Under Your Very Nose

I wrote this note in late 2007, following a fascinating chat with a friend about his daughter’s internet experience. I sent it to several parents and got barely a response. Most people think it can’t happen to them.
I post it now because it’s relevant to the next post…and because it bears repeating. I'm truly sorry it is so long...

For about 10 months or so, a friend of mine here in Barbados has noticed his daughter Jenny (10) often online (MSN Messenger) with a former classmate of hers – let’s call her Mary (also 10).

It apparently all started when ‘Mary’ contacted Jenny online and told her that she had had a problem with her hotmail account and that she had to change it. The new email was, Mary said, code_b@hotmail.com. Jenny dutifully accepted the story and added Mary’s new contact, and online conversation resumed and intensified with Mary’s new email address.

Over the months, the conversations with Mary developed a pattern. Mary would ask Jenny to turn on her webcam (Mary didn’t have one), which Jenny would readily accede to. Mary would ask Jenny if her breasts had grown yet and would ask Jenny to take her top off to show her. Because they had been reasonably friendly and in the same school previously in Barbados. Mary would ask Jenny if ‘she had any hair down there’. After a while, Jenny became uncomfortable with these questions and would make up excuses not to do what Mary asked, like ‘my father/mother is in the room’, or ‘I’ve got to go to bed now’.

A few weeks ago, one of Jenny’s friends, Sue (13), was online at night when ‘Jenny’ came online. Jenny asked Sue for answers to certain questions, on the understanding that it was a sort of a ‘question game’. ‘Jenny’ obtained from Sue a lot of personal information, including her hotmail password. ‘Jenny’ asked Sue if she had a webcam, asked her to turn it on, and to take off her top. Sue by this time was suspicious (she knew that Jenny was already aware that Sue had a webcam), panicked and went offline.

Sue called Jenny to find out if she had been online – she hadn’t. In the time it took for her to make that call, and to figure out that someone was impersonating Jenny, the impersonator had already got into Sue’s hotmail account and blocked her, changed the password, the secret question, and basically taken over her online identity.

Without access to the dozens of contacts in Sue’s MSN contacts list, she was powerless to warn them that someone might be contacting them, impersonating her.

My friend is certain the impersonator was code_b@hotmail.com. He googled code_b@hotmail.com and discovered a teenager (female) from Saskatchewan on MySpace, with a warning on her page to look out for code_b@hotmail.com because (he) had hacked her hotmail account.

When my friend spoke to Mary, she said that her hotmail account (maryxxxx@hotmail.com) had ‘stopped working’ about 10 months ago, and she had gotten a new address. She hadn’t been on MSN with Jenny since….

The thing is that Jenny and Mary are back in the same school now, but have never had a conversation about their online conversations. Such is the modern way. Jenny simply thought Mary was a little weird.

My friend’s process of discovery of these events unfolded slowly. It was not until Jenny was fully convinced that it was really not Mary she had been speaking to all these months, that she finally admitted to the kinds of conversations they had been having. Before that, she had been protective of ‘Mary’, not wanting to get her into trouble.

My friend considered himself a relatively internet-aware parent, reasonably vigilant about Jenny’s online activities; spoke to her about the dangers of the internet, being contacted by strangers, downloading stuff without permission. The computer was in an open space.

Balance that however against the times your child might spend several hours unsupervised on the computer, while you are washing the car, cooking, doing laundry or having a party. Balance that also against the innocence of a 10 year old who implicitly trusts her friends and family.

Children much younger than 10 are online with ‘friends’. Do you know who these friends are. Do you know whether they are who they say they are?

A few days after all this unfolded, Jenny was online (for the first time, and supervised) with a younger friend, Alice. Without thinking, and in response to Alice asking, Jenny turned on her webcam.

That was two weeks ago. In the intervening period, I have discovered that hotmail hacking, for financial gain, and for sexual predation, is in fact much more common than we might expect. Many people have stories that they have not shared.

Today, a friend related to me that her daughter was having an online conversation with a friend in another country. Through pure chance they discovered that the friend had not in fact been online, and within hours, my friend’s hotmail account was inaccessible, hacked. Because she orders stuff online, she immediately contacted her credit card companies and stopped the card(s). She felt that there might have been credit card numbers, user names and other information that could be used to enable unauthorized use of the card(s).

My initial advice – I’m no expert: Switch off the webcam. It should only be used with permission, and only when the other party is also using theirs. Visual recognition is the only real proof that you know who you’re talking to. Encourage your kids to ask questions only the real other party would know. But not personal questions, because they shouldn’t answer those either. Safe questions (e.g if they’re in the same school - name of teacher, etc).

If you’re a hotmail user, think about what’s in your folders and inbox. Or your child’s. Does it have banking details? Credit card details? Usernames for online banking and accounts on Ebay and such like? A hacker would have access to all these.

We all chose to think that online identity theft and sexual predation was a first world thing, it’s right under our noses, in our homes….check yourself - and your kids.

November 5, 2007