A very important ethical issue I believe to be very prominent in today’s society is online identity theft, commonly known as ‘cat-fishing’, made popular by the MTV series Catfish.
The article given about the young woman Ruth Palmer interested me the most. I could not imagine how scary and confusing it must be to find out someone has been impersonating you online. It lead to me thinking, what is it exactly that makes an individual want to be someone else and why they would want to make potential friendships and relationships online if they could never meet face-to-face.
A couple obvious reasons would be because that they are insecure about what they look like or maybe people are simply bored and are looking for some entertainment.
People can pose as a different person entirely simply by selecting an individual’s Facebook or Instagram account and transferring pictures and other personal information to a new account with a different name, creating a whole new persona in which someone can hide behind.
These people hiding behind fake accounts can trick people to the extent of falling in love, which happened to the creator of the show Catfish, Nev Schulman. In my opinion this is ethically wrong on every level, playing with peoples feelings and being misleading and deceitful can lead to sever consequences.
People go to the extent of creating other fake accounts such as family members and friends to create a more authentic profile for the person they are trying to be. As experience by Ruth Palmer, she found conversations online between ‘herself’ and her mother and friends.
These people who create such accounts clearly have an abundance of spare time to manipulate all this information. People may also ask the question whether the person is someone they potentially know…
Despite this act seeming so wrong to many others, and me unless there is an actual crime amongst the impersonation it is not actually illegal to ‘misuse’ pictures online. On the other hand I would certainly say this is unethical.
If it is anonymity that people are looking for there are other ways of addressing this issue, networks exist where you can create usernames instead of sharing your personal information, from my point of view there is no real need to take on someone else’s identity.
References
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31710738
http://www.thewire.com/technology/2012/02/learning-cormac-mccarthy-twitter-hoax/48147/
FrancescaCharnley 
Very interesting read! I particularly like how you neither raised ethical issues by educational/ business uses of social media, but steered towards more personal/leisure issues. I do agree with you and feel as though catfishing has certainly been made easy due to how simple it is to take (screenshot/save) peoples photo’s i.e. through Instagram and Facebook. People scheme and formulate profiles that look very authentic to manipulate people, but in hindsight are far from what they display. Though this act seemingly plays with peoples feelings as you said, especially when dating is involved, to what extent do you think this MTV series is helpful, or not- due to its entertainment purpose? Could this show be giving people ideas?
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Thank you for the comment, if I’m honest I never really thought about whether the show could be giving people ideas. Thinking about it now it definitely could however I think the sort of person who would be that way inclined wouldn’t necessarily watch the show. Although the show is aired for entertaining purposes I think it gives people an eye opening experience as to what some people can go through and show how scary it can be.
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Hi Francesca,
Think you for upload a such a nice blog on this topic I really enjoy reading that, there are number of points you have made and unfortunately there are all true, for example people do misuse other people picture on their social network. I have come a cross in my personal experience; where I have my favorite Bollywood actors and actress and I know much more about them but when I go on my Facebook account I get random Facebook friend requests with my favorite actors and actress picture on their profile. Which I know for sure it a spam that because I’m already friend with them.
However, I would be grateful if you know how to identify these users or is there is any other way you can block from my account?
Also just want to make point: the video at the top it summaries the full topic, which is good but I was confuse with the blog layout and horizontal line I thought the video is not part of the topic 4 that because the video is above title, for next time try to add the video below title that will help other.
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Thank you for the comment. Yes a lot of people do impersonate celebrities online, thankfully social media sites like Twitter for example can ‘verify’ whether that account actually is the genuine person, if they are not then their account wont be verified.
Unfortunately I’m not the best with technology, all I can suggest is to maybe study their profile a little, genuine celebrities will have thousands of followers and likes and I presume the amount would be more professional than an impersonators attempt lets say.
Sorry for the confusion, thank you for that I will definitely keep that in mind for next time!
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