Current mood:
numb
| Charity Scam, Stealing pictures to Break Hearts. |
| Alycia writes: How are you? I am helping a few friends deal with an Internet problem and thought I would ask for your input. Okay, so there is this girl stealing pictures from people's pages and passing them off as her own children. She's such a scam artist. Anyway, she stole pics of a little boy Gage with cancer and is passing his story off as his own and having people send her stuff. So, what I was going to ask you is if you know if it would be possible to find a way for Myspace to make it so people can not right click, save pictures. I was told that there is a simple way for them to do it, but I wanted to know what you think since YOU ARE INTERNET SAFETY :) RESPONSE: The other day I saw a dateline episode about a woman who was surfing the internet for parents who wanted to adopt. This girl would stuff her stomach to send them pics, and call them all the time and tell them they were exactly who she wanted as parents for her baby. They would send her rent money and food money, and just before the baby was supposed to be born, she would cut off her cell phone and email, and disapear. They found this woman who had done this to at least 5 or 6 couples and confronted her. When confronted she turned into a weeping child, and swore she was just screwed up, and she hoped they would forgive her someday. Then continued with her scheme when she realized she hadn't been caught. What makes people prey on the weak this way? What kind of person can take other people's pain, and turn it into thier own profit or amusment? I right click on graphics, mostly from comments people leave me, so that I can pass on animated graphic posts to my friends. I don't use it for profit, or malice. I have been to sites where you can't do it, however I believe they would have to either disalow thousands upon thousands of peoples pics, and animated comments, or disalow those kinds alltogether. Web sites that do not have the scope and size of myspace, can do it easily, but to my knowledge, myspace could not. Unfortunately we would only be curing a symptom anyway. If this person wanted pictures of cancer patients to scam people they would not be thwarted by the right click prohibition. There will allways be scammers, and allways be people trying to bring them to justice. It is good that you are one of them. Do not be detered by this unfortunate answer. If you weren't out there doing what you do, then many more would get away with it. A good way to go after people like this is to report thier site as inappropriate content. It's in Report Abuse at the very bottom of the profile. You must leave them as much detail as possible, including where they stole the picture from. Myspace will investigate and delete profiles that contain stolen, or inappropriate content. I have had many of the sites deleted that sell vitamin drinks, and webcam girls, and stuff like that by simply reporting them. In fact myspace will contact you if a site was deleted because of your report. It is very gratifying, even if they can just make another site. Go after them. If it's all you can do. You may stop them from making a transaction with some unsuspecting victim, or wear them out on making a new myspace page. Either way, it's all I have been able to think of to do. Good Luck Alycia. I will post this in a blog and bulletin to help others watch for this scam. Katherine WSEG's Internet Safety Division |
I saw that story on dateline...the chick who called herself "Christy". What a sick human being, but a perfect example of why we need organizations such as yours.
Love Sent,
~ Joanna