Don’t expect others to behave online

I get requests from my friends, specially from female friends to report certain accounts online. Most of them are about fake accounts that resemble them. Recently I got a similar request from a friend. However this one was somewhat different.

The request was to report a fake account that’s using pictures of a friend of mine and posting very abusive stuff. However unlike other occasions this friend has been posting selfies and other pictures of her publicly on social networks like Instagram and Twitter.

I asked “why should I report this account, if you post photos publicly, you should remember the consequences” . Her response was “that doesn’t justify other people using them”.

The thing is we can’t expect others to behave themselves and obey the laws all the time. Internet is just like the society, it’s not a fair place. There are trolls and sociopaths and sometimes people have completely opposite personalities online in contrast to their real lives. And we can’t reason with them.

The best thing we can do is protect ourselves and make sure our photos and other information doesn’t fall into people that shouldn’t have them. Also if you post something publicly online it’s there to stay and there is no way you can stop a photo being downloaded by people if you post them publicly.

There is no point in using the internet unwisely and then calling for help after you got in to trouble or hoping for others to behave well, prevention is always better than cure.