P piracy if they can do so without causing harm." Smith College assistant professor James D. Miller acknowledged the threats to the privacy of legitimate Internet users that such actions would pose, but drew comparisons with other successful crime-fighting measures that can invade privacy, such as metal detectors at airports.

See also

• Human flesh search engine
• Anonymous
• Pixelante
• YTMND's conflicts with eBaum's World

External links

• 'From flash mob to lynch mob', CNN, June 5, 2007