In “Craigslist Crime Isn’t All Cyber Crime” by Paul Muschick
readers are exposed to recent cases of a new form of crime that is being
facilitated by the well known website, Craigslist. Since the formation of the
website scammers have been utilizing it by fooling people into transferring
money to their bank accounts in return for cars that do not exist or renting
apartments for leases they have no control over. However, the fooling has gone
beyond the possible cash thefts that occur online and the shame that the people
who are being scammed might feel is incomparable to the new crime that is being
committed. Robberies are now being aided. People are lured with exceptional
prices on phones and other items but once they set to meet the crooks they are
robbed for everything they are carrying. Muschich says, “last April a man was
robbed of $400 at gunpoint in Bangor when he was lured into a park after dark
to supposedly look at an iPhone for sale on Craigslist” (Muschick, 2013). Fraud
on Craigslist has become far too common however this new extent on the crime
that is being committed has really placed into perspective just how far some
people will go in order to scam others for money and goods.
In order to really analyze this phenomenon and have some sort of
understanding as to why scammers find it so easy to do this to people I will
utilize John Suler’s “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” Suler categorizes
several of the behaviors displayed online which might make it easier for a
person do be dishonest, act out or self disclose. The first category analyzed
in his article is “dissociative anonymity” which evaluates the way in which
users have the ability to utilize another person’s identity or flat out hide
their own. In the Craigslist cases reported above, this form of disinhibition
might have been the main proponent in the reason why the crooks found it so
easy to rob the people they were scamming. Without any traces of who these
people are, what their names are, or where they live. The people were easily
robbed and had very small chance of gaining justice for the crime.
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