Christian Little

I’m sure that wasn’t the intention of what they’ve done, but I can’t really think of any other application for their latest research into cyber communication. The research was released yesterday through the Chronicle Online, Cornell University’s online publication that outlines their research projects and activities.

I actually came upon the research entirely by accident, as I’m on their list to get all of their research news. (I get their news because I use part of it for a science news portal that I run). Essentially the Chronicle is a daily digest of all their press releases and research papers that they’ve done, which is very useful as they do a ton of research and you can get it directly from the source instead of waiting a few days for Google News and other major networks to pick it up and start syndicating it.

Now again I want to make it clear that I doubt this was their intention, but when you read the story this is the headline:

The research story outlines how you can use social networks like Facebook and instant messaging software to basically force your way into somebody’s life. It talks about various methods they used to try and get a complete stranger into somebody’s life and the success rate of each method.

So here’s the question – aside from cyberstalking, why would you want to research this? I guess there is some application for police and cyber crime units to consider, but for the most part it seems like all they’re doing is educated cyberstalkers in ways to be more successful.

All I can say about this is WTF.

Related Websites:

• Cyber Communication Research – research by Cornell University
• School Opens Cyber Stalking Communication
• Hacker Gets 2 Years for Cyberstalking on MySpace