Security News > 2021 > January > Utah Ponders Making Online ‘Catfishing’ a Crime

The Online Impersonation Prohibition up for debate this week in the Utah House of Representatives, "Makes it a criminal offense, under certain circumstances, to impersonate an individual online with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate, or threaten any individual," according to the current draft of the legislation.

The legislation, officially known as House Bill 239 and sponsored by Utah Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, is part of a larger submission, HB 80, which seeks to amend privacy laws to create an "Affirmative defense" for companies in lawsuits over data breaches, according to a report posted online by Fox 13 in Salt Lake City.

The practice of catfishing often occurs in online dating or social-networking scenarios in which someone takes someone else's personally identifiable information-such as photos, addresses, educational history or professions-to pretend to be that person to seem more attractive or interesting to people they meet online.

In 2018, a catfishing scam bilked 42 service members from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps out of more than $560,000 when prison inmates in South Carolina posed as attractive women online and lured the men into online romances.

These are the type of scams that HB 239 aims to identify and make criminal, according to Lisonbee, who told FOX 13 that the bill targets those who actively take on someone else's identity to defraud or harass someone rather than prosecute people merely for creating anonymous online accounts.

"A lot of times people tend to hide behind the guise of social media and online anonymity and don't really put the consequences of their actions together."

News URL

https://threatpost.com/utah-ponders-making-online-catfishing-a-crime/163456/