In a shocking display of crime adjusting to technology, Israel Nieves carried out premeditated revenge against a man his ex-girlfriend was seeing; the murder weapon? Facebook.
After 19-year-old student Jason Rodriguez started seeing the ex-girlfriend of Israel Nieves, he suddenly started receiving Facebook messages from a mysterious woman named Ty Ann; soon the messaging escalating to flirty text messages and explicit Tweets. Eventually, Ms. Ann invited young Rodriguez to a real-life rendezvous, but when the tempted student arrived at the meeting point he found an armed Nieves instead of a sultry vixen.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, the police were able to decipher Nieves' pseudonym and track him down using an unnamed iPod app. What this horrific episode displays is the sometimes-nefarious power of anonymity and the sensitivity of information we willingly publish online. Unfortunately, crimes facilitated by social networks will only become more common in the future, unless serious security measures are taken to protect end users.
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