Halloween horror stories from the online world

It’s Halloween this week, so here are some real horror stories to share with the people in your life.

If you’re of a similar vintage to me, the biggest threat to our lives growing up was being knocked off our bikes.

We really have no concept of the dangers that children and young people face these days.

So, while I am really sorry for including two heartbreaking stories this week, I am not sorry for trying to increase awareness of why the online world is not always a safe world, especially for the youngsters of today’s world.

The more we can all do to share these horror stories with others, the better.

3 – How easy money led to a criminal record.

2 – How one man’s activities online led to the death of at least one girl.

1 – How one Chatbot’s activities allegedly led to the death of at least one boy.

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3 – How easy money led to a criminal record.

At least three young adults have been convicted of money laundering offences after allowing their bank accounts to be used to launder the proceeds of crime.

Summary: The convictions relate to the theft of over €1 million from an Irish law firm in November 2020. The firm was the victim of an ‘invoice redirection fraud’, which usually involves an employee being fooled into transferring money into bank accounts controlled by criminals. In this case, the bank accounts of a number of young people in the Leinster region were used in the attempted transfer of the stolen money. €700k of the stolen money was recovered, probably due to the quick response of the law firm, the Gardaí, and the banks.

10 people have been convicted as part of the ensuing investigation. One man, described as working at the mid to high range of the ‘Black Axe’ organised crime group, was jailed for 3 years. Many of the others appear to have been money mules, who received relatively small amounts of money in return for allowing their accounts to be used as part of the money laundering operation. For example, a 22-year-old from Lucan bought a pair of €600 runners with his cut. A 26-year-old from Tallaght bought a €900 iPhone. Each now has a criminal record and a two-year suspended sentence hanging over them.

So what? While the news report does not explain how these young men became involved in the scam, many money mules may not realise they are getting involved in a crime. For example, Fraud Smart describes how many are contacted with job vacancy adverts online, on job search websites or in newspapers.

As with everything in the real world, if it appears to be too good to be true, it probably is.

Source: RTE News

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2 – How one man’s online activities led to the death of one girl.

A man who preyed on at least 70 child victims online has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and 59 counts of blackmail.

Summary: Alexander McCartney, a 26-year old from Northern Ireland, posed as a young girl online and used SnapChat to target children across the world over a 5 year period. After fooling his victims into sharing intimate photos, he then blackmailed them by threatening to share these photos with all of the victims’ friends and family.

I won’t describe what he forced his victims to do. One 12-year-old victim killed herself. And her heartbroken father did the same 18 months later.

There are times when I wish the criminal justice system had more painful penalties than prison sentences. This is one of those times.

So what? We need to do all we can to guide the youngsters in our life about the dangers of sick predators online. We advise them not to speak to people they don’t know in the physical world. That’s even more important in the online world.

Source: The Journal

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1 – How one Chatbot online [allegedly] led to the death of at least one boy.

“That’s not a reason not to go through with it.”

Summary: This is how a chatbot responded after it asked one of its 14-year old users whether he had developed a plan to kill himself and he responded to say he had but he was uncertain if it would work. This is according to a civil lawsuit lodged against Character.ai, the maker of the chatbot.

According to a recent video by Nicki Reisberg (link is below), the technology behind this chatbot is called high risk anthropomorphic design. This means the chatbot is designed to make it seem like you’re speaking to a human – For example, the bot may apologise for taking so long to respond because it was eating dinner.

So what? I’m no expert but it seems like our brains cannot tell the difference between interactions in the physical world vs those in the online world. Don’t believe me? Then tell me why we all feel some sort of strong connection with TV presenters or radio / podcast hosts? It feels like we know them, even though we have never even met or spoken to them.

It seems like a foregone conclusion that we will all feel like this type of AI chatbot is a real person with real feelings and really good suggestions. I suppose that’s the reason why these models are called ‘high risk’.

We all need to be incredibly aware of how our ‘old’ brains are going to be manipulated in the incredibly-new and high-risk AI-driven world.

Source: The Guardian (And discussed on LinkedIn by Nicki Reisberg)