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Anonymous social networking 

Secrets and liesMar 22nd 2014, 14:45 by P.H. | WASHINGTON, DC 

SOCIAL media may have brought millions of people together, but it has torn many others

apart. Once, bullies taunted their victims in the playground; today they use smartphones to do

so from afar. Media reports of “Facebook suicides” caused by cyberbullying are all too

common. Character assassination on Twitter is rife, as are malicious e-mails, texts and other

forms of e-torment. A recent review of the academic literature on cyberbullying suggests—

conservatively—that at least a quarter of school-age children are involved as either victim or

perpetrator.

 A new generation of smartphone apps is unlikely to help. With names like Whisper, Secret,

Wut, Yik Yak, Confide and Sneeky, they enable users to send anonymous messages, images

or both to “friends” who also use the apps. Some of the messages “self -destruct” after delivery;

some live on. But at their heart is anonymity. If you are bullied via Facebook, Twitter or text,

you can usually identify your attacker. As a victim of an anonymous messaging app you

cannot: at best you can only guess which “friend” whispered to the online world that you might

be pregnant. As the authors of the paper cited above point out, anonymity frees people “from

traditionally constraining pressures of society, conscience, morality and ethics to behave in a

normative manner.” 

Unsurprisingly, none of this is deterring venture-capitalists. Whisper, which was launched last

November, has raised more than $20m from blue-chip funds such as Sequoia Capital. Secret,at less than two months’ old, recently scored almost $9m from a group that includes Google

Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and actor Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments.

Not every venture capitalist is as sanguine about investing in what have been dubbed “bullying

apps”. In a 12-tweet diatribe, Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape and is now a

general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a hot Silicon Valley VC firm, took issue with both the

apps and those investing in them. “As designers, investors, commentators, we need to

seriously ask ourselves whether some of these systems are legitimate and worthy,” he wro te;

“… not from an investment return point of view, but from an ethical and moral point of view.”

Mark Suster, another well-known investor, took a similar stance on his blog: “It’s gossip.

Slander. Hateful. Hurtful. It’s everything [Silicon] Valley claims to hate about LA but seemingly

are falling over themselves at cocktail parties to check 5 times a night. We can do better.”  

This is not, of course, how the startups’ creators see things—and in fairness many of the

secrets they share are harmlessly banal. David Byttow, co-founder of Secret, has claimed his

app assists people in “voicing their opinion in a very constructive way.” Michael Heyward,

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Whisper’s boss, took to Twitter to defend his app against Mr Andreessen, tweeting

a screenshot  (pictured above) of a whisper that read “This girl talked to me on whisper

because of a self harm post, she doesn’t know she saved my life.” (This was shortly after he

hired Neetzan Zimmerman, formerly of celebrity-smearing site Gawker, as its editor-in-chief,

and Whisper began whispering about the alleged infidelity of a well-known actress.)

The app companies claim they have or are working on ways to deter slanderous or abusive

posts. Secret says it removes such posts, although that rarely seems to happen quickly or

consistently. And after hosting posts that have included multiple shooting and bomb threats —

some of which led to school evacuations—Yik Yak is now using “geofencing” technology to

prevent its app being used at a majority of America’s middle and high schools. That will do

little, however, to affect its use outside school hours or at universities, which Yik Yak is still

targeting.

The startups’ bigger challenge may be figuring out a business model. Advertising will be a hard

sell: most of the services collect little or no data about their users besides location, and their

unpredictable demographic ranges from tweens to thirtysomethings. Few advertisers will want

to be associated with apps that count bomb threats and cyberbullying among their core

services. And teens—the services’ most intensive users—are notoriously fickle in their app

appetites. Once they realize that few people care about their secrets—at least compared with

those of famous actresses—they will move on.

The market for such services is also littered with failures. Formspring, an anonymous Q&A site

beset with cyberbullying and allegations of related suicides, raised $14m before shutting down

a year ago. It has since been reincarnated, at least in spirit, as spring.me. Latvia-based Ask.fm,

a Formspring rival that had won a few big advertisers, lost many of them after it too was linked

to cyberbullying and multiple suicides. (Among those to quit was British tabloid The Sun,

which shows just how bad things were.) Juicy Campus lasted 18 months before shutting down

in 2009 amid similar controversies—and after venture-capital firms realized it would never turn

a profit.

 And then there is the original secrets website, PostSecret, which launched in 2005. In

September 2011 it decided to join the smartphone age with an app for Apple’s iPhone. After

trying and failing to weed out offensive secrets from the millions posted, PostSecret scrapped

the app four months later, never to return. A pile of venture-capital cash may be about to suffer

the same fate.

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Investors Debate The Ethics Of Anonymity Apps 

Posted Mar 15, 2014 by   Alexia Tsotsis ( @alexia ) 

VCs are publicly and privately debating the morality of investing in the

burgeoning“anonymish” app space, after a series of negative posts, mainstream

gossip, a high profile resignation and even bomb and violence threats have pushed

the volume of the debate to eleven.

Last night, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen had one of his characteristic

Twitter surges. He began his speech by referencing product developments that

unequivocally exist for the good of humanity, comparing them to products that are

“designed to encourage negative behavior, tearing people down, making fellow

souls sad.” 

He asks in his soliloquy (included below) whether these products should be

invested in, from an ethical and moral standpoint, due to the possibility of negative

consequences. Investor Mark Suster, who has been singled out as a target on

Secret just like A16z has, supported Andreessen‟s view. 

“Investors make choices every day,” Andreessen wrote, in a continuation of the

thread. “Many things don‟t get funded that would make $ but aren‟t ethical, moral,

and/or legal.” He confirmed that „public opinion‟ sensitive LPs are one reason

behind this, and notes that “headline risk”, “branding risk” and “explaining to family

risk” are some others. 

While he emphatically did not mention specific apps, the most popular apps in the

space currently are Yik Yak, Secret and Whisper. The Secret and Whisper CEOshave replied to Andreessen, citing that the positive aspects of their respective

products outweigh the negative.

To Whisper CEO Michael Heyward, who brought up an example of a potential

suicide prevention on Whisper, Andreessen responded, “How do you decide who

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to protect and who to out?” with a link to our story about Whisper gossip and

Gwyneth Paltrow.

As far as I can see, no prominent Secret or Whisper investors have joined the

discussion, but Homebrew‟s Hunter Walk has provided his take, holding that moral

issues should affect investment choices but not focus solely on a product‟s

negative side.

Walk says that he asks, “Is the world a better place because this product exists?

Not „can this product be abused and utilized for negative purposes‟ but rather „what

is its primary use case, primary reason for being and can the team sustain that true

north over time?'” before choosing whether to invest. 

If I were a Secret investor, I would say that people are people, and will exhibit bad

behavior almost anywhere you put them. Former about.me community

managerLaura Gluhanich brings up the fact that Twitter, Andreessen‟s debate

platform of choice, did nothing when a user posted her home address and issued

death threats. In fact, some parody accounts on both Facebook and Twitter allow

for a form of antagonization similar to that on anonymous apps.

I would also echo what Secret co-founder David Byttow asserted, that the potential

for these apps to improve upon the human experience is immense, but we have,

“lots of hard work to do and difficult issues to work through.”  

I have never read worse things about myself and our writers than on Secret. Not

even in our comments section. Sure, this is the business we‟ve chosen, but what

happens when you point this water cannon at a person who has never owned an

umbrella? “This is [the] heart of a big part of my concern,” says Andreessen, “It‟s

the most vulnerable people who will be most damaged when this goes wrong.” 

Despite sharing this concern, I am a happy user of Secret and other apps in the

space, and want to see them adjust themselves to provide maximum objective

good with the least amount of bad. Bringing this aspect of human behavior into the

light is a first step, as is adding features like post flagging and moderation. 

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This is an important topic beyond tech, a question of how humans should treat one

another: Can we enforce niceness? Do we want to? Do we have a moral obligation

to do so? And if we do, how can we execute on that, without a heavy hand of

censorship? Who decides what defamation is, or fair commentary? When does

gossip become slander? And are we equipped as an industry to handle these

questions? We in tech are great at building, but at moderating? There we don‟t

have much of a track record.

 As this is a very timely and ongoing discussion, I‟m looking forward to continuing

the debate in our comments section, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Secret, on

Whisper, on Yik Yak, on Wut,and in person. 

Marc Andreessen’s LatestTweetathon? “Naughty Fun” Leads to“Ruined Lives” in Anonymous Apps. 

March 15, 2014, 3:05 PM PDT

By Nellie Bowles 

In a 12-part Twitter treatise late last night, high-profile venture capitalist MarcAndreessenattacked tech that enables “voyeurism,” which might start as “naughty fun” but

ends with “broken hearts” and “ruined lives.” 

Though Andreessen, the co-founder of influential VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, didn’t

name any companies (and asked people not to guess), he also said it’s an important topic todiscuss.

But he is obviously targeting anonymous sharing apps such as Whisper and Secret, which isonly 46 days old but yesterday said it had received $8.6 million in funding. And Whisperhas raised $30 million at a $200 million valuation recently.

In his latest tweeting marathon —  he’s done a lot of this kind of thing since the  beginningof the year   —  Andreessen implied that these social apps are tapping into deep-seatedhuman nature, but that they’re morally reprehensible and shouldn’t be built. The engineers,he noted, are responsible for stepping up to the moral plate.

China anonymous-confession app Mimistirs concerns about ethics, bullying

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PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 09 April, 2014, 7:11pm

UPDATED : Thursday, 10 April, 2014, 8:10am 

Photo: Corbis A free phone app that lets users anonymously confess secrets, from

extramarital affairs to invasions of a loved one’s privacy, earned as much criticism as it hasfans in China since its launch two weeks ago.

Developed by Shenzhen-based Wumii Technology Limited, Mimi (which means “secret” in

Chinese) encourages users to share their innermost thoughts without fear of being exposed,

according to its description.

Users can log on using a cellphone number, then will be led to a screen where they can either

post messages, read other people’s posts and comment or “like” them. But the app only shows

messages from other Mimi users in the person’s phone book. 

“I slept with my investor. I am a guy, and so is he,” one post reads.  

“I check my boyfriend’s e-mails and WeChat messages daily,” another says.

Many have pointed out that the app bears strong similarities to US-made application Secret.

Nevertheless, the app has enjoyed some success since its debut on app stores, where it was

downloaded more than 1,000 times on Android alone.

But Mimi did not sit well with netizens who think it encourages negativity and irresponsible

behaviour. Others believe it can be a platform for online bullying.

Wang Guanxiong, a venture capital investor and influential opinion leader with more than one

million followers on Weibo, said he was pessimistic about the app’s future. 

“By allowing users to comment anonymously, it encourages people to throw irresponsibleaccusations at each other and engage in a war of words,” Wang said.  

“According to Chinese law, neither the police nor the app developer will be able to protect

users from being verbally abused,” he said. “Things might get even uglier considering the

general hostile tendency of China’s online quarrels.” 

Wumii Technology did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

III. ETHICAL ISSUESThe foundations of all secure systems are the moral principles and practices and

the professional standards of all employees of the organization, i.e., while peopleare part of the solution, they are also most of the problem. The following issuesare examples of security problems which an organization may have to deal with:

A. Ethics and Responsible Decision-Making

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The foundation of all security systems is formed by moral principles and practices of those people involved and the standards of the profession. That is,while people are part of the solution, they are also most the problem. Security problems with which an organization may have to deal include: responsibledecision-making, confidentiality, privacy, piracy, fraud & misuse, liability,

copyright, trade secrets, and sabotage. It is easy to sensationalize these topicswith real horror stories; it is more difficult to deal with the underlying ethicalissues involved.

The student should be made aware of his individual responsibility in makingethical decisions associated with information security.

B. Confidentiality & Privacy

Computers can be used symbolically to intimidate, deceive or defraud victims.Attorneys, government agencies and businesses increasingly use mounds ofcomputer generated data quite legally to confound their audiences. Criminals alsofind useful phony invoices, bills and checks generated by the computer. Thecomputer lends an ideal cloak for carrying out criminal acts by imparting a cleanquality to the crime.

The computer has made the invasion of our privacy a great deal easier and potentially more dangerous than before the advent of the computer. A wide rangeof data are collected and stored in computerized files related to individuals.These files hold banking information, credit information, organizational fundraising, opinion polls, shop at home services, driver license data, arrest records

and medical records. The potential threats to privacy include the impropercommercial use of computerized data, breaches of confidentiality by releasingconfidential data to third parties, and the release of records to governmentalagencies for investigative purposes.

The basic law that protects our privacy is the Fourth Amendment to the UnitedStates Constitution, which mandates that people have a right to be secure inhomes and against unreasonable search and seizure. In addition, many laws have been enacted to protect the individual from having damaging information storedin computerized databases.

C. Piracy

Microcomputer software presents a particular problem since many individualsare involved in the use of this software. Section 117 of the copyright laws,specifically the 1980 amendment, deals with a law that addresses the problem of backup copies of software. This section states that users have the right to create backup copies of their software. That is, users may legally create a backup copy

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of software if it is to be held in archive. Many software companies provide a free backup copy to users that precludes the need for to users purchase softwareintended to defeat copy protection systems and subsequently create copies oftheir software. If the software purchased is actually leased, you may in fact noteven be able to make backup copies of the software. The distinction between

leasing and buying is contained within the software documentation. Thecopyright statement is also contained in the software documentation. Thecopyright laws regarding leased material state that the leasor may say what theleaseholder can and cannot do with the software. So it is entirely up to the ownerof the software as to whether or not users may make backup copies of thesoftware. At a time when federal laws relating to copyright protection areevolving, several states are considering legislation that would bar unauthorizedduplication of software.

The software industry is prepared to do battle against software piracy. The

courts are dealing with an increasing number of lawsuits concerning the protection of software. Large software publishers have established the SoftwareProtection Fund to raise between $500,000 and $1 million to promote anti-piracysentiment and to develop additional protection devices.

D. Fraud & Misuse

The computer can create a unique environment in which unauthorized activitiescan occur. Crimes in this category have many traditional names including theft,fraud, embezzlement, extortion, etc. Computer related fraud includes theintroduction of fraudulent records into a computer system, theft of money byelectronic means, theft of financial instruments, theft of services, and theft ofvaluable data.

E. Liability

Under the UCC, an express warranty is an affirmation or promise of productquality to the buyer and becomes a part of the basis of the bargain. Promises andaffirmations made by the software developer to the user about the nature andquality of the program can also be classified as an express warranty.Programmers or retailers possess the right to define express warranties. Thus,

they have to be realistic when they state any claims and predictions about the ca- pabilities, quality and nature of their software or hardware. They should considerthe legal aspects of their affirmative promises, their product demonstrations, andtheir product description. Every word they say may be as legally effective asthough stated in writing. Thus, to protect against liability, all agreements should be in writing. A disclaimer of express warranties can free a supplier from being

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held responsible for any informal, hypothetical statements or predictions madeduring the negotiation stages.

Implied warranties are also defined in the United States by the UCC. These arewarranties that are provided automatically in every sale. These warranties need

not be in writing nor do they need to be verbally stated. They insure that goodtitle will pass to the buyer, that the product is fit for the purpose sold, and that itis fit for the ordinary purposes for which similar goods are used(merchantability)..

F. Patent and Copyright Law

A patent can protect the unique and secret aspect of an idea. It is very difficultto obtain a patent compared to a copyright (please see discussion below). Withcomputer software, complete disclosure is required; the patent holder mustdisclose the complete details of a program to allow a skilled programmer to buildthe program. Moreover, a United States software patent will be unenforceable inmost other countries.

Copyright law provides a very significant legal tool for use in protectingcomputer software, both before a security breach and certainly after a security breach. This type of breach could deal with misappropriation of data, computer programs, documentation, or similar material. For this reason the informationsecurity specialist will want to be familiar with basic concepts of to copyrightlaw.

The United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries have nowamended or revised their copyright legislation to provide explicit laws to protectcomputer program. Copyright law in the United States is governed by theCopyright Act of 1976 that preempted the field from the states. Formerly, theUnited States had a dual state and federal system. In other countries, such asCanada, the courts have held that the un-revised Copyright Act is broad enoughto protect computer programs. In many of these countries the reform of copyrightlaw is actively underway.

G. Trade Secrets

A trade secret protects something of value and usefulness. This law protects theunique and secret aspects of ideas, known only to the discoverer or hisconfidants. Once disclosed the trade secret is lost as such and can only be pro-tected under one of the following laws. The application of trade secret law is veryimportant in the computer field, where even a slight head start in thedevelopment of software or hardware can provide a significant competitive ad-vantage.

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H. Sabotage

The computer can be the object of attack in computer crimes such as theunauthorized use of computer facilities, alternation or destruction of information,data file sabotage and vandalism against a computer system. Computers have

 been shot, stabbed, short-circuited and bombed.

It is easy to sensationalize these topics with real horror stories; it is moredifficult to deal with the underlying ethical issues involved.