Tag Archives: cell phones

Cell Phones and Identity Theft

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shutterstock_85529755Identity theft has been called the fastest growing crime in America. And one of the fastest growing means of identity theft is theft of cell phones.

Two thirds of Americans now own cell phones. ABC news ran a story this week about cell phone robberies. According to ABC, one out of every three robberies in America now involve cell phones. Thieves literally rip them out of victim’s hands, steal unprotected data, turn them off so they can’t be tracked, then wipe the data, and resell them.

According to the FCC:

  • More than 40% of all robberies in New York City involve smartphones and other cell phones
  • The situation is getting worse: In Washington, D.C., cell phones were taken in 54% more robberies in 2011 than in 2007, and cell phones are now taken in 38% of all DC robberies.
  • Other major cities have similar statistics, with robberies involving cell phones comprising 30-40% of all robberies.
  • Robberies are, by definition, violent crimes, and there are many instances of robberies targeting cell phones resulting in serious injury or even death.
  • Loss or theft of an unsecured smartphone often results in access to sensitive personal data.

A web site specializing in compiling statistics on identity theft, IdentityTheft.info points out that:

  • 15 million Americans have their identities used fraudulently each year with financial losses exceeding $50 billion.
  • That represents 7% of all adults with an average loss of $3,500.
  • Close to 100 million additional Americans have their personal identifying information placed at risk of identity theft each year when records maintained in government and corporate databases are lost or stolen.

The FCC, police and legislators have launched initiatives to halt the epidemic of cell phone thefts. They include:

  • Creating a global database to prevent use of stolen smartphones.
  • Teaching users to lock their phones with passwords and educating them about lock/locate/wipe applications.
  • Introducing Federal legislation to criminalize tampering with unique hardware IDs on cell phones.

Making it a crime to tamper with the unique hardware identifiers built into cell phones has been a key part of successful foreign initiatives to deter cell phone theft by creating databases of stolen cell phones which carriers could then block.

Digital media and crime suspect identification

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For law enforcement authorities, “digital footprinting” may be the next big thing in suspect identification.

cellphoneimageofcrowd

The past week provided several new examples of the unintended consequences of new media – all related to the Boston Marathon Bombing case. While many of the side effects I discuss in this blog are negative, In this case, they were mostly positive.

Public supplies thousands of images

Shortly after the bombings near the finish line in this year’s Boston Marathon, law enforcement authorities put out the word through television that they were interested in receiving cell phone pictures and videos from onlookers. Their theory: that the perpetrators would be visible somewhere in the photos.

The public responded. At one point, according to ABC news, the deluge of images pouring into the FBI temporarily crashed their site. So great was the outpouring of support from the public that ABC dubbed the phenomenon “clicktivism.”

Within days, the FBI identified two suspects with the help of facial recognition software to track the thousands of faces in the crowd.

Suspect identification

They correlated the citizen-supplied videos and images with security camera footage from surrounding stores and found two young brothers carrying backpacks large enough to conceal pressure cookers packed with explosives. The color of the backpacks also reportedly matched the color of charred fabric found at the scenes. Through analysis of the images, authorities were also able to identify the brothers at the locations where the bombs exploded.

The authorities then circulated images of “Suspect 1” and “Suspect 2” through mass media. Within minutes, the images went viral and the FBI was able to put names with faces from the leads.

The FBI continued to investigate the suspects’ digital footprints … with the help of social media.

A cell phone reportedly played another key role in tracking down the suspects. As authorities closed in on the suspects, they allegedly carjacked someone to get away. The person who was carjacked reportedly told authorities that the the brothers had confessed responsibility for the bombings to him. The person who was carjacked also left his cell phone in the car when he got away. Using the GPS tracking technology built into the cell phone, authorities closed in on the suspects, shot one and captured the other alive.

Digital footprinting

The remaining suspect is still far from a trial. However, it’s likely in this case that digital footprinting may prove to have the evidentiary value of fingerprinting.

At the top of this post, I said the side effects of digital media were “mostly” positive. Evidently, the Internet also played a negative role. According to news reports, the suspects may have used to Internet to learn how to make the bombs.

Ironically, this one case shows the best and the worst of digital media.

Will news consumption preferences change media crisis coverage?

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In 2004, Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, published a poignant essay entitled Media Crisis Coverage: To Serve and to Scare. It was published in the Journal of Media Psychology.

Professor Fishoff examines what he calls the “dysfunctional partnership between the media and the public in our increasingly media-centric lives.”  He describes the intimate, adrenaline-fueled dance between viewers and producers of television crisis coverage and observes:

“The thin line between gut-wrenching, vital information and a news-sponsored horror show begins its fade to oblivion.”

In 2001, days after 9/11, a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project titled How Americans Used the Internet After the Terror Attack found that 81% of all Americans said they got most of their information from TV; only 3% of Internet users got most of their information about the attacks from the Internet.”

In his essay Media Crisis Coverage, Fischoff observed:

“During a crisis, many viewers, particularly those with 24-hour cable news shows, seek out the constant drumbeat of news coverage to stay informed and reduce the stress that accompanies uncertainty.  But watching hours of crisis coverage footage can often have the opposite effect.  Visual images go directly to the most primitive parts of our psyche, pushing all the fear buttons.  Anxiety is elevated.  People watch in order to calm themselves.  The more they watch, the more they want to watch because the more anxious they feel.  And the cycle continues.”

To reduce the psychological trauma and anxiety of being drawn into news/horror shows, Fischoff made a number of recommendations. One had to do with the size of the screen that viewers used to watch crisis coverage.

“Shrink the size of the image,” said Fischoff.  “Here is another example of when size matters: According to Detenber (1996), size is important to emotional response. It is important to babies in perceiving others, and to adults when watching a movie in a theater. Image size positively affects the arousal and dominance dimensions of emotional responses. Size is a primitive heuristic (in animals, for example, who is prey and who is predator, or who is too powerful to safely take on) that influences a range of judgments. Films seen as large images on a screen elicit stronger feelings of arousal than the same films when viewed on small screens disbursing small images.”

After reading this essay, I began to wonder about two things:

  • Will the trend toward getting news from the Internet, especially via smartphones and tablets, reduce the traumatic stress that people feel when viewing crisis coverage? Their screens are much smaller than televisions’ (70″ LED screens seem to be the current norm for new TVs).
  • In times of real crises, such as 9/11, will people revert back to getting news from TV because of the “quality” of coverage it presents?

Fast forward ten years. By 2011, Pew found that “The internet now trails only television among American adults as a destination for news, and the trend line shows the gap closing.” The report also found that in December 2010, 41% of Americans cited the internet as the place where they got “most of their news about national and international issues,” up 17% from a year earlier.

Source: Pew Internet and American Life Project

 My Take

Current Internet news coverage fundamentally differs from television news coverage. It tends to be more text than video focused, although this is beginning to change with increases in bandwidth. The comparative lack of video and sound remove much of the visceral “you-are-there” impact of crisis coverage. And if digital coverage becomes too repetitive, i.e., with endless reruns of the Twin Towers falling, viewers can easily switch “channels” or topics. The Internet offers millions of URL’s to choose from.

I suspect that the shift to digital news consumption will have a psychologically mitigating effect on consumers. I also suspect, for television producers, the real horror show will be their bottom line.

The Dark Side of Cell Phones: Traffic Accidents

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shutterstock_54292804What discussion of media impacts of life would be complete without looking at the relationship between cell phones and traffic accidents.  Cell phones were originally seen as on-the-road safety devices. Ironically, today The National Safety Council, CDC, U.S. Department of Transportation and World Health Organization  recognize them as one of the leading causes of traffic accidents.

The National Safety Council estimates that at least 23 percent of all traffic crashes – or at least 1.3 million crashes – involve cell phone use per year. An estimated 1.2 million crashes each year involve drivers using cell phones for conversations and at least 100,000 additional crashes can be related to drivers who are texting. Cell phone conversations are involved in 12 times as many crashes as texting.

Researchers observing more than 1,700 drivers found that three out of every four drivers using a cell phone committed a traffic violation according to the National Safety Council. At any given daylight moment, they say that 9 percent of drivers are talking on phones (handheld and hands-free).

The National Safety Council report also indicates that talking on a cell phone while driving makes you four times more likely to crash, and texting while driving increases your chances of a crash by up to 8 to 23 times.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claims that an average of 15 people are killed each day and more than 1,200 people are injured in crashes that were reported to involve a distracted drive. The CDC recognizes three main types of distraction:

  • Visual—taking your eyes off the road;
  • Manual—taking your hands off the wheel; and
  • Cognitive—taking your mind off what you are doing.

Distracted driving activities include (but are not limited to) things like using a cell phone and texting. The CDC says texting while driving is especially dangerous because it combines all three types of distraction. Younger, inexperienced drivers under the age of 20 may be at highest risk because they have the highest proportion of distraction-related fatal crashes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes distracted driving as a serious and growing problem. With more and more people owning mobile phones, and the rapid introduction of new “in-vehicle” communication systems, they claim this problem is likely to escalate globally in the coming years.

WHO says drivers using mobile phones increase their accident risk by increasing their reaction times, inadvertently following too closely and swerving into adjacent traffic. They also claim that there is no conclusive evidence to show that hands-free phoning is any safer than hand-held phoning, because of the cognitive distraction involved with both types of phones.

The problem of distracted driving has become so serious that the U.S. Department of Transportation has set up a program to end it. See D!straction.gov to get the facts, get involved and see what the government recommends.

Cell Phones Affect Kids’ Sleep: Need for Digital Curfews

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A personal anecdote: I am writing this at 3:00 a.m. after being woken up by a text message on my wife’s cell phone (which she fell asleep with) at 1:38 a.m. The message was from our son who lives two time zones west of Houston. No emergency. He just wanted to tell my wife that he received something she emailed.

I tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. So I started wondering if other people had this same problem, i.e., being awakened by electronic gadgets. To the google search bar! The Center on Media and Child Health lists it as a hot topic.

In Perspectives on Parenting, Karen Jacobson, MA, LCPC, LMFT and Lauren Bondy, MSW, suggest setting a digital curfew.

“The playground for tweens and teens today is electronic,” they say. “kids today are roaming, playing, forming relationships, testing limits, making mistakes, exploring, experimenting, and forming their identities and values in online digital spaces.”

Studies [1][2][3] show that sleep is interrupted when teens receive texts at night. Likewise, homework is interrupted and children become distracted when they receive notifications of a new chat messages, texts, or emails. To avoid a daily battle, the authors suggest that parents make a time when all media are off limits into part of the routine. Other recommendations the authors make include:

  • Involving kids in establishing a media plan for their entire day, and agree on weekday and weekend hours.
  • Allowing social media time only after homework is done or during homework breaks.
  • Asking kids, “What’s the best place to charge your cell phone and keep it from distracting you?”

 ParentTeenCellPhoneCropped

Cell phones are rapidly becoming an integral part of kids’ lives. According to research by C&R Research, 22 percent of young children own a cell phone (ages 6-9), 60 percent of tweens (ages 10-14), and 84 percent of teens (ages 15-18. And cell phone companies are now marketing to younger children with colorful kid-friendly phones and easy-to-use features. According to market research firm the Yankee Group, 54 percent of 8 to12 year olds will have cell phones within the next three years.

These studies and observations suggest that growing and uncontrolled cell phone use among children can have a detrimental impact on their sleep which, in turn, can make them tired the next day and affect their ability to learn in school.

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1. Irregular bedtime and nocturnal cellular phone usage as risk factors for being involved in bullying: A cross-sectional survey of Japanese adolescents by Tochigi, Mamoru;Nishida, Atsushi;Shimodera, Shinji;Oshima, Norihito;Inoue, Ken;Okazaki, Yuji;Sasaki, Tsukasa, 2012

2. Adolescent use of mobile phones for calling and for sending text messages after lights out: Results from a prospective cohort study with a one-year follow-up by van den Bulck, Jan, 2007

3. Text messaging as a cause of sleep interruption in adolescents, evidence from a cross-sectional study by van den Bulck, Jan, 2003

via CMCH.tv.