If you answered yes, then you have been a victim of something called catfishing. I'm sure you've heard of the famous TV show at some point. The TV show tries to unmask catfishers for who they truly are.
With social media being such a big part of our lives and people posting personal pictures of themselves online it's obvious that they can be stolen by people with wrong intentions. This phenomenon called catifishing seemed to have started when myspace was really big. People would steal others pictures and use it as their own. These catfishers would create myspace profiles with pictures of strangers they found online and would start connecting with people and starting relationships pretending they were someone they were not. Some times catfishers would take advantage of people thinking they are in a truthful relationship and get money or gifts out of it.
The phenomenon of catfishing really touches on the problem of privacy on the internet. Even though people think just because their profiles are extremely private it never truly is, nothing is private on the internet. By taking the risk to post our personal pictures on the internet we face the risk of being caught in a catfish scam. Even if ever part of our profile is hidden and private, your profile picture isn't. Catfishers can take your profile picture along with any other pictures and use them to create fake profiles.
One of the most famous cases of catfishing involved a NBA player Chris Andersen or more known by "Birdman". The scandal including birdman, at the time a 17 year old girl, and a women from Alaska. To quickly explain what happened this women from Alaska basically catfished both this NBA player and this young girl. She ended up getting thousands of dollars and gifts from birdman. When it all finally ended it turned into a huge lawsuit with the Alaskan women ending up in jail.
Heres an article explaining the catfishing case: https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/chris-birdman-andersens-catfish-opens-up-to-nev-and-max-recap-w483003/
Overall the phenomenon of catfishing leads back to the privacy that we believe we have on the internet. Which leads me to still stand by that nothing is private on the internet, anyone can use a picture or information of you for their own agenda.
Have you ever been involved in a case of catfishing or know anyone that would? I'd love to hear about it!
First of all I love that show, and I find it super interesting because you just never know who is on the other side of things, it is also interesting because people are not as afeard to do or say things when they are behind a computer or phone, people would sometimes never do the things that they do online, in person, but they are able to do all kinds of things now because they have a way to control people or have the courage to do certain things because it is not face to face. It is a terrible thing catfishing, because people can ruin other peoples lives by doing that, giving them false hope and false love just to entertain themselves or make them feel good about themselves, but it is easy to do now because nothing that you put online or do online is private so it can be easy to be catfished and there is nothing you can do about it. My sister experienced this, she one day got a message from one of her facebook friends and it was a profile that someone created using her photos, and they were pretending to be her, and there was nothing my sister could do about it, she had no way of deleting the profile because her pictures were not private, they were out there for anyone to use. It is crazy to think that people can pretend to be you, and there is nothing you can do about it.
ReplyDeleteI thought that this was really an interesting post yet also scary. I think about how social media can really help people with their businesses or reaching out to a long-lost friend. When you hear about stories like this, it is kind of scary. I think about how I can protect myself better on these different social media platforms. You also wonder if it is happening to you. I have never really thought about my profile picture on Instagram or Facebook being stolen and used for something that isn’t right. I remember hearing about a famous college football player being catfished. His name was Manti Teo. He believed that he was dating this girl Lennay Kekua. It ended up being all fake and the person had made up many different lies and even said that they had died of cancer. Here is the full story- (https://abcnews.go.com/US/notre-dame-football-star-manti-teo-dead-girlfriend/story?id=18232374). For someone to go that far is really scary. I wonder why they did this and how they got so many pictures of another person without anyone knowing? Also, how can we educate others to make sure that they are protected from being catfished. I think that there somehow needs to be more security and protection on social media.
ReplyDeleteYes, my personal pictures have been stolen a couple of times and it is hands down the creepiest thing that I have experienced. The thought of someone using my pictures to communicate with others has always made me feel extremely uncomfortable and the only thing I was able to do was to report the account that was posing as me. when I noticed this was happening I changed my Instagram page from public to private. But, it seems like people will still go through lengths to find you on different platforms to get pictures from there. When something like this happens to people it tends to make them want to get off of social media completely and it ruins the fun of it. For people to go through such lengths to imitate someone that they are not is scary and it makes social media users feel unsafe while using these platforms. We live in such a public and scary age and something needs to be fixed and users must learn how to be much safer when it comes to social media.
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