Newsflash-some online women are not
A guy named Jason Fortuny in Seattle tried a little "experiment" last week that provides an excellent cautionary tale for privacy. According to Wired, he ran an ad in Craig's List purporting to be a young woman interesting in a dominant man to have sex with. Accompanying the explicit ad was a provocative picture of a woman apparently taken from somewhere else on the Internet. The ad drew hundreds of responses, many of them complying with the personal ad's request for a photo of the answerer's face.
Fortuny then put all of the responses up on a website with the pictures and identifying personal information (many of the men used their real names).
Ha, ha, ha.
The Wired blog that discusses this refers to Fortuny as "sociopathic." I wouldn't go that far, but I do think that he should be sued.
I think that most people know that most of the women on sex sites, are not. I'm sure some people think that these men deserve to get burned because they should have known better. Others may take a more self-righteous viewpoint that there's something morally wrong with sexual solicitation on the Net, so who cares about the victims?
I view this story as yet another reminder of the power of the Internet to out someone. Private communications are not always so private when they're conducted electronically, whether by email, IM or written on a website.
I'm less disturbed by the idea that people on the internet may not be who they say that they are, that women may be men, for instance. I believe that the intent of well over 90% of Internet communication is honest; let's face it--Ebay wouldn't exist otherwise.
Posted on September 11, 2006
