Mama's Gun

The "six degrees of separation" is a theory first held by Frigyes Karinthy and detailed by sociologist Stanley Milgram putting forward the fact that human society is a small world characterized by short path lengths.

According to different experiences, Milgram showed that one people is generally linked to antoher by a network of five other persons. For exemple, only five people are separating me from the president. Because I (unfortunately) know someone, who knows someone...who happens to know president Nicolas Sarkozy.

In spite of the controversy that surrounds this theory, I found it interesting to relate it to the Internet and especially with a phenomenon that is spreading faster and faster called cybercrime.

Indeed, social networks seem to rely on Milgram's theory and tend to embody it by inviting people to widen their network of family, friends and colleagues. The whole point of a social network is not only to be linked to people you know, but also to get in touch with people you may or could know. The world is becoming even smaller than what the six degrees of separation was telling us. We are getting to know more and more people thanks to the new technologies.

But is having someone as your Facebook friend or your Twitter follower really knowing that person ?

The answer to that question would be no for at least 50% of my contacts. This phenomenon of virtual friendship leads to very dangerous activities.

Twitter has recently been a victim of phishing, which is a specific form of cybercrime. It means that hackers actually managed to create a very convincing copy of the original Twitter website in order to usurp the identity of its users. As soon as you enter your username and password on this fake website, the hackers are intercepting all these pieces of information and can connect themselves to Twitter from your personal account. Not only the hackers have an access to your personal stuff, but their main goal is to send infected messages to fool your contacts too and create a bug.

But the worst thing about cybercrime is not on the Internet, it is when the crime is no longer virtual and becomes a reality. If you google your own name, you will see how easy it is to get information about who you are, what you do, where you live and so on. Websites like 123people are collecting every piece of information about each person on the Internet and can enable you to learn things you shouldn't know about strangers.

But what if you were that stranger ? What if someone was actually using the Internet to learn about you at this very moment ? Wow ! I'm starting to freak myself out...

But in a nutshell, the line between the virtual world and the real one is not that thick, and cybercrime can have a lot of impacts on reality. Let's all try to control our own image, and be careful not to reveal to much of ourselves on the Web, otherwise, who knows who might knock on your door...

Ok didn't mean to scare the hell out of you !

Bottom line is : stay aware, okay ?