Social Networking: A Boon to Criminals
Tejashree D. Datar, Richard P. Mislan · 2010
With the world getting more and more digitized, social networking has also found a place in the cyber world. These social networking sites (SNSs) which enable people to socialize, and build and maintain relationships are attracting attention of all kinds of people such as teens, adults, sports persons, and even businesses. But these SNSs are also getting unwanted attention from people like sexual predators, spammers, and people involved in criminal and illegal activities. This paper talks about SNSs and how these sites are exploited for criminal or illegal activity. The SNSs are discussed in detail with respect to user profiles, user networks, and privacy and security with respect to these user accounts. The paper also talks about the way available data on these SNSs can be exploited. The paper concludes with a few real life recent criminal cases associated with these SNSs. Keywords: social networking, social networking sites, Facebook, MySpace, online predators, phishing, social networking crime, social networking models