This week I am writing about cyber sleuthing, we did a fun engaging exercise in our last EDTC300 class in which we performed cyber sleuthing of people online (all the people we were given to do this on had given permission). It was amazing how much information you could compile about someone from simply accessing their social media accounts and using google. From where people live, the dynamics of their family and their profession and hobbies. It was somewhat unsettling realizing how easy it was to gather all this information in such a short period of time. Combining this with the growing trend of cyber shaming and it highlights the seriousness of online shaming and bullying. Monica Lewinsky speaks about the price of shame and how quickly she went from an unknown to a worldwide figure as her scandal become public knowledge through the media and internet. She says, “public shaming as a bloodspot has to stop” and she is right.

Our wonderful instructor Ms. Hildebrandt writes an incredibly intriguing blog about catfishing and how crazy it has become. Take a few minutes to read her story as it shows exactly how “the internet is an utterly crazy place” as she tells the story of a catfisher/catfishing victim who seems to lack common sense, but what she lacks in common sense she makes up for in nonsense. I simply cannot summarize the complexity of this woman, Srkj, without recounting the entire blog post. But this example shows how someones digital identity can become victim to identity fraud in a way as this individual who Ms. Hildebrandt references, Alec Couros, seemingly has to tirelessly fight to protect his online identity from scammers. As I previously mentioned, this story is definitely worth a read to better tell the story than I ever could.