The internet has created a place where it is possible to be somebody else without anybody knowing. There is no way to tell if somebody is real or who they say they are. The anonomity of the internet has created many problems such as cyber bullying and internet predators. Social media is a huge part of the Internet. It's a place where you are supposed to be yourself. However, social media is creating many more problems of identity. People place too much trust in social media. They freely put information about themselves, as well as give thousands of people access to that information.

In this project, we created four fake facebooks to show how easy it is to create an online identity and to test how many people are willing to readily accept somebody who is made up as a real person.

Examples of False Identities in the News

The internet has created a place where people can easily create and choose any identity they desire. Some of these fake identities are harmless, but others are not. Fake Internet profiles are becoming more and more abundant and also more dangerous. People create these fake Facebooks to attract a target audience, whether it is children or even other adults.

In May of 2010, the Herald Sun covered a case in Sydney, Australia where an eighteen-year-old girl was convinced that a man she accepted on Facebook was trying to offer her a job with an animal welfare group. A man, who told her she would get a bonus for meeting him at a train station, lured her. Unfortunately for Nona Belomesoff, she didn’t make it out alive because Christopher James Dannevig ended up killing her in a remote field. Many people are so trusting on the Internet and they do not realize that there are dangerous people in the world. They get too involved in what the person on the other side of the screen is saying and then start to believe whatever they say. This is obviously not the first case of online predators, but it is definitely a brutal one that people should think about next time they accept a “friend” that they don’t know on Facebook. It happens all too often that someone in the situation gets hurt and in this case, the young girl’s life was cut short.

In November of 2011, Cameron Stuart Hore was arrested for posing as a woman online to lure young boys into sending him lewd photos and performing sexual acts via webcam. Hore would send photos of a woman that he claimed was himself, under the name of Sarah Ruddenklau. After receiving and sending photos, Hore worked to develop relationships with the boys and arrange to meet them. Hore was arrested for eight counts of sexual explotation of people under 18. It appears that Hore was arrested before the situation got tragic, but the fact that he was able to deceive young boys enough to receive explicit photos is disturbing. Using the power of the internet, Hore was able to successfully create an identity that helped him commit crimes.

OUR FAKEBOOKS

SABRINA

Sabrina Jacobsen is a 20 year old Night Shift Manager at Hot Topic.

SOPHIA

For my fake Facebook, I made a fourteen-year-old freshman in high school, Sophia Cavanaugh. She is from Portland, Oregon and goes to Sunset High School in Beaverton.

HENRY

I created Henry Sullivan, a 52 year old married man from Omaha, Nebraska. I said that Henry went University of Nebraska-Lincoln and was a Republican who enjoyed Nirvana, AC/DC, The Beatles, Stephen King and Ender’s Shadow.

RACHEL EVANS

Rachel Evans is an eighteen year old college freshman at the University of Oregon. She is from Tampa, Florida where she attended Riverside Academy. Her favorite artists range from Lady Antebellum to Drake and her favorite movies are The Goonies and Billy Madison.

Restrictions Our Fakebooks Faced

Facebook quickly began restricting Henry and Sabrina from adding friends for certain amounts of time. Then they required us to sign an agreement stating that we would not add friends that we did not know and review Community Standards before we continued using the account. Facebook sent notifications to us reading that it was apparent that we were adding people we did not know. We assume that this is because feature that allows a user to tell Facebook if they actually know someone who has requested them.

CONCLUSION

Exploring identities and the features of fake online identities: What types of people are easy to trust? Is it simple to create a fake identity?

- The FakeBook project showed us that a lot of people will readily accept people they don't know as their friends and give them access to their private information. However, many people do not. Mututal friends play a vital role in the ability to trust a stranger.

Term

Winter 2012