Sonya Bateson: Anything on our phones can be used against us

As the ancient proverb goes, “What we post online is forever", writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / 123rf

OPINION:

Who remembers the sound of dial-up internet?

That beep, boop, cccshhhhhhhhhh, ding that you’d have to listen to for ages, followed by the slow creep of the progress bar as you’d wait literal minutes for your desired webpage to load. It was the height of technology for its time.

I can remember, as a young teen, having to wait until after 7pm to use the internet because my parents didn’t want me tying up the phone line.

Then, later, as internet speeds got somewhat faster, I’d leave the internet connected overnight to download maybe three songs from an, err, less-than-legal file-sharing programme, hoping the audio clip I’d found named “Sk8er_Boi_Avril_Lavigne.mp3″ wasn’t actually a virus or, maybe worse, the Sesame Street theme song in disguise.

Those were the days.

We teenagers had cellphones, of course, but they were almost always the classic Nokia brick phone with such new-fangled technologies as the Snake game and personalised ringtones.

I can remember waiting patiently by the car radio for my favourite song to come on so I could record the chorus to set as my ringtone. Admittedly, it wasn’t the best sound quality, but it was worth it to hear the crackle of Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams every time my mother called.

It’s nostalgic to look back and remember the way things were. Simpler times, then. The good ol’ days.

My generation will be known as the last one where kids stayed out playing until the street lights came on, the last ones who did all their school homework using encyclopaedias and reference books, and the last ones to have all their friend’s phone numbers memorised.

We were also the last ones to grow up without the internet in our pockets, and the potential abuses that can come with it.

There have been recent cases here in the Bay of Plenty of teenage males being blackmailed into paying money after sending “inappropriate pictures” on social media.

It’s a fairly well-known blackmail scheme in which scammers pose as a love interest, ask for nudes or for their victim to perform a sex act on camera, then tell their victim that they’ll send the evidence to all their friends, families and workplaces if they don’t pay a certain amount of money.

I know there’ll be people reading this thinking to themselves, “Well, serves them right for sending a nude photograph on the internet”, or, “What did they think would happen?”

The reality is, the asking for and sending of nude photographs is a normalised part of modern dating culture. That doesn’t mean everyone does it, but it’s certainly common.

I tried to find some data on this, but couldn’t nail down any accurate figures. What I could find suggested that somewhere between 18 per cent and 40 per cent of teens and young adults have sent or posted a nude or explicit picture of themselves.

And it’s not just young people that ask for and send nudes, either. One poll I read suggested one-third of American adults had sent a nude photo of themselves at some point in their lives, and 39 per cent kept naked photos of themselves on their devices.

Basically, it happens a lot. A lot.

It’s not fair to shame people that fall victim to scam artists and predators, especially for doing something that so many people otherwise get away with. What makes these types of predators so successful is that they spend time earning their victim’s trust.

It’s like revenge porn. Two partners may love and trust each other and believe that their loved one would never, ever share their private images. But then the relationship ends and the bitter ex shares those images with friends and acquaintances, or uploads them to porn sites to get back at the person they once loved. It’s cruel, petty and potentially life-destroying.

But photos don’t even need to be sent to others for them to be misused.

I read a story about a young woman who had been taking photos of herself in her underwear throughout her weight-loss journey.

They weren’t risqué or sexy photos, but they did reveal a lot of the woman’s body.

She left her phone on a table at a dinner party while she went to the bathroom, and in that short window of time, a man who had unrequited feelings for her grabbed her phone and used his own camera to take copies of her photos.

He was found out when a friend of his later borrowed his phone and saw the images.

It’s a truly scary world out there. Technology can make it so much easier for predators to find a victim and ruin their lives.

We certainly should not shame anyone who has fallen victim to these awful people. But we should ensure that every person on this planet who uses a device of any kind is aware of how easy it is to lose control of our private photos.

As the ancient proverb goes: “What we post online is forever.”

I’d amend that to: “Anything on our phones can be used against us.”

Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader, and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a Millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.