Project 4 – Pitch for the future
From the brief, I know that this project is about finding some doable design challenges according to the initial research after selecting one of the topics as the starting point. And the issue I chose is Cybercrime in the topic of Convergence.
The reason why I chose this topic comes from my real experience. My friend was cheated by a fraud who pretends to be my account. She was told that I need to buy the airline ticket to come back to China and my other social accounts cannot log in due to the problem of the network which means that “I” can only contact her through the fake account. She was afraid that I cannot come back, so she followed the scammer’s instructions and transferred the money without confirming with the real “me”. Later I know that all this happened only because my post on social media contained my address information which reveals that I was overseas.
1. Research
The internet is developing very fast in recent years, but most computers and software are deeply insecure. The online environment is not safe, which provides opportunities for criminals to ingest benefits. The ubiquity of internet connectivity in the anonymity, speed, and convenience it provides has dramatically increased the volume and pace of cybercrime activities.
Today, cybercrime is a business and it’s run by traditional organized crime groups and new modern organizations. They are global, multinational, multilingual, and operating 24/7.
According to the research, I found that how to obtain personal information is the key to online fraud. Fraudsters will design special speech skills and use different cover stories according to the psychological characteristics of people after obtaining their information.
Otherwise, online fraud is very hard to defend against due to its anonymity. And around 70% of cybercrime crosses national borders, which can make it almost impossible to catch perpetrators.
Most victims think that they can avoid it when they encounter it before being cheated. However, various scams are emerging in an endless stream which makes it difficult to identify and avoid being cheated. And most of our information is not encrypted which means that it is very easy to be obtained by people with ulterior motives.
I have also known that shame and the stigma associated with online fraud causes victims unwilling to speak their experiences out because there is a negative stereotype about who is a victim of online fraud that they’re greedy, gullible, naive, and uneducated from the speech of Cassandra Cross who have been researching cybercrime and fraud for many years. However, most of the victims are not foolish people, they just are targeted by online fraud in the right way at the right time. And fraud does not discriminate against victims against their education or occupation. So, anyone could be the victim of online fraud.
2. The Process of Film Making
3. Final Film