Increasing Violence and death from social media; Safety measures you need

Life is not what it used to be 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. They are old school. Now a new world has come on how we live, play and work. We are dependent on mobile phones, smart phones and internet. The world is now a global village. Most people live in a digital world. We are now digital citizens. 


This great and good side of the digital world also has its pitfalls as people are being killed, bullied, threatened and emotionally drained from big brothers on the other end of the social sphere ;posting as friends. You need to know top smart ways to be safe on facebook, whatsapp and social media as well as how to detect identify thieves before they cause you harm

Digital citizenship is a term for anyone who uses a Smartphone or social media account or uses an online educational platform or creates digital content. However, most people do not know the rules of digital citizenship. We post and add contents without knowing the implications.  It is the smallest world.

Unfortunately, it has also exposed most of us to vulnerability. Most people do not realize this until sad events happen to them or to loved ones or they read it in the news. It is a tragedy to see young females being killed or maimed or people receiving threats that can keep them emotionally negative for a long period of time.

Kids are also not spared in this scenario. Children are using online medium without knowing the implication. They are very vulnerable. Also, un-informed families, which unfortunately includes the educated open social media sites like facebook and other social media accounts for kids who are minors thinking that is the sign of loving them. Things are going wrong on daily basis. 

Teens, PreTeens and even young adults are very vulnerable and lots of atrocities are going unnoticed even with parents, There is high rates of cases of teens and preteens getting into wrong hands and having the wrong discussions from the wrong people on the other side of the phone or social media.  This also includes undergraduates, and even young adults.

Let me give you shocking examples of social media violent happenings in recent times

Facebook used to kidnap, traffic Indonesian girls

Source: http://www.ryot.org/

DEPOK, Indonesia (AP) — When a 14-year-old girl received a Facebook friend request from an older man she didn’t know, she accepted it out of curiosity. It’s a click she will forever regret, leading to a brutal story that has repeated itself as sexual predators find new ways to exploit Indonesia’s growing obsession with social media.
The junior high student was quickly smitten by the man’s smooth online flattery. They exchanged phone numbers, and his attention increased with rapid-fire texts. He convinced her to meet in a mall, and she found him just as charming in person.

They agreed to meet again. After telling her mom she was going to visit a sick girlfriend on her way to church choir practice, she climbed into the man’s minivan near her home in Depok, on the outskirts of Jakarta.
The man, a 24-year-old who called himself Yogi, drove her an hour to the town of Bogor, West Java, she told The Associated Press in an interview.

There, he locked her in a small room inside a house with at least five other girls aged 14 to 17. She was drugged and raped repeatedly — losing her virginity in the first violent session.
After one week of torture, her captor told her she was being sold and shipped to the faraway island of Batam, known for its seedy brothels and child sex tourism that caters to men coming by boat from nearby Singapore.

She sobbed hysterically and begged to go home. She was beaten and told to shut up or die.
So far this year, 27 of the 129 children reported missing to Indonesia’s National Commission for Child Protection are believed to have been abducted after meeting their captors on Facebook, said the group’s chairman, Arist Merdeka Sirait. One of those befriended on the social media site has been found dead.

Woman kidnapped after chat on Facebook (Uganda)

Source: Ugandan Monitor, KAMPALA

It all began as an innocent chat on the social networking site, Facebook. It was followed with a request for a coffee date. For 26-year-old Joan Alupo, meeting a friend she had just made on Facebook was not meant to be a cause for worry.

However, what was supposed to be an evening of fun turned out to be an ordeal as the would-be date instead kidnapped Ms Alupo, holding her for two days. According to police, Ms Alupo, a fresh university graduate and daughter of former Tororo District chairperson Radice Okama, walked out of her family home in Muyenga, a Kampala suburb, on Wednesday evening ready for the date.

Instead, hours later, her parents received a distress call from their daughter, with her captor (whose identity the police are keeping confidential so that investigations are not jeopardised) warning that they would harm her unless the family paid a Shs400 million ransom.

Although the deputy police spokesman, Mr Patrick Onyango, confirmed that the Force’s Special Investigations Unit was following up the matter, he refused to divulge details, saying it would compromise the probe. However, sources within the Criminal Investigations Department told the Daily Monitor that after the family received the call, they contacted the police for help. Police boss Kale Kayihura, according to the source, then asked the Special Investigations Unit to take up the matter.

Demand for ransom
On Thursday, says the source, the family received a second call from the captors, this time demanding an even higher ransom--$400,000 (about Shs1 billion). They asked the family to wire the money to different accounts in Japan and Tanzania. International police later established that one of the accounts belongs to a charity organisation.

When detectives went to Mr Okama’s home, they checked Ms Alupo’s laptop and reportedly came across a thread of conversation between her and the alleged kidnapper. It was then that details of the coffee date were found.
The lead helped the detectives track close friends of the kidnapper and finally made contact with him.

How ex-General’s daughter, Cynthia, was killed by facebook ‘friends’

Source: Vanguard News: 
Source: Nigerian Vanguiard

 By EVELYN USMAN IKEJA— Indications emerged, Tuesday, that the late Cynthia Osokogu, the only daughter of General Frank Osokogu (rtd), whose body was discovered in a Lagos morgue a month after she was declared missing, could have been murdered by her facebook acquaintances. Already, six persons, among them two university students, a pharmacist and an employee of the hotel where the 24-year-old post-graduate student was murdered have been arrested. DEATH BY FACEBOOK:

The late Cynthia Osokogu Investigation into the murder, as reliably gathered, revealed that Cynthia was strangled to death in the hotel by her assailants, who thereafter left with an undisclosed amount, her student identity card and phones. Report said the beautiful and vivacious Cynthia had chatted with the two undergraduates on facebook for months. In the process, they reportedly got to know that she owned a boutique in Nasarawa State, following which they reportedly had a business proposal with her, promising to host her whenever she visited Lagos.

On her arrival at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Ikeja, on July 22, 2012, she was reportedly picked up by the two undergraduates and driven to a hotel in Festac Town. Unknown to her, she was embarking on a journey of no return. At the hotel, her drink was reportedly drugged before she was strangled to death. Vanguard reliably gathered that after her death, one of her assailants left the room and later put a call to the hoteliers, informing them that there was a corpse in one of the rooms.

Open Truth and Lessons:

Kids, young adults and all users of social media especially facebook and whatsapp need to understand what it means to use cell phones, smartphones and social media. And parents need to understand how to guide and protect their kids and young adults in a new age.

Smartphones, Social media and other internet usage could destroy your reputation, career and even lead to death. 

How to handle the Big Brother: Big brother is watching you already. As you join facenbook or start using smart phones, you need to also understand the safety measures to employ in order to have safe usage of it. You need to know how to deal with stalkers, spies and identity thieves who join these platforms and want to be your friend for a negative motive.

Big brother is a spy, identity thieve and liar but will always pose as a friend, loving and caring in order to harm you. Never fall a victim but always be at a safer side by understanding the 111 smart ways to besafe on facebook and whatsapp as well as knowing how to identify liars, spiesand identity thieves who may pose as friends on social media.

Never give your phone number out to someone you just know on facebook, never disclose your location, bank information, credit card information or mother’s maiden name on facebook post, monitor what your child does on smartphones and teach him  or her about online safety.