Fake social media accounts are just beginning to show destructive power
(CBS/What's Trending) - We are rushing into a world of social awareness, social politics and social media entering almost any facet of our lives. But, the lack of gatekeepers are enabling fake social media accounts to be set up, maintained and used in ways from just annoying to truly dangerous.(Credit: Google screenshot)
President Obama recently held the first ever Twitter town hall. The assumption was that the Twitter accounts that were being used to ask questions were actually from real people. That was probably false -- at least a bit.
This follows news of Fox News Twitter account being "hacked" to send out tweets about the assassination of President Obama. While this is a horrifying example, Fox did correct itself and issued an apology to the White House. However, most of the faked social media accounts are maintained by people or smaller groups without the resources or ethical obligation to either correct false information -- and potentially were even created with the desire to do harm.
As early as 2008, people started focusing on the issues around fake social media accounts with the initial emphasis being on identity theft and how to protect one's name. Now the issues are being elevated to politics, security and even warfare.
The Obama administration is exploring lots of different uses of social media, and so are government agencies. The U.S. Military has publicly acknowledged that it recently hired a company to run their social media accounts.
It turns out there are government contractors who have not only developed software platforms to create and maintain fake social media accounts, but they are now attempting to sell such platforms to the government and corporations. The HBGary story is just one example of this recent trend. It turns out there are lots of companies making tools like this, but not many are making solutions yet.
Want to know What's Trending? Check out how Incubus is #Innovating the album release with Incubus HQ Live.Even the Pope has weighed in about the problem of faked social media accounts. He gave the whole issue a level of realness not seen for other technology issues.
How can we solve this? This is a good question. It is my opinion that we won't see "solutions" to this problem until a faked social media account is used to enact murder, kidnapping or some other nefarious act. Already smart law firms are creating practices around "fixing the problem of fake social media accounts." If one Googles or Bing searches the term "fake social media accounts," there are thousands of stories about the negative side of this, but very few mentions if any of ways to combat this emerging problem.
Want to know What's Trending? Check out how Incubus is #Innovating the album release with Incubus HQ Live.
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Tuesday 12 July 2011
Fake social media accounts are just beginning to show destructive power - What's Trending - CBS News
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