What is happening. Why you should care. How you can help.
There are 93 million fake profiles on Facebook. That is not the
problem I refer to. The problem is that within that huge number is a large quantity
of profiles created for the sole purpose of locating, harassing, and stalking
people with disabilities. That is the problem.
And Facebook has created the perfect tool for the predators
to locate their victims. It is called the Friend Finder.
I call these internet predators Disability Trolls because
they are literally trolling for people with disabilities with the lure of a
fake profile. Usually, this lure consists of the profile of a young attractive
wheelchair user or amputee. Next, a description of how she is newly injured and
is looking to meet other people with disabilities is added.
The Disability Trolls are relying on several factors to
initiate successful contact with real people with disabilities (PWDs). They
realize that many people with disabilities are socially shutout and are
desperate to share their experiences with others with similar disabilities.
They also know that many PWDs want to serve role models and help people with
new disabilities. Therefore by pretending to have a new disability, they can
initiate “friendships” with disability “veterans”. The Trolls are also relying
upon the fact that the majority of PWDs are simply unaware of this threat, and therefore
they don’t take measures to protect themselves. The Trolls leverage this
initial trust into deeper and more invasive online relationships.
Every teenage girl knows to stay away from the obviously creepy
middle-aged man. But a teenage girl with a new spinal cord injury is highly
likely to open herself up to a fake profile that assumes the identity of female
disability peer. The danger arises when in fact the fake profile is really a
middle-aged man with a disability fetish for young women in wheelchairs. This
fetish can easily morph into obsessive stalking. Even if the relationship only
exists online, the victim will feel violated and have been violated on many
levels.
Now that you know what is happening, the next question to be
answered is “Why you should care?” You should care because you, your friends,
and your peers with disabilities are being systematically victimized and preyed
upon. This victimization includes the following:
“Friending” unsuspecting PWDs by predators using fake
disability profiles.
Stealing personal photographs of the person and uploading
them to disability porn websites.
Repeatedly private messaging PWDs and trying to engage them
into intimate discussions revolving around their sexual and personal health
issues.
Stalking selected PWDs either online or in person.
Hopefully, by now you have been convinced that this type of
behavior is unacceptable and needs to be stopped. Fortunately, the head of
Facebook Security recently made the following claim “"On Facebook we have
a really large commitment in general to finding and disabling false
accounts," and "Our entire platform is based on people using
their real identities."
Facebook claims that it will remove fake profiles and the
offenders will not be allowed to create new profiles. Facebook backs up this
claim with an easy reporting feature. It literally takes seconds to report a
profile as being either fake or harassing, and block the profile from “seeing”
and contacting you.
Once Facebook has been notified of the report, it initiates its
own investigation. Happily, the nature of fake profiles makes them easy for
Facebook to identify and delete. Real people can also easily “prove” their legitimacy
of their profile. Thus, reporting all suspected fake profiles is a simple and
effective solution to a serious problem.
People with disabilities are statistically the most likely
to be abused, sexually assaulted, bullied, harassed, and victimized. They are also
the least likely to report these victimizations due to fear of retribution.
Fortunately, reporting the fake profiles can be done anomalously. It provides
the opportunity for PWDs to set and enforce limits and boundaries on unwanted
behaviors.