115Why People Attack Each Other Online
Finally, internal corporate feuds can spill out into the public
sphere online, often creating serious reputational harm. Conflicts over
projects, pay, or promotions can lead angry employees to blog about
each other or the company. Such feuding employees may leak com-
pany secrets, or may demean each other or the company as a whole.
Such internal disputes have the air of dirty laundry; online, they all
too often become permanent stains on a company’s reputation.
If you have been smeared because of your business, see Chap-
ter 13, which provides special advice for small business owners and
professionals.
Extortion
What’s a little extortion between friends?
—BILL WATTERSON (CREATOR OF THE COMIC STRIP
CALVIN AND HOB BES)
Online extortion works the same way as offline extortion: an aggres-
sor creates a list of demands and threatens to harm the victim unless
the victim complies. Extortion has a long and sordid history, from
modern schemes to extort money from actors by threatening to reveal
personal photos
19
to the “danegeld” payment of 7,000 pounds of silver
by Charles the Bald to Viking invaders in 845 A.D. in order convince
the raiders not to pillage Paris—perhaps the first recorded protection
racket.
20
But, no matter where it happens, extortion is motivated by
greed or a lust for power. Greedy criminals see online extortion as a
relatively nonviolent way to separate victims from their money.
Online attackers use many of the same methods as offline ex-
tortionists: threats to reveal compromising photos or information,
threats to spread lies, threats to boycott a business, or threats to
cause physical harm to the victim or the victim’s family. And online
extortionists have even created unique forms of cyberextortion,
such as “cryptoviral extortion”—which is the use of a computer virus
(“ransomware”) to encrypt (encode) the victim’s data and files so that
116 Wild West 2.0
the victim’s computer is useless until the victim pays a ransom.
21
If
anything, online extortion is more dangerous than traditional extor-
tion: The ability to extort people anywhere in the world complicates
law enforcement, and the Internet often provides powerful digital
anonymity to criminals who might otherwise leave a trail of physical
evidence (such as the typewriter flaws that inevitably appear in
clichéd cops-and-robber shows). As with everything else, the power
of Internet anonymity is not inherently good or bad, but it changes
how people interact; it empowers people to make (good) anonymous
political speech just as much as it empowers people to make (bad)
anonymous criminal speech.
The Internet has also democratized extortion, just as it has de-
mocratized information. Extortion was once a shady business con-
ducted by mobsters and drug dealers who preyed on the rich, the
famous, and the desperate. But, thanks to the power of the Internet,
it is much easier for almost anyone to conduct extortion or to be-
come a victim of it. An online extortion artist can stalk victims any-
where in the world, often from the comfort of his own parents’
basement.
It is only natural that online extortion attempts often put the vic-
tim’s reputation at risk. Reputation can be destroyed nearly instantly
from anywhere in the world, without any need for dangerous physi-
cal confrontations or any possibility of leaving physical evidence be-
hind. Even if the allegations made by the extortionist are untrue, the
victim will still have to spend hundreds of hours cleaning up his rep-
utation and explaining why the allegations are false.
Actual examples of online extortion are plentiful. One man was
arrested after stalking nearly 4,000 women, some of them underage.
He is alleged to have threatened to reveal private and embarrassing
photos of his victims unless they performed sexual acts during Web -
cam chats with him. Of course, those Webcam chats themselves be-
came part of the extortion scheme, because he could simply threaten
to reveal the most recent sultry performance unless the victim
agreed to perform again. Many women complied with his demands
117Why People Attack Each Other Online
out of fear of having their images and reputation ruined by public
disclosure of intimate photos and videos.
22
Other forms of cyberextortion threaten the victim’s reputation in
order to extort money. Some creative extortionists have threatened to
publicize the fact that the victim visited a controversial website, often
after luring or tricking the victim into visiting it. The allegations can
range from claims that the victim has some extreme fetish to a claim
that the victim visited sites that deal in child pornography. The truth
of the allegation is somewhat irrelevant, and the extortionist offers to
“help” the victim avoid disclosure of this private fact for a “modest” fee.
This type of scheme falls somewhere between a protection racket and
the classic offline “badger game,” in which a married man is tricked into
being photographed in what appears to be a compromising position
with a woman (who is usually the photographer’s co-conspirator).
Businesses have also been targeted in similar extortion schemes.
Some less-than-ethical “review” websites offer businesses the “oppor-
tunity” to “investigate” negative reviews against them for a less-than-
modest fee, often $5,000 or more. Businesses that pay up can have
their reputations cleared, but businesses that refuse to pay electronic
protection money will find that the negative reviews on these sites of-
ten become prominent in Google searches for the name of the busi-
ness. Some lawsuits have been filed, but allegations of unethical
practices continue.
An extortionist is a unique adversary in online reputation attacks.
Most extortionists do not care about the identity of their victims; they
simply want to find the easiest targets, extract as much as they can,
and move on. And most extortion attempts are one-off transactions;
if the attempt fails or becomes too difficult, most rational extortion-
ist simply move on to another victim. There are plenty of fish in the
sea for an extortionist. Thus, for most targets, it is possible to defeat
an attempt simply by becoming a difficult target. But some extor-
tionists think that they cannot back down because to do so would be
to show “weakness.” And other online reputation extortionists fear,
ironically enough, that if they let a target get away, they will get a rep-
118 Wild West 2.0
utation as ineffective extortionists. They want to cultivate an image of
being “tough” extortionists who cannot be intimidated out of a gig.
Reputational extortionists and blackmailers are also vulnerable
in other ways. Most extortionists face a crucial problem: once they
have used up their arsenal of attacks, they lose their leverage over the
victim. Once a private fact has been revealed, the extortionist can no
longer dangle the threat of revealing it. A reference to the Sword of
Damocles is appropriate. The legend is that a large sword was dan-
gled by a single horsehair over the head of a man, in order to instill
in him an appreciation of fear. A wise man once said that what makes
a Sword of Damocles effective is not that it falls but that it hangs.
23
Similarly, what makes reputation extortion an effective technique is
not what is revealed but what is threatened. If a victim turns the ta-
bles by revealing the private fact before the extortionist can, then the
extortionist loses his leverage. In 2009, late-night host David Let-
terman used this technique by preemptively revealing that he had
had inappropriate relations with his staff after an extortionist threat-
ened to disclose the same information.
If you are the victim of an extortionate scheme, use extreme cau-
tion and do not provoke a violent reaction. Carefully consider the de-
cision to go to law enforcement. It may be worth confidentially
contacting a trusted lawyer in your jurisdiction to discuss legal op-
tions and other strategies.
Social Gossip
Gossip needn’t be false to be evil—there’s a lot of
truth that shouldn’t be passed around.
—FRANK A. CLARK (AMERICAN SCREENWRITER)
Social gossip has existed as long as humans have gathered around a
communal fire. Somewhere, there is probably a cave painting me-
morializing ancient gossip—perhaps one caveman was rumored to
119Why People Attack Each Other Online
be less skilled at hunting than he claimed to be or was rumored to be
the father of more (or fewer) children than he thought.
Perhaps human gossip is inevitable because of the power it has
over groups. Gossip binds members of a community together by cre-
ating a common base of shared facts and insider knowledge. The act
of gossiping allows members of the group to prove their fidelity to a
social group (and their usefulness to it) by sharing tidbits of infor-
mation. And sharing embarrassing secrets about others may help el-
evate the social status of the gossiper in relation to the acts being
described. Gossiping also allows people to undermine the social
standing of the victims of gossip, whether the gossiper is motivated
by envy, revenge, or some other emotion.
Gossip offline can be harmful; rumors spread through social
networks at incredible speed, and much gossip is hurtful or false.
But the same gossip becomes even more harmful online when it
leaves a permanent digital trail. Gossip on social sites like Facebook
and MySpace can be shared and retransmitted with just a click.
Gossip on personal blogs can be copied, is often quickly indexed by
Google, and is sometimes even permanently archived by sites like
Archive.org. An inappropriate rumor or even a flat lie can quickly
become “Google truth” as it is spread and repeated from blog to
blog. And, worse, gossip that was once contained within a small so-
cial network can become fodder for the entire Internet once it hits
the wider Web.
If you have been the victim of false social gossip that has gone
online, you will often be able to isolate the false content easily;
most social gossip appears on only one or two websites, and gos-
sipers do not spend as much time linking and developing their at-
tack as do most intentional attackers. If you can prove the gossip
false with objectively verifiable concrete facts, then it may be
worth setting the record straight by e-mailing a gentle and calm
message explaining the problem to the sites where the false infor-
mation is hosted.
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