Assignment #2 Analysis of an online crime
$665 000 Stolen from Downingtown School District recovered.
In April
2013 a group of cyber criminals hacked into Downingtown School District’s bank
account and stole $665 000. The employees in the district’s business
office noticed some irregularities in the bank account, and realized that they
had been hacked. The local law enforced
and the FBI was alert. After a few days, they announced that all of the $665 00
had been recovered and returned. The investigators had figured out that three
wire transfers had been sent to foreign bank accounts, but they would not say
where the money was located. All they would say was that this was a prime
example of sophisticated cyber criminals at work and that it is a good reminder to anyone with a bank account to keep close track of all activity.
We can
think about the disinhibition effect when you feel free to do something that
you normally would not do. Internet is especially a place when people do this,
because people do more on the internet than they would do in the reality. In John Suler’s article Online
Disinhibition Effect he explores
six factors that interact with each other in creating this online disinhibition
effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic
introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. There
are two types of online disinhibition, this is “benign disinhibition” which are
the good one and “toxic disinhibition” which are the bad one. In this case we
are looking at a “toxic disinhibition”, since it is about steeling money
through the internet.
The
disinhibition that I think motivated our online hacker is that he was invisible.
The hacker can sit in his own house when he is doing this crime, rather than
actually being in a bank with a gun, robbing a bank. He is on the internet but no
one can physically see him. It is likely to think that this is a kind of person
who normally would not actually rob someone in person, but because of the
internet it is easier to hide and maybe get away with it? I think this is why
we see a lot of online hacking these days, you are invisible and do not have to
actually go in to a bank and rob it.
Renate Torgersen
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