Cyber Shaming Scams

It seems there is a scam similar to the "revenge porn" scam that we talked about in class - An organization who has found a glitch in the CanLii system that allows them to find out personal information about people involved in court cases. While this information, as we know, is typically public, some of the family law cases (think New Brunswick v G(J) from State and Citizen) are being broadcast to the public, so we know the identity of "G(J)." The company is then advertising a service o the sidebar that charges people to get the information removed. Apparently CanLii is looking into the problem, and has implemented a verification program that distinguishes between humans and computers. This raises huge problems about the exploitation of personal information and, as in revenge porn, we know there often is not a viable solution. Once the information is displayed, there's no telling who has acquired the information, even if it gets removed.

Find the article here:


http://business.financialpost.com/2014/03/29/how-cyber-shame-scams-are-playing-on-our-privacy-fears-and-scaling-up/?__lsa=6ed8-951c