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Cyberbullying Psudonymous anonymity: Maybe naked - but never alone
// By Simone Janson

The Internet in general and the social communities in particular are causing more and more people to leave digital traces on the WWW - as text, sound, image or video. This in turn means that more and more people are afraid for their data, even for their private life and identity. And the ubiquitous question is: how much can I reveal and what will happen to me?

Cyberbullying and data theft: does the internet threaten our identity?

On June 15, 2011, ZDF broadcast the program "ZDFzoom - Help, I'm naked". It is about privacy and data protection in the age of social media. Hendrik Bacon, Professor for Digital Media at the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, calculates the digital life of Thomas Praus and, by linking various information, not only finds the data that Praus voluntarily publishes in social networks - but also data that he has not actually shared with anyone Name and place of residence of his parents.

Computer scientists at the University of Darmstadt are developing an Android app for test purposes that reads smartphone data such as contacts or SMS in the background and uploads it to a server. Can we still defend ourselves against this loss of identity? Former Google boss Eric Schmidt had a creative suggestion: just change his name. But it's not that simple, as the Cologne registrar Lutz Zacharias explains at the end of the film: Everyone who voluntarily goes online is responsible for what happens there with their data. That is not an important reason for a name change.

How important is anonymity?

When thousands of people, especially young people, gathered in Cairo in January 2011 to protest against the government, it marked the beginning of the largest wave of demonstrations in Egypt in years, which finally ended with the resignation of President Mubarak. But that's not all: In the period that followed, unrest broke out in more and more Arab countries. But the revolutions against the old rulers in these countries did not come overnight. They've grown secretly over the past few years - on the Internet. The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain in particular are due to the rapid expansion of the World Wide Web in these countries. The increasing use of the Internet is one of the reasons why the first revolutions in the Arab world took place in Tunisia and Egypt. Freedom of opinion and diversity of opinion - on the Internet, for example on political blogs, it is possible to do what governments otherwise prohibit. And what's more: Via social networks such as Facebook it was only possible for the demonstrators to organize their events. The changes in the Arab world quickly became a facebook-The revolution is hyped up and social networks are viewed as indispensable for democracy.

But for social networks to work like this, users must be safe from government access so that they can move freely and exchange ideas. In addition to encryption mechanisms, the most effective protection mechanism would be to exchange information anonymously. But guaranteeing exactly one hundred percent anonymity is technically difficult, as the computer scientists George Danezis and Seda Gürses write. Because even anonymized data sets can in turn be de-anonymized using appropriate tools. In addition, user profiles can be created even from anonymous data if a service is used frequently. On page 92 of the article it says: The more 'data mining' is carried out, the more data can be compared from different sources, the more the probability that users will be identified or that anonymous traces can be traced back to specific broadcasters will also increase.

Anonymity vs. Identity theft

In one episode of the "Electric Reporter" series produced for ZDF, the psychologist Peter Kruse explains that people who are constantly observed only do what is expected of them and consciously or unconsciously submit to the norm: "If you is constantly under observation, you are no longer authentic. You'd have to be able to act like a brilliant provocateur who doesn't care who is watching, who is just himself. Otherwise the whole system will become a prison. "So the transparent, post-privacy person of the future is an open, but well-behaved being who is constantly careful not to get out of line? Critics fear that this will happen if it is not discussed in good time whether we are really ready to make any statements on the Internet under our real names - without knowing what options there will be to link them tomorrow. This discussion was about the question of how the topic of anonymity on the Internet should be dealt with in the future.

But you can also lose your identity on the Internet in a completely different way: Even Tina Groll, editor at ZEIT ONLINE, experienced a Kafkaesque situation: at the end of 2009 she was suddenly confronted with debt collection claims from companies from which she had never bought anything. Research revealed that it was a case of so-called identity theft. With a fictional eMail-Address and real data, which the thieves could easily find on the Internet, were bought in various online shops under the name of the editor and the goods were sent to a wrong address. When the thieves failed to pay, the companies sent the collection requests to the real Tina Groll. She described her absurd situation in a post ZEIT ONLINE: "It sounds ridiculous, but: I'm afraid to open the mailbox. Almost every day, reminders and threatening letters from debt collection companies flutter into my house. 'Because you have still not responded to the aforementioned demands, we are now initiating the dunning procedure,' it says, for example. I am said to have incurred debts and obtained goods from companies whose names I have never heard of. The things were delivered to addresses that were never mine. There are even supposed to be people there who 'can undoubtedly testify that you, Tina Groll, lived there,' writes a debt collection company to me. There are even arrest warrants against me - and that through no fault of my own. "

"Look how embarrassing!" - cyberbullying

But our identity can be damaged in a completely different way on the Internet: That is when our good name is knowingly dragged through the dirt by others. And that happens faster than many think.

Cyberbullying, also called cyberbullying, is the use of the Internet to insult, threaten or denigrate others. And these experiences are usually made by very young people. The current JIM study shows: 15 percent of the young people surveyed have already found out what it is like when someone spreads embarrassing or insulting pictures or videos of the respondent on the Internet. At 17 percent, girls are slightly more affected than boys (13 percent). The following applies: The older the adolescents get, the more frequently such incidents occur: While only six percent of 12 to 13 year olds report unwanted dissemination of images, this proportion rises to around a fifth among those 16 and over ( 14-15 years: 14 percent, 16-17 years: 21 percent, 18-19 years: 18 percent). On a similar scale, Internet users can also report that generally false or insulting statements about themselves have been circulated. However, beyond the age groups, there are also clear differences with regard to the level of education - young people with a secondary school background report almost twice as often as high school students about being victims of insults on the Internet. Occasionally it also happened that not only lies and denigrations were brought into circulation, but also fake accounts were created under a false name. And: a good quarter of the young people reported that someone in their circle of acquaintances had already been targeted via the Internet.

It is not a phenomenon of the internet age that people are more or less deliberately bullied or bullied by others. The way is new. Bullying has always not been an open-face fight, but the Internet still offers completely new opportunities for bullying people, who mostly act anonymously. On the one hand, potential victims can be spied on vulnerabilities and potential points of attack even better via social networks - provided someone is planning a targeted action. Or they provide the material for spontaneous bullying actions in the form of embarrassing photos themselves. In addition, the Internet offers the perpetrators the opportunity to act completely undetected. This apparent protection of anonymity makes many people forget their scruples about claiming false facts.

Social networks as a stage for bullies

And an important aspect that is unfortunately often forgotten: Social networks in particular not only offer criminals protection, but also a large stage with an audience hungry for new content that is all too ready to applaud them. Or even take part. Of course, the bullies feel that the claqueurs have reinforced their cowardly actions and so continue to be all the more willing. Conversely, this increases the painful effect for the victim: In the past, in the school yard, you could guess what other people were whispering, but you were never confronted with it directly. Now you can practically see in black and white what others say and think about you. Worse still: Often such remarks are thrown carelessly because it's cool and funny. In the spoken language, such insults would fade away within a few seconds, in some cases they can still be found on the Internet for years. No wonder that suicides have already occurred among cyberbullying victims.

Because one is comparatively powerless against this kind of damage to reputation and identity. Certainly there are legal options, but until they take effect, the attacks or embarrassing photos or videos have already found their audience,...