Hackers to be slapped with Twitter, Facebook bans as punishment

There’s no denying the huge impact that social networking has on many people’s lives today. If someone has a bad day, you don’t hear about it straight from their mouths anymore. Instead, you might probably just read about it on that person’s Facebook profile, Twitter feed, or in a blog post. Figures released around September this year showed that a majority of Britons are already using social networking. It was revealed that over 57% of adults have now used sites like Facebook and Twitter, as opposed to the 43% that did back in 2010.

In fact, if something major happens, users just take it to social networking sites instead of to the streets or through other forms of traditional media. Take the case of when news broke out about celebrity injunctions and gagging orders last May. It generated a lot of controversy because many people viewed the orders as violating the celebrities’ freedom of speech, while others wanted super-injunctions bestowed upon them. During this period, it was recorded that one in every two hundred website visits in the UK were to micro-blogging site Twitter to see what was being tweeted, what gag orders had been issued, and so on.

For almost as long as the Internet has existed, hackers have been around to wreak havoc on to other unsuspecting users’ lives, stealing personal information, taking over accounts, and doing a lot of damage.

So really, it does make sense that the government is moving to have fraudsters and hackers banned from social networking sites when they get caught, a fitting online punishment for the online crimes that they have committed.

This online tagging system is just one of the recommendations contained in the 2011 Cyber Security Strategy, which was created in order to protect Britain and Britain’s web business from the ill effects of cyber crimes. The report calls for a programme of education to provide people with information on IT security, aside from detailing the various dangers that lurk on the online world.

The bit on cyber-tagging online criminals in a manner that real-world criminals are tagged reads: “The Ministry of Justice and the Home Office will consider and scope the development of a new way of enforcing these orders, using ‘cyber-tags’, which are triggered by the offender breaching the conditions that have been put on their Internet use, and which will automatically inform the police or probation service. If the approach shows promise we will look at expanding cyber-sanctions to a wider group of offenders.”

Minister for Cyber Security Francis Maude stated: “The growth of the internet has revolutionised our everyday lives and promises untold economic and social opportunities in years to come. This strategy sets out how we will realise the full benefits of a networked world by building a more trusted and resilient digital environment, from protecting the public from online fraud to securing critical infrastructure against cyber attacks.”

Source – The Register