In Cyber-crime and MMORPG circles there is a famous case that happened in 2004 involving two men from China, a stolen sword and the MMORPG Legend of Mir.

In the case gamer Qiu Chengwei, 41 stabbed and killed another gamer Zhu Caoyuan, 26 in real life in retaliation to an incident that occurred entirely on-line. Qiu had lent Zhu a sword which he had obtained inside the game after spending a considerable amount of time and effort. Zhu then sold the sword on an online auction site.

A good summary of the incident is available on the BBC and the Sydney Morning Herald.

It appears that the border between real life and virtual worlds has blurred on this side of the Pacific as well. Only this time the incident involved a jilted lover, rather than a stolen sword; and the crime was attempted kidnapping and burglary rather than murder.

According to the ABC and MSNBC Kimberly Jernigan, 33 of North Carolina was having a relationship in Second Life with a 52 year old man who lived Claymont, Delaware. The 52 year old man has not been identified in the reports, only that his avatar in SL was a lion.

After being together for some time in-world, the couple met in real life where the man broke off the relationship. Spurned, the woman then later traveled from North Carolina to Delaware and attempted to kidnap the man thinking that this would cause them to reconcile and then they move away together.

Police stated that she went to his work and tried to abduct him with a weapon but was unsuccessful. She then posed as a postal worker for several days to locate the man’s residence which she broke into and waited for him. According to Corporal Trinidad Navarro of the New Castle County Police Department:

“He suddenly notices the silhouette of a person standing inside of his apartment pointing what he described as an object at him,…..He then notices a laser beam on his torso, and he runs out.”

Thankfully, the man escaped unharmed. Jernigan was arrested in Maryland and awaits trial on charges of attempted kidnapping and burglary. When her vehicle was searched the police found a taser, a pair of hand cuffs and duct tape.

Although to some readers this case will seem bizarre, I will be watching very closely to see how the trial unfolds, specifically to see what evidence is presented.

This incident speaks to how many users view the social interactions between themselves and others in virtual worlds and MMORPGs. As Giff Constable points out, for some people these platforms have the power to bridge the gap between human interaction and disembodied forms of communication. At the heart of these platforms is “a sense of presence with others at the same time and in the same place.” That is why so many corporations are spending time developing these platforms for business use.

I suspect that the Prosecution will have to prove that Jernigan viewed her relationship with the mysterious man from Delaware as “real” with true emotional implications for Jernigan. The evidence and experts he or she provides to support that supposition will be interesting.

Finally, although the charges appear fairly straight forward, the police have their work cut out for them since they are going to have to gather evidence from multiple jurisdictions. Delaware is where the man resided, North Carolina where Jernigan lived and Maryland is where she was arrested at a rest stop.

Not to mention California which is where the electronic evidence from Linden Labs will have to be obtained.

Much has been written about the evolving concept of identity as it relates to Web 2.0. The Internet allows us to construct imaginary identities that might be very different from who we actually are. Problems arise however when those identities we construct already belong to someone else, or when they are used maliciously

Forgetting for a moment about automated, large scale attacks on identities such as Phishing, targeted offences relating to “identity” on social media sites occur more often than one might think.

The most recent incident involves a family member of Tim McLean, the man who was brutally killed on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba in July of this year. The CBC reports that a person claiming to be McLean’s sister convinced the administrator of one of the Tim McLean Facebook memorial pages to allow them post messages and to collect money on behalf of the McLean family through a Paypal account. It wasn’t until McLean’s real sister found the site that the person claiming to be McLean’s sister was outed and the fraud was uncovered. The RCMP are currently investigating.

In another case Megan Meier, the very unfortunate Missouri teen who committed suicide several years ago, involved a false identity in the context of cyber bullying. The perpetrator was mother of a former friend of Meier’s whom she had fallen out with. The former friend’s mother, Lori Drew, created a MySpace profile of a fictitious boy named “Josh Evans” who accessed Meier’s MySpace profile and made a friend request, which Meier accepted.

With the help of an assistant at her office Drew began communicating regularly with Meier. Initially “Josh’s” comments were flattering; however, later the comments turned very hurtful and were considered by the court to be a large part of what motivated Meier to commit suicide.

In an odd twist, Fox News reported that a blog called “Megan Had It Coming” appeared on the Internet on December 3, 2007. The blog contains detailed information about the circumstances of Meier’s death as well as negative commentary about her. The writer of the blog claimed to be Lori Drew (aka Josh Evans).

Drew denies writing the blog and investigators are looking into its background. If what Drew says is true, it appears to be a case of Internet based vigilante justice.

Drew was indicted on a number of charges, some of which are being appealed at the moment.

Now on to the Olympic circuit. In a recent case in reported by The Mail Online, British Olympic Swimmer Rebecca Adlington was derided on a Facebook group page.

The issue is that the group was set up using the picture and name of Helen Fernandes, a prominent British brain surgeon who in reality had no connection to the swimmer or the group on Facebook. In her statement to the press Ms. Fernandes said “I didn’t even understand what Facebook was until I received a call alerting me about the fraud.”

This case is different than the one relating to Meagan Meier case because it involves possible defamation and not cyber bullying or harassment. However, these cases and the McLean case share the involvement of a forged identity and they illustrate that the problem of fictitious profiles in Social Networking environments are not limited to any specific class of person or crime.

This reasoning appears to be part of the logic behind a decision made in the District Court, Civil Division in Queensland Australia. In Citigroup Pty Ltd. v. Weerakoon heard in April of this year, Judge Ryrie denied a request by the plaintiff to email a “personal service” to a defendant through the defendant’s Facebook page. In her commentary, the Judge stated that:

“I am not so satisfied in light of looking at the uncertainty of Facebook pages, the facts that anyone can create an identity that could mimic the true person’s identity and indeed some of the information that is provided there does not show me with any real force that the person who created the Facebook page might indeed be the defendant, even though practically speaking it may well indeed be the person who is the defendant.”

It may be the case that Judge Ryrie was truly uncomfortable with the ability of someone to set up fake profiles; or that the lawyers for the plaintiff were not able to adequately prove through other means that the person receiving the messages from the Facebook profile was in fact the defendant; or that the lawyers were unable to use the information available from the Facebook profile to physically locate the defendant.

In my view it’s likely “d” a mixture of all of the above.

Leaving the debate about Privacy vs. Anonymity vs. Freedom of Speech aside, if these cases illustrate nothing else, it is this: from identity theft, to on-line harassment to requiring further evidence to prove that people are who they say they are, there are certain to be more and more investigatory issues that arise out of Web 2.0 platforms and their relationship to what we consider “an identity” than what we are used to dealing with in the Security and Investigations community.

Research professionals who use the Internet are keenly aware that using one search engine alone is rarely good enough to find all the places where relevant information might be located.

Still, when we find a place that contains a significant amount of information about a particular subject we may be inclined to focus on that place and our ambitions to continue our hunt begin to fade. This approach can be detrimental to effective open source research.

It’s also very important to continually re-visit old sources to see if anything has changed.

As an example, in 2007 the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal heard a case between Complainant Richard Warman, and Respondent Jessica Beaumont (Warman v. Beaumont, 2007 CHRT 49). In his complaint Warman alleged that comments posted by Beaumant on the Canadian section of a forum hosted on the website Stormfront.org would expose:

“Rastafarians, Jews, gays and lesbians, Chinese, Hispanics, blacks, Aboriginals, and other non-whites to hatred and/or contempt”.”

In his analysis of the issues, Athanasios D. Hadjis, the Member of the Tribunal who heard the case felt that the evidence met the requirements of an offence under Section 13 of the Act. The information was posted on the Internet which was “by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking” and that Beaumont’s messages would expose “identifiable persons” to hatred or contempt. The Tribunal ordered Beaumont to pay a fine of $1,500.

The Tribunal ordered Beaumont to pay additional compensation to Warman directly for postings that she made on pages maintained by her on two separate social networking sites: EveryonesSpace.com and MySpace.com.

The time line is important. The complaint was filed in early 2005 and although the posts on Stormfront continued after 2005, the posts on Myspace and EveryonesSpace did not appear until early 2006, well after the initial complaint was filed.

The posts on the social networking sites were comments and doctored photos which the Tribunal deemed to have not only been discriminatory but to have been aimed directly at Warman himself; presumably in retaliation to him filing the complaint.

It follows then that the MySpace and EveryonesSpace evidence was also submitted later on in the course of the Tribunal hearing.

As an aside Everyonesspace.com is now defunct and the domain is for sale.

It is my experience that people who are heavy Internet posters rarely restrict their contributions to one location. It is not uncommon for an individual to post on multiple blogs and forums; or to maintain accounts in multiple virtual worlds. Evidence relevant to a case may be available in one or many of these locations.

Furthermore, other people’s commentary, which can be relevant depending on the situation, can also be found in multiple places.

In summary when researching an incident which involves the use of the Internet, it is imperative to avoid a myopic approach. As an former employer of mine used to say “You never know what you don’t know.”