Verified Badges for Everyone?

by Corye Douglas

The threat of cybercrimes is growing - both in scope and intensity - as the government drags its feet on mandating cybersecurity policies to protect citizens.

One fifth of U.S. Internet users who are minors report unwanted sexual solicitation, and half have faced cyber-bullying via social media.  Employment scams defraud job seekers by stealing personal information, financial data, or money.

The FBI recently stated that possible abductors are luring children by posing to be in their age group and conceiving a relationship of false trust via social media platforms.  It is evident that social media-based trafficking is on the rise during the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) now calls on social media platforms to help eliminate trafficking in women and girls, amid an increase in online traps designed to recruit potential victims during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The public's exposure to cybercrimes has increased in recent months as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to shift to remote learning and employment.  Many countries that were ill-prepared or unequipped to tackle cyberattacks now find themselves at increased risk.  Children and adolescents are a primary target for these attacks.  Since many schools now conduct classes online, kids are exposed to the Internet earlier and for longer durations than ever before.  There is also a growing number of children using social media platforms, with or without their parents' knowledge and consent, under the age of 13.

Identifying, investigating, and punishing all occurrences of cybercrime is a tall order indeed.  The cloak of anonymity granted by the Internet must be removed to reduce the time and effort required to locate culprits and charge them with cybercrimes.  An innovative solution for accelerating this process is for social media platforms to require verification of all users when creating an account and for existing accounts to remain active.  Current age verification protocols are easily overcome by children.  No social media platform asks for any identification for adults, either.  Even when malicious users are identified and their accounts disabled, without safeguards, a predator can easily switch to a new profile and search for another target.

Currently, it is difficult to locate unscrupulous web users, as anyone with an Internet-enabled device can log on and commit a crime without validating their identity.

The FBI arrested only 1,200 identity thieves between 2003 and 2006, though nearly 8.3 million victims were reported during this time.  Moreover, only a third of the arrests resulted in convictions.  Many law enforcement authorities remain unaware of a majority of cyber-bullying and sexual harassment instances due to under-reporting.

Vague jurisdiction laws and an inability to prosecute from a lack of concrete evidence further inhibit arrests and convictions.  More identification and less anonymity are needed to bring cybercriminals to justice.

Social media specifically is linked to many more forms of cybercrime: stalking, hacking personal accounts to steal identities, impersonating someone else to gain confidence of victims, and more.

There are even instances of vacation robberies: a predator clues in to Facebook pictures and posts not only to recognize when targets are on holiday but also to identify their addresses and potential whereabouts.

An entire TV series is devoted to unveiling those who are "catfishing" - romantically wooing victims online under false pretenses over a period of time, often stealing money from their victims.  Instances abound of shared links that promise freebies, only to divert the user to a malicious website.

In fact, the dark net is now reaching out to social media accounts to sell and share tools for developing hacking skills.

One way to eliminate user anonymity while preserving privacy is linking the social media platforms and the State Department of Motor Vehicles or Motor Vehicle Commission through auto-redirect verification; PayPal, and e-commerce websites employ this strategy in a similar fashion.

This process will use public and private keys to encrypt the transaction from the social media platform to the DMV or MVC website.  The encryption will hide the user's personal identification information and it would not be visible to anyone viewing the website source code.  Social media platforms would not store or have access to any identifying data on their servers, limiting the scope of damage in the case of a data breach.

Requiring verification of all user accounts will ensure a decrease in the incidence of criminal activity.  Consider, for example, the case of prepaid and post-paid mobile accounts involved in criminal activities and terrorist attacks.  Although burner phones are still used in some crimes, the added security feature of a required ID check for phone purchases provides ongoing mitigation.  Identity verification acts as a powerful deterrent for most offenders.

Government cybersecurity guidelines would be an advantage for social media platforms in ensuring complete and consistent safety and privacy of all user verification.

However, considering the fragmented nature of cybersecurity regulations in the U.S. at present, the possibility of arriving at universal protocols for sharing, storing, and "forgetting" personal information is distant.

The call for accountability on social media platforms has become a strong demand to protect vulnerable groups accelerated by the shift to more online exchanges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With cybersecurity policy always lagging behind cybercriminals' creativity, early adoption of a proactive solution, such as 100 percent ID verification as a mandatory requirement for social media account holders, is an essential step toward mitigating cybercrimes, as well as meeting the U.N. call to mitigate online risks of exposing women and girls to trafficking and sexual exploitation.