Are mothers to blame for a never ending violent cycle?

Recently we have talked about women and cmc in lecture and it just so happened to parallel my crim 453 class lecture “the objectification and victimization of women.”

In video games such as Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider, and Anime series’ unfortunately it isn’t uncommon to see women objectified and often victimized. For example, in Grand Theft Auto women are often portrayed as prostitutes or trophies.  Sometimes players are even given monetary rewards for being violent and beating up these women.

            Surely these video games are rated ‘M’ for ‘mature audiences’ in attempt to keep young avid video gamers from exposure to such violence. Although there are these attempts by society, it depends on the individual household. If a child asks for this rated ‘M’ game there are mothers that will say no way, its rated ‘M’ for a reason, you can wait. Then there are mothers that will run out the next opportunity they get and purchase the game for their child. Once it is in the child’s hands they are exposed to different virtual worlds that they might not be mature enough to understand yet. By not being able to understand this it may lead to future difficulties for children, including but not limited to, difficulties distinguishing between real life and virtual life and what’s expected and excepted in virtual life verses real life.     

            By these video games objectifying and victimizing women, although it wasn’t meant for a young audience, that young audience may think its okay to do the same in real life. Adding to the never-ending vicious cycle.

            In an article I found about this vicious cycle provides research about the relationship between the two. Media psychologist Dr. Karen Dill-Shackleford (2011) stated that when women are constantly shown as sex objects rather than a counterpart, constantly represented as demeaning and degraded, and constantly portrayed as submissive, this supports anti-women and violent attitudes.

            Even in video games rendered towards young audiences such as Mario Bros women are used as damsels in distress. For example, Princess Peach (or Daisy; point being that it is a female character) is placed in a situation that she can’t escape from on her own, rather she must be rescued from the ‘bad guy’ by a dominate male character. When questioned about the issue brought about by this plot, developers say it is still being used today, and will continue to be used, because the damsel in distress is an ‘easy motivation.’

            If something is easy everyone would do it, hence probably why Nintendo refuses to let up on the reigns of portraying women as weak or victims. It’s easy enough for everyone to play, therefore possibly higher sales. It seems more like a lucrative business move on their part rather than re-modifying the game so that it doesn’t promote violence in an already highly violent society. Whether Nintendo realizes it or not their video games are just as at fault for promoting violence as others such as Tomb Raider. Even though there isn’t as much gore or weapons, it doesn’t matter how much violence is physically incorporated, the ideology is there and that’s what matters most. Playing video games at a young age and being exposed to this is probably partially at fault for the expectation of more violence as their gaming progresses. The older they become, the more challenges they want to encounter, more gore, etc.

The Walking Dead: Stealing the identity of the Dead

With technology evolving it has become easier to steal a person's identity. Identity theft is when someone steal a piece of your information, whereas identity fraud is when they then use the information, most of the time these two go hand in hand. Identity theft is very common. In 2012 alone there were 12.6 million reported cases. There are also different types of identity theft, like financial which is the most common. Criminal pretending to be someone else when you are convicted. Cloning which is assuming someone else's identity. Synthetic when you take someone's info and combine it with fake information. Medical, when you use their information to obtain medical care or drugs. Lastly there is ghostly which is using the identity of a dead person. The article I found was on Ghosting (http://eco-comics.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-easy-is-it-to-steal-dead-mans.html) It touched on how this method of identity is very rare, in fact it is the rarest form because it is so difficult to execute. It is extremely difficult in todays day in age due to technological advances. Since many records are filed online it is hard for criminals to get a hold of them. As well as finger prints it is all electronic so it is very difficult to steal a dead person's identity

Kids Online and Parents Monitoring

In this week, we talked about the technology across the life span. Unlike the generation of our parents, people in age range of 18 to 29 today has the highest rates of Internet use. Our group uses Internet more than any other age group, and the usage of the Internet of the age group of 13 to 17 is following this group. Teens these days have been growing up with continuous Internet usage. Kids online are benefited by easy access to the academic information. However, on the other hand, they are at the risk of many dangers on the Internet.

            According to the data shown in the class, the number one concern of parents on kids using Internet was encountering strangers online. It is a danger to all the Internet users, but especially kids are vulnerable to the predators because they are not quite good at catching a sign of danger yet. Other concerns that are raised were private information available to advertisers, reputation management, and impact on future opportunities. It was funny to hear the story about son giving the family’s information to the advertiser to earn some items for his game on the Facebook. However, it could be no fun if the information given was more financial related or private medical information. Kids often reveal personal information without even noticing its consequences. Therefore, parents are very concerned about their children using Internet. According to the article, Parents are desperate for any way to help their children avoid the career torpedoing, cyber bully-provoking mishap, and they sometimes choose to monitor or even spy on them in order to protect them from all the dangers online. 77% of the parents answered that they have been monitored their kids, but sometimes these monitoring cause some conflict between kids and parents.  Kids think that parents are invading their privacy by the surveillance online. How can we satisfy both worrying parents and kids’ privacy? A communication is the key. Internet is affordable and accessible to most of the kids today. By comparison, there is not enough education on kids about how to use Internet wisely and safely. Signe Whitson gives some advices on how to communicate with the kids on this issue. First, Parents need to teach what is appropriate or inappropriate before they let their kids to go online, and they should show their child how to set up the privacy features. These settings will protect the child from allowing strangers access to his or her profiles. Next, parents need to thoroughly explain what dangers exist on the Internet to the kids, instead of downloading a monitoring program on the computer. Talk with him or her in clear, frank terms about the real dangers of online predators and the serious need to avoid them.

She recommends since danger online occurs more commonly at the hands of friends than of enemies, it is also critical to teach your child how to "block" comments and contacts by peers who have a history of engaging in cruel online behavior. After all these communication with the kids, Megan Mass, the sexuality educator, asks the parents to be honest about the monitoring when they decide to do so because secretly recording a kid's Internet usage will likely do more harm to the relationship than good for the child.

            I was not monitored when I was a kid, but I had a time limit of using the Internet. Also the computer was placed at the living room. I was told about keeping private information safe online a lot from my parents. Instead of secretly spying on me, my parents set the discipline so I can eventually have a concept of what is appropriate behavior online. Kids are getting more familiar to newest technology, and they can find the way to flee from parents’ monitoring. Regulation without communication only makes kids to sneak out of surveillance and causes rebellion. It is not about controlling them, but it is rather teaching them how to use a technology safe.

Fishing is Plenty of Fun... Until You're the one Biting

Online phishing is a major problem in today's highly technological society. The more we post about ourselves on social media, or buy from different websites, the more exposed we are to those which may attempt to steal our information for their own good. This theft may cause financial loss, identity theft, and more. This is online phishing, and if we are not careful, we could all be caught- hook, line, and sinker.

We were in choir. My choir teacher usually let us listen to the songs that we were going to sing, so we could become familiar with the tune. The class began normal, and she booted up her computer to play the song. Unfortunately, her computer never booted up. Before it even got to the desktop, a notice appeared from the "FBI". It informed her that she had violated federal law by downloading materials illegally. She would have to pay an online fine, or else she would be arrested in the upcoming week. This was an attempt at phishing. Someone had claimed to be the FBI in an attempt to gain her credit card information.

Phishing can come in many different forms. Sometimes it uses a virus like in the above, real life example. Often times, phishers use fake emails and messages to attempt to retrieve the information. Just as a fisherman may bait a line that he has cast, these "phishermen" bait the email with claims of the necessity of needed account information. The emails are not obvious, they often come from someone claiming to be from PNC Bank, or from Bank of America. It may say that "Joe" from Bank of America needs your account number to re-authenticate your finances, while in reality, some hacker just wants to re-authenticate your money into his hands.

There are some ways that people can see through the trap of phishing.  One definitely needs to check the grammar and the spelling in the message. Often, the phishers are oversea attackers, meaning that they may not have the best grasp on the English language. This is an obvious give away- as professional banks would never send a mass email with spelling errors. Another way to check for phishing is to check the links contained in the email. Phishing messages always have links- they go to the websites that ask for the information. This means that the websites will be created to resemble professional URLs. There may be an extra letter somewhere in the link, or it may just appear strange. Another way that you can verify that the email is from an authentic source is to call said source. This is a foolproof way to differentiate between the real and the fake messages.

Online phishing is a real danger to our society. Intelligent people are out there trying to steal our information with deceptive emails all the time. We need to take precautions to avoid being taken advantage of, such as a few extra reads of your emails, or a phone call. Often, the emails may not even have a mistake, and be completely foolproof. It just goes to show the kind of danger that online hackers out for free money can cause.

E-mail Phishing Attacks Take Just Minutes to Hook Recipients

As I scroll through my emails everyday, I see tons of emails that are spam such as; fake bank companies trying to trick me to log on to their website to acquire my personal information. Phishing is a lot more common than we think and everyone gets spam in their emails, so everyone is at risk of getting involved with phishing sometime in their life. Phishing is defined as the "illegal attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details that is used for malicious reasons such as identity theft." The phishing e-mails that I get from banks or credit card companies are almost so deceiving that they look like a legitimate e-mail.   

According to the article I read from Wired, e-mail phishing takes only seconds for someone to receive your information, which gives you little to no time to react and protect your personal information. According the new Verizon Breach Investigations report, if your someone in IT security, you've got one minute and twenty seconds to save your company from being hacked. This is the median time it takes for an employee to open a phishing email that lands on a company’s network and in their inbox, which sets a motion to prevent data from leaking. Verizon noted that 23% of recipients open phishing e-mails and what is more dangerous is the 11% who go as far as to click the attachments that are contained in the e-mail. This is scary information to know because I feel like these statistics are much higher than they should be, especially with so much knowledge on the web about protecting your personal information and identity from phishing. In 37% of the breaches examined, defenders were able to contain the attack within hours. I’m also surprised by this percentage because I feel like as soon as I see anything suspicious on any of my credit card statements, e-mails, or anything else that contains my personal information, I do an investigation immediately or change my password. I also never open any suspicious or spam e-mails.

The article goes on to say that although many organizations are quick to respond to an attack on their network, it still takes a long time to uncover the breach, which is the main issue here. Typically, it can take several months to years to uncover a breach. I think that with technology and the knowledge we can obtain in the world today, we should be more cautious when opening certain e-mails. I also think it is a little ridiculous that it takes some organizations a long time to uncover a breach and therefore people should be taught the proper precautions before opening any type of suspicious e-mails, especially in their workplace where this can affect others and the network they share. I feel like the percentages of recipients who open phishing e-mails will decrease in the future, as people are taught to distinguish the difference between a legitimate e-mail and a phishing e-mail.

Over-Sexualizing Women In Video Games

            I don’t know about you, but when it comes to America, everything seems as though it has to be bigger, better, faster, etc. Whether its food, cars, clothes, or even bodies, America has a sense of pride in making things larger than life and as excessive as possible. This is no different when it comes to video games, cartoons, or movies. There is always a main character that is the hero and he is big, strong, fast, and brave. He defeats all of his enemies and saves the day for society. But where are the females in these storylines? Usually, the females are pictured as sex symbols or helpless characters that need to rely on the male “hero” to make their way throughout the story. For some reason, this is always a part of the story, and the only question that I can ask is, how realistic is this stereotype?  I know plenty of strong women that have never had to rely on a man or be a sex symbol to live their lives to the fullest. In this final blog, I will discuss women in video games and how they are over sexualized and exploited in many cases.

            In my personal experience, I have observed countless times in which females were “sexed” up or made helpless/ditsy in both video games and movies. For example, one of the biggest box office earners ever, Spiderman, has a character named Mary Jane which can fit into either of these roles. Mary Jane is the love interest of Peter Parker (Spiderman) and many times throughout the movie they force Mary Jane to rely on Spiderman to be saved, or make her seem as though she is a sex object/a goal for Peter to win her over. Another example of over sexualization is displayed throughout the video game Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider’s main character is Lara Croft, is a British archaeologist and an adventurer. She is one of the most influential female video game characters that have ever been created, and of course, like we discussed in class, she was made to look like an unrealistic sex object. She couldn’t just be a normal female doing extraordinary things, but instead they had to create her as a busty female with unrealistic proportions who was wearing very little clothing, even though she was going on all kinds of adventures. It made no sense for her to be dressed/proportioned like that, however, sex sells. In an article by The Orion, titled VideoGames Oversexualize Powerful Women, they discuss how women in video games are exploited and over sexualized. The article talks about how almost all women in video games have extremely large breasts, but not a proper bra, or one at all and also bring up the fact of how the women in these games wear significantly less clothing than makes sense to be fighting and battling as they do in the game. The article summarizes that video games give women this unrealistic stereotype that is offensive to many women across the world.

            Personally, I do not think that it is morally right for women to be displayed as they are in almost all video games, however, sex does sell in most cases, and that is why these video game creators portray women in this way. It may be offensive, but they believe that it makes the game more appealing for the average male that is playing these games. I do, however, believe that this problem is slowly changing and that in the near future, women will be seen as more realistic in video games.

Heaven Doesn't Need Furniture

It is always discussed how children are the prime targets for online predators and deception online. Children trust too easily, and are easily extorted by predators for photos and personal information. However, it is not only children who can be easily duped online. We assume children are most vulnerable due to their overtly trusting nature or inability to know how much information is TOO much to post. But, parents and seniors are just as much at risk for engaging in dangerous behaviors online.

Maybe it is because they aren't well versed in the forms of CMC, or maybe it is because they are just as trusting as their children when it comes to the internet.

Seniors are obviously more at risk than middle aged adults. They often fall victim to online theft due to their lack of knowledge and confusion, or because they are lonely and trust whoever they are speaking to. Some examples include giving information over the phone to a supposed IRS agent, or predators posing as their grandchildren to have money wired into their accounts due to some "emergency".

Going further than seniors, the deceased are also at risk. A 2012 study found that about 2.5 million deceased Americans a year are being impersonated by fraudulent people. This can be done because: 1. It takes 3+ months for people to be recognized as dead by Federal Bureaus. 2. Because family of the deceased will not realize it is happening, and once they do, it is difficult to prove your relation to the deceased and that they are actually deceased when someone has been running around pretending to be them.

It's not only the dead and (definitely) dying that are at risk. Parents, too, are over trusting. But, they are often being victims of mistrust when they are involved in topics or areas that are their most vulnerable. For example, in 2013, Sarah was involved in Facebook groups and chatrooms with supposed parents of autistic children so she and others could talk about their experiences with their children.

She became close with a male online, Phyl, to the point where he was supposed to visit her in New York. But, in Catfish fashion, he never showed. His profile vanished as well. It turns out that his disappearance corresponded with him being arrested on 20 accounts of child pornography and sexual touching charges. He was posing as an autistic adult, giving people advice on bathing their autistic children, and probing them for photos or videos of the children in baths. Sarah never complied, but some others did. In this case, the predator was being overtly manipulative over parents in their times of need, rather than predators lurking after children who are too trusting in general with strangers.

In summary, the internet is a terrifying place full of monsters, but not only kids are at risk. Parents, too, can be made a fool of, and even the ghosts of the dead can be found making furniture purchases several months after the funeral.