a reason of Viber been banned? Source: @ArabNews We have heard of cases of girls being blackmailed through social media or other cyber networks. However, there has been little discussion in the media of females who use the same means to harass men to extort money. With the spread of mass media, particularly social networking sites and the speedy tempo of technological development in smart devices, it has become very easy to reach people living in distant lands. Arab News decided to deliberate on this very sensitive issue, which has not been touched upon by most local media sources. It spoke with male victims, experts and social specialists to highlight the different aspects of this phenomenon. Majed Bahabri, an activist and blogger on social networking pages, told Arab News that the many cases of males being blackmailed are for the purpose of extorting money. Cyberspace or smartphone racketeering cases are usually committed by girls and sometimes by males posing as girls. Unfortunately, extortion through blackmail has become very widespread and looming on social networks in different forms, causing anxiety among youth,” Bahabri said. Khalid Al-Saadi, an IT manager at a local company, commented that networking sites are open to all and that there is no way to impose restrictions or control users. He said that users and surfers are of different ages and come from various cultural backgrounds and nationalities. “In fact, naïve young males or even men might fall victim to such scams. I would say that even rich people, businessmen, media figures and entrepreneurs are a likely target for some racketeers, usually girls from outside the Kingdom. As such, it is important to raise awareness among our kids and the public at large about the dangers of cyber-blackmail.” Fahad, 36, narrates a real story of one of his closest friends, a famous media personality and columnist at an Arabic newspaper. Fahad’s friend has recently been duped through the well-known social network site, Skype. The columnist received a private message in his Facebook inbox from an unknown female account. The Arabic message read: “I am a regular reader of your daily column. I’m 24, from Morocco and very interested in chatting with you over Skype.” The young man didn’t realize that this was a trap for a much more dangerous game of money extortion. No sooner had the girl posted the FB message than he logged onto Skype and began chatting with her. He spent around a week chatting and video chatting with her. Fahad’s friend admitted that the girl was very beautiful and within a week he was enamored by her daily flow of romantic chatter. After she had shown him her face and exposed parts of her body amid indecent clothing, the girl asked the man to do the same over video chat. Overwhelmed by temptation, the man did as she had asked. Soon after, the video chatting stopped and a private message was sent to the man’s inbox telling him that the girl would post the taped video of this recent video chat if he did not send an instant remittance of around $ 3000 within two days. At first, the man thought it was just a kind of joke and not a real scheming for his money. So he refused to send the money and it was then that disaster struck. The girl carried out her threat and within hours, part of the video chat was widely spread among many people’s smart phones via WhatsApp. The man received tons of text messages asking him about this video and hundreds of calls. He had to switch off his mobile and even disappeared from the office for a week. He eventually called up the Moroccan girl and agreed to send the amount if she would stop posting the video and not publish the rest of it. Fahad told Arab News that the man was in very bad shape and was fearful that this video might reach one of his family members, causing him huge embarrassment and even divorce. Fahad added that as soon as the girl received the money, she stopped threatening him. However, every now and then she calls him and asks for more money and he is unable to refuse. Ahmad Al-Malik, a social expert, said that victims of such occurrences suffer from negative psychological and social effects which are hard to overcome. He stressed that users and surfers of all ages ought to be aware that cyber scamming and racketeering are real and exist and that they should not be misled or get involved in any of these rackets. “I suggest that there should be special campaigns held regularly to enlighten Internet users. The campaign should be run by different government and private bodies like the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Information and Ministry of Social Affairs,” Al-Malik said. He added that many homes and families can be badly affected by cyber blackmailing and may lead to family disintegration caused by indecent chat or video chat. “Parents should monitor their kids. They could benefit from recommended courses or programs tackling this issue. Moreover, managements at government and private companies should impose strict control on traffic and use of Internet at work. Some social networking pages must be blocked during working hours. The employees –males and females — should also be educated about the jeopardy of cyber racketeering.” Suha Abdullah said that her cousin, Yasser, 27, was also scammed by a local female chatter who told him after many chatting sessions that she is interested in calling him on the mobile but does not have enough credit. He directly sent her SR 200 riyals worth of credit and finally discovered that the chat was just a male impersonating a girl. He had used faked photos of a pretty girl with long black hair with a spoofed soft voice over audio chat. Adnan, another victim who has just completed his academic studies and is searching for a job, said that the extreme boredom he lives in has made him a kind of addict to social networking pages and software like Facebook, Bebo, Zoopa, Tango, WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber and others. He justified that as long as there is no job, no theaters, no cinemas and other similar activities, the best alternative for him is the net and social networking. “In fact, I didn’t expect that males or men could be blackmailed by girls via the web. I only knew that girls are susceptible until it happened to me. However, it was not a big deal. A girl on Viber pretended that she is in love with me and kept messaging me and calling me for a month until we decided to meet at one of the local malls here. Before she agreed to meet me, she called me on Viber and told me that she has recorded all of our conversations and short messages and she would forward them to my father’s or mother’s number and other family members.” She had found their numbers via a message I had sent by mistake to all contacts on my Viber’s list including this girl. Such messages sent to a group enable people to see other’s numbers. I had to pay her a sum of money to prevent such a threat which would cause a problem for my very religious parents. As I don’t have a job, I had to borrow the money from a cousin who is employed. The Jeddah Police spokesman Lt. Nawaf Al-Bog advised parents and families to pay much more attention to such incidents and to impose a kind of control on social networking activities among their sons. He also explained that there is a continuous and secret coordination between area police stations and the Committee Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia’a) to process any reported cyber blackmail case and to enlighten the public on how to avoid such incidents. Al-Boog stressed that persons who are exposed to any physical or verbal blackmail have to report it to the nearest office. “Cyber blackmail and money extortion over the net is regarded as a crime and should be swiftly reported. In fact, we don’t have any accurate facts and figures of such cases here.”
Posted on: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:44:45 +0000
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