If you follow me closely, you know that I’ve been discussing romance scams (also known as “catfishing”) for several years now. In short, a romance scam is where criminals will harvest photos from social media and dating site profiles and then use these photos to set up fake profiles on these same sites to enter into online relationships with individuals for the purpose of defrauding victims out of money.…
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Loading...[This post was written jointly with Katia Hildebrandt and also appears on her blog.]
In recent weeks, the topic of digital identity has been at the forefront of our minds. With election campaigns running in both Canada and the United States, we see candidate after candidate’s social media presence being picked apart, with past transgressions dragged into the spotlight for the purposes of public judgement and shaming.…
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...I’ve had many victims of #romancescams (where scammers used my photos) ask me how it was possible that they saw “me” over Skype. From these conversations, I’ve discovered that the scammers used a technique to port video over Skype to further fake someone’s identity.…
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...This post was written jointly with Katia Hildebrandt and also appears on her blog.
Recently, we presented at OER15 in Cardiff, Wales, on the topic of developing a framework for open courses. In our session, we considered our experiences in facilitating MOOC type courses in order to think through and address the challenges that these types of courses present.…
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...I was recently invited to speak with the #eLearnOnt “Game Changer” series where I discussed various options around building online and/or blended course environments via Google Hangout. I began with traditional LMS options and moved to the more nebulous concept of “Small Tools Loosely Joined” course/environment design.…
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...This past Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to co-facilitate a Day of Pink event for local school division. We invited approximately 100+ elementary students (mostly 7th graders) to participate. The themes included (digital) citizenship, (digital) identity, anti-bullying, and becoming an upstander (someone who stands up to support the protection, safety, and wise decision-making of others).…
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...You may have read my previous posts about scammers using my personal photos to construct fake identities for the purpose of entering into online romantic relationships with women and defrauding them out of money or goods. If not, here’s the original post which outlines the problem and here is the followup.…
(No Ratings Yet)Loading...Last September, I wrote a post about how scammers had been using my photos to lure women into online, romantic relationships for the purpose of ‘borrowing’ or extorting money. Since that time, the scams have continued. I get, on average, one new report a day from women (and occasionally men) who have been tricked, or nearly tricked, into sending money.…
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I recently received the following message via email. I’ve omitted a small portion of the text to protect the privacy of the sender and have only corrected a few spelling errors to improve the overall readability of the passage.
…I know you do not know me, but I had to share something with you.
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