I Know Exactly Who You Are Instagram Real
A Saint John-area mom found her 11-year-old son corresponding with an Instagram account that requested individual letters from children at River Valley Middle School and Beaconsfield Center School.
Maggie Coffin Prowse was cooking dinner inside her New Brunswick home, when her 11-twelvemonth-old son said something frightening. "My eldest son was playing on his telephone and he said 'Hey, this guy guessed who I am!' I said, 'What practice you mean, they guessed who y'all are?'" The mother of 2, who lives in Grand Bay-Westfield, northwest of Saint John, went over and saw her son scrolling through Instagram. The "guy" was really an bearding profile with the username i_know_who_you_are_679. The contour picture was a effigy in a red hoodie with a creepy black shadow where a face should accept been. The description of the business relationship was equally unnerving. "I know who you are … dm my business relationship and I'll gauge who y'all are. RVMS [River Valley Heart Schoolhouse] kids and I tin guess some Beaconsfield kids." At that place are hundreds, if non thousands of Instagram accounts akin to i_know_who_you_are_679 that claim they'll perform the aforementioned trick: in substitution for a follow or a shout-out on your profile, they'll DM you lot back with personal details ranging from where you lot alive and go to schoolhouse, to who has a beat on you, and details nigh your future. Many of the accounts apply a Guy Fawkes mask — widely associated with the hacktivist group Bearding — equally a profile moving-picture show. It'due south a creepy ploy — but one that appeals to the curiosity and vanity of young users. One of the most popular such accounts, with the username i.know.exactly.who.yous.are.dms, has more than 80,400 followers. Coffin Prowse said her son had been intrigued past the business relationship. He sent a DM, or direct message, asking the person backside it to approximate who he was. The account responded with correct information: his grade and the school he attends. But when her son asked them to reveal their name, the message he got dorsum was: "I can't tell you that.' "Red flags were going upwardly all over the place," said Coffin Prowse. "It made me feel like I watched way too many episodes of The Following." According to David Shipley, the CEO of cybersecurity firm Beauceron Security, "borer into people'due south curiosity is a swell mode to build up an online audience." The modus operandi of these accounts, he said, is to build upwardly followers, then sell the account off to spammers and marketers. Accounts with a huge following are a valuable commodity that can be sold in the shadowy world of the and so-called night spider web. "It's a classic example of bait-and-switch," Shipley said. A sophisticated example is the interference of Russian hackers in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. "Russians hackers created Facebook groups for conservative causes or Christian movements, posting innocuous content relevant to a conservative audience," Shipley said "Then as the ballot ramped up, they started spewing out fake news most the Hillary Clinton campaign because they had a big audience that trusted them. In addition to participating in a potential scam, Shipley said, interacting with anonymous accounts besides opens users upwards to doxxing — where scammers scrape the web for personal data, and so publish it online — every bit well as cyberstalking, blackmail and other intrusions. "It'south all about trust and manipulation," he said. The Instagram profile targeting kids at RVMS and Beaconsfield has since been deleted. And it likely wasn't the work of sophisticated hackers in the first place. The references to specific Saint John-area schools, and the fact that users didn't have to follow the account to get a response, suggest a pupil may take created a copycat account inspired past the popularity of the I-know-who-yous-are genre on Instagram. In an email to Coffin Prowse, River Valley Heart Schoolhouse primary Trudy M.Grand. McGrath said the school was aware of the account, and administrators were "sure" it must be a student (or grouping of students), since the information shared would only exist known to students at the school. "I would just encourage students to not interact with anyone online unless you lot know who they are," McGrath said in the electronic mail. School administrators could not be immediately reached by CBC News for comment. After talking with several police officers she knows, Bury Prowse said, she chose not to file a police study. "Because the kids are reaching out to the person every bit part of this game, there's very little that the authorities can do," Coffin Prowse said. The most surprising thing to Coffin Prowse was that her son "wasn't fazed by it," she said. "The kids are desensitized to it. Everyone under the age of 22 is completely blasé about the whole thing." Shipley recommends that parents written report whatsoever creepy anonymous Instagram accounts interacting with their kids, but — an important step, he said — to "get informed as a parent." Parents of younger children, in detail, need to take basics well-nigh how apps work and which ones their kids are using. Kids also need to exist taught not to message anonymous accounts, no matter what intriguing information they promise to evangelize. "The internet is not a i-style consumption method, similar goggle box," Shipley said. "This is a ii-manner relationship with data exchanged. That'due south where the risk comes in. "Folks who aren't street-wise to the digital world are really easy marks."
'All about trust and manipulation'
Why is this such a huge thing?
Copycat account
Kids 'desensitized to information technology'
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/i-know-who-you-are-instagram-1.4552382
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