A couple days ago when I was at home for break I was relaxing and watching some of my favorite movies and TV shows, like Law and Order. There was an episode about a catfish and it lead me to a question, how many crimes are occurred because of social media or the internet? After looking this question up on google, this is the response I received:

“Social-media -related crime reports up 780% in four years. Complaints to police about alleged crimes linked to the use of Facebook and Twitter have increased by 780% in four years, resulting in about 650 people being charged last year, figures show”

Although this is shockingly high, I am not really surprised, and I am sure your not either. When you think about it, its crazy how easy social media has made it to gain personal information of someone in less than 5 minutes. For one example, I think sometimes people forget its so easy for someone to just discover your exact location on Snap chat, if you have that feature on. If you are not on private mode on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter its so easy for anyone to discover where you live, where you work, and basic information about you and your whereabouts.

One of the craziest thing I used to hear people talk about in middle school was the dark web. I always heard people talking about these crazy websites on the “dark web” or the “deep web” and if you go onto it, someone from the internet can gain access to your address and personal information and it was really dangerous and stupid to try and go on it, yet I knew of some people who allegedly went on it. Since then, I had never been inclined to research any more about it or be involved in it in anyway, mostly because it scared me to be honest.

After just googling about the dark web for 10 minutes its just as scary as it was in middle school and probably worse because of all the new information I know now. Its scary how much crime can be committed over the internet and people are smart enough sometimes to get away with heinous crimes like selling counterfeit goods, sex trafficking, and selling illicit drugs.

Apparently there is a difference between the deep web and the dark web and I had no idea and that just goes to show how confusing this whole internet crimes thing is.

In case anyone is wondering:

Dark web: the part of the World Wide Web that is only accessible by means of special software, allowing users and website operators to remain anonymous or untraceable

Deep web: the part of the World Wide Web that is not able to be discovered by means of standard search engines, including password-protected or dynamic pages and encrypted networks.

The crimes that are committed on the deep and dark web include murder for hire, sex trafficking, drug sales, child porn, and so much more.

Nevertheless, the internet and social media have so many outlets that can lead to crime and horrible things and it leads me to the question, do we talk about this stuff enough and how can we avoid crime from occurring by using social media and the internet?

In my opinion, I think it was probably a step back in terms of personal privacy and safety when apps like Snap chat allowed for location services to be enabled, and other apps like Instagram and Twitter makes it easy to gain access to information about literally anyone. I think it would be nearly impossible to stop any of this from occurring unless we all understand the consequences. Luckily the apps do have the option for privacy and making accounts more private, so I definitely recommend that and I will be checking mine now too!!!

Sources:

https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/dark-web-crimes.html