By Vanessa Pena
Sara Majerska Div. 281 signs into Facebook to check her daily updates. She receives a very special notification that leads her to a link on her wall. As she clicks on the link a new tab opens up with the name “Christina Pablito”, but instead of recognizing a friends face in the profile picture, Majerska sees herself.
The so-called “Christina Pablito” began to add friends of Majerska that attend Lane. The thief would message Majerska’s friends, introducing herself as Christina Pablito in an attempt to bring attention to the fake profile.
Soon enough the thief gained multiple friends that would “show love” on her wall by posting fake greetings as if they have been long time friends.
Majerska is not familiar with any of the people who posted the greetings on the wall, and does not know why someone would make a fake profile with her picture to contact others from Lane.
Friends of Majerska who Christina Pablito requested, realized the profile was fake since they knew the real Majerska, and the information that the fake profile shared with others did not match any of Majerska’s information or values.
“The ‘About Me’ was made up since it was very unbalanced. It did not make sense. Her ‘About Me’ said all these things that didn’t match my values,” said Majerska, who does not recall exactly what the ‘About Me’ said since this incident occurred in the summer of 2011.
Majerska’s attempts to discover who the thief was went unrewarded. She messaged the thief asking what the reason was for all this but, the thief never answered nor approved the friend request that Majerska sent. As a last resort Majerska reported the fake profile to Facebook personnel.
Facebook did nothing to solve her problem, and the page is still up to this very day. The profile does not get as many greetings as before nor has the profile had any posts since last February but, the page and picture impersonating Majerska still stands.
Majerska believes that the profile was made to defame her reputation.
“I think [the thief] just made it to be stupid. I don’t know if someone made it who didn’t like me,” said Majerska.
After the incident, Majerska keeps all her pictures on private and only adds people who she knows.
Majerska is not the only one walking the halls of Lane with a stolen identity via internet. Other students have had their identity stolen using a social network.
Eesle Koh, Div 255, also discovered a fake profile impersonating her through a friend who posted the link on her wall. The fake profile had Koh’s profile picture by the name of “Torrie AsianBarbie Glass.”
“The ‘About Me’ read something like this: ‘I drink until I hit the floor,’ I smoke that dough,” said Koh.
Since Koh’s friend requests were never approved by the fake profile, her friends began to friend the profile for some insight of who was behind this.
“The fake profile wrote on the walls of guys that I didn’t even know!” said Koh.
Taking a stand against “Torrie AsianBarbie Glass,” Koh called Facebook personally and reported the fake profile.
“I never talked to a real person representing Facebook. It was just a voice message that told me they accepted my report,” said Koh.
Two days after the profile was reported, the page was taken down.
Koh believes that the profile was made to use her pictures and fool some of her guy friends into thinking negatively about her.
After experiencing this Koh claims she is now very careful about putting her pictures on private and careful with who she accepts as a friend. She also hides
everything on her profile from public viewing.
Kristen Reyes, Div 378, can also be found as ‘Angie Lopez’ on Facebook. Reyes discovered the fake profile impersonating her in August when she stumbled upon it while viewing a friends profile. That friend was in an open relationship on Facebook with “Angie Lopez.”
The “Angie Lopez” profile did not attempt to communicate with friends of Reyes. The profile was recently discovered targeting someone else instead of trying to harm Reyes’ reputation. In fact, the profile targets a girl from Shurz High School that is “trying to steal Lopez’s boyfriend,” according to the page. The profile bullies and even threatens to harm the girl that the profile is targeting.
“I didn’t really make a big deal about it [the profile]. I was just like ‘okay?’,” Reyes said.
Recently Reyes viewed the profile in length causing her to change her feelings towards the situation.
“The fact that I saw [the thief] talking so bad about some girl really worries me now! This just got really creepy,” she said.
The profile is still up today since Reyes has chosen not to report it. She feels that the profile has not made enough contact with her to really concern her. The friend request Reyes sent to “Angie Lopez” is still pending and no mutual friends exist between them.
Reyes has not found the creator of this profile but makes the claim that if contact between “Angie Lopez” and her friends were made, she would take action.
“I’d definitely be hitting up Mark Zuckerberg then!” she said.
Many tend to think that drama like this is only between girls looking to disrupt each other’s lives, but not when referring to Mikey Heath, Div. 253.
Heath received a message from a distant friend with a link directing him to “Kevin Carlucci.” The message sent Heath to a profile with a stolen picture of him, and comments from girls who seemed very interested in the fake “Kevin Carlucci.”
“[The thiefs] were major creeps though because not only did they use all my pictures but they added people and had conversations with them,” said Heath.
Soon enough, the fake profile of Heath started gaining the attention of even more girls. Girls from different states that had absolutely no connection to Heath were commenting on his pictures on the fake profile.
“There were girls writing on the wall asking why I wasn’t texting them back and people were commenting on pictures of me writing stuff and that [the thief would respond to]. The picture comments were just basically like ‘oh my god you’re so hot; cutie’ and stuff you know girls say to me,” said Heath.
Heath is a strong believer that the profile was just made to get girls using his good looks.
It was evident that the creator of this page not only created a fake identity but also created a line of friendships in the process.
“[The girls] would tell the creep how much they missed him/her and how they couldn’t wait to text me every morning. I honestly felt so violated,” Heath said.
Heath attempted to add the fake profile but he ended up getting blocked from the page. Heath soon gained access to the account when his sister added the intruder.
Heath contacted Facebook and the page was deleted shortly after.
Facebook is not the only source for an identity thief to begin their job. Users of Formspring, another social networking website, have experienced identity theft as well.
Joshua Aguiar Div. 255 does have a twin, but it was not the work of his twin sister that was bringing Aguiar negative attention.
Aguiar received a text message from a very close friend at that time with the question: “Did you just write on my Formspring?” His friend was so insulted by the comment on her Formspring that she contacted Aguiar right away.
After three days of nonstop harassment towards Aguiar’s friends, the fake profile was taken down.
“I guess it isn’t fun trying to be someone else,” said Aguiar.
Aguiar believes that the creator did not do a good enough job to ruin his relationships with friends if that was the purpose of the fake Formspring.
While some learned quickly about the seriousness of impersonating someone on a social network, others are still unaware of the rights they have in that kind of situation.
Identity theft is broken down into statutes meaning that different types of theft result in different degrees of crimes. The more serious the crime is, the more consequences there is to face depending on the statute it falls under.
The statute that identifies thief’s who impersonate someone else falls under the fourth degree although it varies from state. Stealing someone’s identity on the internet was recently changed to crime time due to the suicide rates connected to social networks.
There is also a act called the “Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.” This act is effective when the “terms of use” are broken causing this to be known as criminal activity.
Last year, a woman by the name of Dana Thornton was indicted for breaking the fourth degree of identity theft. This crime sent her to face a maximum of 18 months in prison.
Thornton impersonated her ex boyfriend on Facebook using his photos and personal information. She used this page to write things such as “High all the time, had herpes and frequented prostitutes and escort services.”
The law she broke fell under “for the purpose of obtaining a benefit for himself or another or to injure or defraud another.” Meaning Thornton used her ex-boyfriends information to defame him so she could feel better about her hatred towards him.
The strictness of these consequences came into play when a 13 year old girl committed suicide in 2006 in a suburb in St Louis after being targeted online by a fake Myspace page. The Myspace profile was created by the mother of a teenage girl in order to humiliate the 13 year old due to the suspicion of rumors said about her own daughter.
Facebook established a chat system early December that allows users to connect with a crisis counselor attempting to tackle the bullying and defaming done on their page. This is a new tool provides an instant chat session at any time when seeking help. This creation can been known as a way Facebook can now help against fake profiles, bullying, or offensive content. With more than 800 million users on Facebook, “crisis counselors” have been added to help all their users when in need.
