Mexican Cartels Using Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to Track Down American
Victims
Posted on August 12, 2011 by Mark Schumacher
It's bad enough that America has to deal with protecting our physical
borders, but now Americans have to worry about Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
being used by Mexican cartels to track them down. The drug cartels have been
using these Internet tools to their advantage, as ways to threaten for
payment, and in some cases even worse. Graphic videos on YouTube are being
used to harass people found on "friends lists" of Facebook subscribers who
the cartels deem as potential enemies or problems.
For example, the students at the University of Texas-El Paso are being
targeted as soon as they use the "check-in" feature on their mobile device
to update their Facebook page. As soon as this update occurs, the cartels
can quickly and efficiently find these people, and track them down. This is
why using profiles on Facebook can become extremely dangerous, and should be
kept as private as possible. Social Media sites are something that can
become extremely dangerous if not used intelligently, as explained in the
article below.
Full article below:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/mexican-drug-war-spreading-on-web_n
_924602.html
"The Mexican drug war that has taken thousands of lives over the past
four years isn't just on the other side of the border.
It's now online.
Cartels are using Facebook and Twitter to find out information on
potential victims and to track them down. "They use them as intelligence
sources, I suppose, to gather information on people," said Dr. Tony Payan,
associate professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso.
Payan told Fox News Latino they're also posting violent videos of
victims being tortured YouTube to threaten and intimidate their enemies.
"They are saying: 'Look you guys, you contrary team, competitors, you enemy,
this is what's going to happen to you,'" he said.
Plus, the use of Twitter also allows the cartels to send messages
quickly.
"You don't have to make a bunch of phone calls, you don't have to take
the time to communicate to everybody,"Payan said. He added they use secret
phrases about where to meet other cartel members or to inform them about the
status of an operation.
Before, cartels worked quietly.
"I think this is a new generation of drug traffickers, new generation of
criminals, and they often like to post what they do on the Internet," Payan
said. "They used to be quite discrete and quite restrained. In fact, they
went out of their way not to draw attention to themselves." Now, the tables
have turned.
Gomecindo López, a commander at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office,
said they have been aware of the drug cartels using social media sites for
several years. There have been no incidents reported of cartels using social
media to target victims in El Paso, nor any spillover of violence.
López said businesses who have relocated from Juárez to El Paso to
escape the violence should be the most careful – especially if they still
have close ties on the Mexican side of the border. "We know you have a
highly successful business, we know you can pay. If you don't pay this is
what's going to happen to your family," Lópezadded, mimicking what a cartel
might say.
Facebook can be a resource for the cartels to search for the business
owners and find out to whom they may related, and what members of the family
may still live in Juárez. They may threaten to kidnap a family member or
extort their business if they do not pay ransom, experts said.
When Facebook users use the "Check In" function on their mobile devices,
it tells cartel members (or any criminal) where they can find their targets.
Students at the University of Texas-El Paso recommended not using that
function – and to keep their Facebook profiles as private as possible.
That includes not accepting friend requests from strangers.
"If you don't know them, just don't accept them," said graduate student
Austin Campbell. "You never know who's looking out for you or who's watching
you [or] who's following you through social networks like that, so I would
just prefer to not update where I'm at, what I'm doing, just in case someone
out there is trying to find me or look for me," said senior Christine
Zamora. "You don't know what they're capable of."
Fox News Latino reached out to Facebook and asked how users can protect
themselves from the cartels. A spokesperson responded via e-mail and stated:
"Our policies prohibit any kind of threatening, intimidating, or hateful
contact between one user and another, and there are several ways that people
can protect themselves from this kind of behavior on Facebook."
"All users should be careful to only accept friend requests from people
that they know, or remove people who are harassing them from their Friend
Lists," the spokesperson added. "
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