I am a forensic informatics student and am currently writing a my thesis on social networking sites in the context of a sex offenders using them to groom potential victims. Particularly any evidence they leave on a perpetrator's machine and how easy personal information can be gained from a person's profile. I am especially interested in Bebo, Facebook and MySpace as these are the three most common in the UK.
The purpose of this post is I want to find examples of cases which have involved these sites. At the moment I have only fond a few for MySpace and one for Facebook. I have trawled through various law databases to no avail and was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction or give me case examples they may have worked on obviously without any of the victim(s) or offender(s) details.
Any help or suggestions would be most appreciated! Also if anyone has any suggestions or comments on my thesis they would be welcomed!
Lucy
Just a request, but I suspect we'd all be interested in reading your thesis when it's complete. Please let us know when that happens.
Lucy,
You might struggle to get your hands on cases where the names have been changed because doing this with an old case is very time consuming. The only people who might have such cases ready to go are ones who have been working towards or have completed the new UK CRFP accreditiation. There aren't many people who have signed up to this voluntary code yet so we're talking relatively small numbers of examiners.
Something you might try is asking if the Strathclyde Police Hi Tech Crime Unit will let you visit with them. At the Met Police we had a PhD student spend time with us once a week over a few months where she had opportunity to find out what she needed for her research.
Steve
Hi Steve
Yeah I have had quite a lot of difficulty I'll try the CRFP route and see what I can find. I have contacted the Met police and had someone call me this morning telling me they couldn't give me any cases and to try looking on news sites (like I haven't already tried that) not sure what department they were calling from but they didn't seem too keen to help whoever they were roll
I am down working for QinetiQ at the moment in Malvern and have gotten a few ideas from them but not really any case details I could use! So the search continues cry
thanks for your suggestions they have been really helpful D
Just a request, but I suspect we'd all be interested in reading your thesis when it's complete. Please let us know when that happens.
I sure will … depending on how good my mark is lol
Hi Lucy
just to quote 'Complete' from cfw forum,
Check out thedeadkidsofmyspace.com for examples.
duplicating here for the benefit of other interested parties.
kern
Thanks Kern that site is really useful … although I'm kinda getting sidetracked reading all the stories I've gone from none to loads oops
