Nude pics as IOU: a new, risky online loan among Chinese university students
en.people.cn
en.people.cn
Could one argue that almost all individuals who use the modern day internet ("Internet 2.0") with their identity and privacy unknowingly jeopardized are subject to this same psychological slavery?
I think your comment spills over onto the rest of us, regardless of debt, after the Snowden disclosures. We are all frogs in the same pot of boiling water. There are some resources we have (such as end-to-end encryption), but for the most part, similar leverage is held over most of us.
For example, the image is processed in the browser. The platform/lender only get the nude with the face blurred. The <code/script> to un-blur is available in a bitcoin/ethereum transaction/contract; and the borrower can stop it if he pays on time.
But for now, they are exposed to blackmail.
ps: it's interesting how the blockchain can come in handy for all these shady uses; and we still struggle to find one legitimate use case for it.
If all the code and data is public what stops anyone from executing the code early?
(Note this is more a question about Ethereum than the specific business model under discussion, which is why I use the generic term "secret". It's generally relevant to decrypting things after a certain period of time.)
Now, as far as I know, you can't hide a secret inside that transaction. But it's possible that a blockchain genius can figure out how to make a trick and get it to work.
If the assumption is that extra input is needed that will be supplied at time T2, that extra input is a password/decryption key, and people using this device must trust that this key will not be released early, and will be released at T2 if condition C is not met.
The best you can do is to distribute the decryption key at time T1 over a group of people using a method that allows any N people to recover the key and doesn't allow N-1 users to do so. If N is large enough, users might be convinced the secret will not come out early. If it is small relative to the total group having part of the secret, users might be convinced the secret will certainly come out at time T2. Both conditions can be met at the same time, but it still would require trust.
Witness crypto lets you create an encrypted file whose decryption key is _X_ Bitcoin blocks (specifically, their SHA hashes which are the PoW); after _X_ blocks have been created after a particular block ID, the file can be decrypted. So that's general time-lock crypto, for public broadcast. The witness could be extended to include the transactions: decrypted iff _X_ blocks pass with <_Y_ bitcoins sent to address _Z_. The _Y_ is the loan, and the address _Z_ is the blackmail counterparty. To render the blackmail file permanently undecryptable, one simply sends _Y_ bitcoins to _Z_ before _X_ blocks pass - that is, repaying the loan on time.
Who sets up the file? It could be a third party, who only needs to do a one-time setup & broadcast rather than permanently storing keys & needing to be trusted indefinitely. Alternately, you could imagine applying even more crypto magic: homomorphic encryption in which a CNN verifies the presence of nudity and facial recognition with the borrower. (Witness crypto is currently in the 'magic' realm but homomorphic NNs are surprisingly feasible: https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6181 ). Then the borrower provides the data, the NN runs over it, verifies it is blackmail, the witness crypto-encoded file gets released, and now you have a public secure blackmail system with no trusted third parties.
As always, if crypto isn't solving your problems, you aren't using enough of it. :)
Therefore, to obtain "acceptable" security, one should probably pay back the loan long enough before the deadline that the economic cost of mining N wasted blocks outstrips the value of the blackmail material itself.
(Not considered: the economic calculation probably changes if one entity is giving out multiple such loans, and can therefore mine "fake" witnesses for multiple encrypted materials at once?)
Edit: Oh, ignore me, I forgot this was some cunning banking blackmail platform rather than the other nude picture blackmail thing.
I really hope this is not the case, but I fear we might see a follow-up on this article discussing suicides connected to these kinds of loans.
I mean, you get this loan for education. Then you get sick or something and can't pay it back. Suddenly they are threatening to send that same picture to your parents and your workplace with the note that it is your penalty for not paying your student loans on time.
And the truth is that I could explain it to my mother. My brother? Yeah, that's going to be an awkward conversation but I'd get over it. A discussion on this with a male boss (I'm female)? Yeah, that's going to be uncomfortable for some time.
vs
Someone installed a hidden camera in your house, and tried to exhort you for money with videos of you showering
In both cases I can somewhat make the embarrassment minimal by just being upfront with folks.
In the case of debt, however, the reason for the pictures is because I didn't pay the debt. It doesn't matter if it was preventable or accidental, i'm still the guilty party. Not only do you have the photos, but you have outsiders knowing your financial affairs. Nothing can be done if you don't have money.
In your example, someone had to install that camera without permission then come forward to try to get money. I could call the police. I could forewarn folks about getting such an email. I have options. Not only that, but people are more likely to see that I've been victimized in some respect.
Granted, I'm not for the naked photo bribery method of collecting debt, but it still is different situations.
To be fair, though, in some cultures the shame really is with the nakedness. To a lesser extent, that extends to different regions of the US or different sorts of families.
Edit: Some of the reaction with the nudity - for a supervisor at work - is that if I was the supervisor getting that picture, I'd never forget the look of them naked. Whatever I did see. And so I imagine it is about the same for other people.
First thing I thought of (ala another comment) is that those openly engaged in the nudist lifestyle for instance might not give two flips about nude photo "collateral". To be honest, I can imagine other individuals (lifestyle or not) in at least the US would have a similar attitude. I cannot say as much about other cultures but I have a hunch the same applies to many Western nations.
So, if you're in a position where you give no flips about a nude photo, you have every incentive to take the money and run. Doubly so in fact for taking advantage of what IMHO is kind of a creepy sounding scheme.
The article makes a statement of both men and women of college age can do this, but only provides examples of women BTW.
Really?
I wonder how you'd see it if it was one of your offspring somehow getting caught up with such a bunch of loan sharks. Or it's their dodgy partner using their photos etc to get an easy few $$$.
It's easy to say they wouldn't be so naive? Of my own offspring, they've all had their moments of teen stupidity. Fortunately nothing that's played out online or risked long term consequence. Yet. :)
If they have confidence they might brush off everyone on campus knowing and seeing simply as a badge of honour. A more introvert, shy, personality or having the "blessing" of good religious and so often judgemental relatives might have their entire uni experience ruined, or worse. In a culture where sense honour and shame are far stronger.
For the "wrong" personality or circumstance it's easily far more damaging than a traditional good kicking from the loan shark's heavies. Perhaps takes far longer to heal too.
The interesting thing is that the U.S. dollar actually went down this year, so they had an even bigger interest rate in US dollars.
Of course, there are periodic crises where lenders are wiped out (latest in 2002), and that "justifies" the predatory interest rates :( . But lending is huge here and it has made a lot of people rich.
I really hope P2P lending takes off, a few startups are working on it here.
The article mentions 30% weekly interest rates. That would compound quickly and overtake 40-50% annual rates pretty easily.
10,000 yuan borrowed on an annual interest rate of 24 percent within a week.
Even the greediest moneylenders here rarely go beyond 10% weekly.
Other options include legal contracts but then again, the kinds of people who accept these loans wouldn't be approved for a regular loan and hence suing them is unlikely to be cost effective. That really only leaves the threat of violence and most small time lenders aren't going to have the resources to do that.
Still, I am surprised that anyone would agree to do this. The deal to me seems incredibly one-sided since you're still having to trust that the other person will go through with the loan -after- you give them the collateral - and that's a huge risk in my opinion. The protocol here could be improved by using an escrow agent but once again that does not completely eliminate trust.
Information is sometimes more liquid than cash ...
You've got to consider the people who just don't care about nude pics being sent to work mates/friends/relatives. Free money for them? Yes please.
Hell, for the right price I'll do it. Especially if it's just a straight up nude instead of something compromising or whatnot.
But it definitely needs a mechanism to better handle the images themselves. I think snapchat or whatever has a mechanism to (attempt to) prevent screenshots and to delete the images after a criteria is met (time limited, if memory serves)? An open source solution on a trusted server would help a lot with this.
Getting more in to institutional solutions here (and if the loan seekers were able to be approved by those they wouldn't need it), but I could see something like:
1. Seeker and Lender agree to terms. Specifically interest rates and minimum payment requirements.
2. Seeker takes photo and uploads to service.
3. Seeker then uses service to blur out particularly sensitive portions while leaving face visible. Lender sees that image exists, and either approves or requests a different blurring to ensure body shaming will be sufficient
4. Seeker must then register all payments with service (bitcoin would actually be a great solution to this, funny enough). If service does not recognize sufficient payment being made by all dates, image is sent, unblurred, to lender to use as they see fit
5. Once terms of loan are complete, image is deleted. This is the biggest problem as we know the data won't be deleted, if only because getting it out of all the back-ups is a huge hassle.
Same with relying on a third party to delete it and handle transmission. But, again, nothing ever really gets deleted which is where it falls through.
To achieve the same level existential anxiety for someone living in the US, you would probably have to take out one of your kidneys and put it in storage with the risk of having it sold or destroyed.
If anyone wants to team up please leave a reply with some contact details.
Credit where it's due though: "nakedloans.io" is a domain that could be pivoted to other purposes should this one fail.
This is offensive.
Did you read the article? Or are you simply mesmerized by the prospect of quick money?
"As she kept failing to pay back on set payment due dates, she borrowed more money from the platform with the same weekly interest rate until the overdue payment grew to 55,000 yuan, which then led to a threat with her naked pictures ...
Li told the newspaper that many of her fellow students have borrowed money in this way, but most were too ashamed to talk.
Snapshots of similar threatening collection messages have also gone viral, with a photo of a female borrower and a message reading how the lender would send the photo and her naked video footage to her family members if she could not pay back her 10,000 yuan borrowed on an annual interest rate of 24 percent within a week"
Human history is replete with instances of exploitation. Martin Shkreli comes to mind as a recent example.
But then, to each his own. Feel free to follow your instincts.
And no; I for one wont be contacting you.
I was laughing extremely hard when I registered that domain.
Sorry, I know this is a serious discussion but I couldn't help myself.
It should be good enough to fool the loaner but leave you with a clothed original for plausible deniability to debunk your nudes later.
You could create a middle service (say with Stripe integration), lenders and borrowers could register, lenders loan the money to borrowers, and borrowers have their images stored by this middle service (the lenders themselves don't see the images).
If the loan is paid off, the image is deleted forever (maybe with a sort of credit rating built in....so the next time you need a loan, maybe you'd not need an image upto a certain amount).
If not, the image is posed online on the service's website.
(goes without saying, this would be available only for those above 18, etc. following all possible laws)
My personal take is: I understand this is basically physiological blackmail, but how does releasing the images help the lender? (as in, the lender probably won't receive the money anyway - once the image is released).
It prevents other borrowers from doing the same. The people that have their nudes released are a done deal and the lenders know it. But if they don't do that, the whole concept is off.
How does this service avoid having a Suicide Girl sign up and then immediately bolt with the money?
Do you think this could all be done legally?
If someone is willing to implement this, keep in mind that in China, having a website ain't the end-all-be-all solution. A better way would be to integrate with kik / line messenger (apart from the website).
Morally speaking, I'd not want this on my shoulders just because, at one point, I'd get hit with the realization that I'm ruining someone's life (with or without cause) - that someone who has done absolutely nothing to me (personally). Overtime, I don't think I could live with that (as this topic in recent news got me thinking [0]).
[0] https://medium.freecodecamp.com/the-code-im-still-ashamed-of...
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/08/why-there-are-no-credit-...
https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/27/data-from-alibabas-e-comme...
Last time I was in China, people told me that several countries accept your credit history / verification by AliPay (mobile payments processor arm of Alibaba) as proof of solvency
The best approach I can think of is to use an in person meeting, with trusted hardware that allows the borrower to show the lender the nude pic briefly. The borrower needs to prove to the lender that a contract exists that would reveal the decryption key if he or she doesn't pay on time.
Without an in person meeting, there would need to be a trusted third party that controls the whole process, vouches for the identity of the person in the nude pic, etc. --- Otherwise the scheme is just based on exclusivity of access to anyone's nudity as collateral. It could be anyone's nude image.
That aside... So, does that mean once your picture is released, you don't need to pay back? If so, I see some people would probably get rich :/
Although im sure they would make you agree/state that your not a nudist.
We already know that Bitcoin's pseudonymity is good enough to avoid persecution (dark markets, ransomware, etc)
Now it can be also used by loan sharks to make these loans which are highly illegal in most western countries.