This is just the first step towards something else. But they need a first step that is not too scary. Once you get used to it then it goes to the next step and so on until complete slavery. Not middle age type slavery but psychological slavery where nothing belongs to you anymore, not even your self. So you will do whatever you are told, since you otherwise have no concept of possibly having other resources to survive. Frog in the boiling water approach. And of course the debt will pass on to your family, etc...
> Not middle age type slavery but psychological slavery where nothing belongs to you anymore, not even your self
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.
I think there can be multiple solutions (and maybe the blockchain can help in that).
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.
Can ethereum be used that way, such that a secret only becomes available after a set period of time, but the release can be aborted?
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.)
I'm not a pro when it comes to Ethereum but bitcoin has something kind of close to that: Locked Time transaction. Basically, after a certain time (or block height) a transaction becomes possible unless you act earlier.
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.
No, that's not possible. If the assumption is that a secret inserted at time T1 can be retrieved after time T2 without receiving any input not available at time T1, nothing stops Evie from pretending it is T2 and recovering the secret _now_.
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.
You're semi-joking, but blockchains could solve this problem cleanly: releasing secret information unless payment is made. In this case, it's a subcase of time-lock crypto (http://www.gwern.net/Self-decrypting%20files) and like time-lock crypto in general, can in theory be solved by 'witness encryption'.
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. :)
Note that the security level of this by design is no more than the proof-of-work cost of N blocks, if you pay back the loan N blocks before the deadline. Proof: If the required key is X bitcoin blocks with no transaction to lender, and you pay it back after X - N blocks, the lender need only mine N blocks, starting from the Xth, to obtain the key (X blocks). They can do this at any time.
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?)
Whoever took the picture is the borrower, so it's absolutely 100% OK for them to keep a copy of their own nudes... After all, even if that was somehow accomplished, they can easily manufacture more! The goal is to come up with a way for the lender to have a copy of the picture without needing to be trusted indefinitely. Which my scheme does.
It's super creepy and the interest rates are outrageous; but you have to give it to them, public shaming as a collateral is good "outside the box" thinking.
But ... what are they being shamed for? I don't think I'd want anyone to have naked photos of me, but there's a gigantic difference between a picture of me engaging in "shameful" behaviour, and simply a naked photo of me that's been used for collateral ... isn't there?
The shame bit is a cultural difference, so it wouldn't have quite the same impact. Not that it wouldn't be uncomfortable.
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.
The problem I see with the scheme applied universally is indeed this -- the "shame factor" is relative.
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.
So if someone installed a hidden camera in your house, and tried to exhort you for money with videos of you showering, is that the same thing? If not, where's the difference?
Nope. Pre-acceptance of the terms and conditions is different from being victimized, assuming you mean that I didn't know about the videos in your example.
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.
In a way, yes. In a way, it is punishment for not paying.
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.
Someone installed a camera into your house with your consent as part of a loan-scheme designed to get you to pay back your loan (viable or not) or risk release of videos of you showering
vs
Someone installed a hidden camera in your house, and tried to exhort you for money with videos of you showering
There's a cultural difference. Some things that "a westerner", broadly speaking, might consider an inconvenience can effectively be a life-long chain around the neck in other cultures.
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 think if you are a woman and they are going to release a naked picture with your name, address and cell phone number, the larger threat is going to be harassment, not just shame.
The article makes a statement of both men and women of college age can do this, but only provides examples of women BTW.
Ha, you haven't seen really outrageous interest rates. Here in Uruguay banks have 40 to 50% annual interest rate, and the equivalent to payday lenders have over 100% annual interest rates.
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.
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.
Got to say: I can't really think of a better way to solve trust problems in a peer-to-peer lending platform between strangers. You could use monetary collateral but if people could do that they wouldn't need to borrow in the first place.
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 ...
Conceptually, I think it is a horrifying yet good idea.
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.
There is no mechanism to stop someone taking an analogue copy of the picture with a secondary camera even if it's on Snapchat/a server somewhere and then "using" it later.
The whole idea just seems poorly thought out. Unless the idea is for both sides to have mutual nude pictures of each other but then to hold them indefinitely. This just wouldn't work otherwise.
That is why I mentioned the blurring. your lender can easily (or not so easily) screenshot the proof of nudity, but all they get is a blurred out picture that they can confirm face, verify identity, and verify nudity (while bodysuits and pasties are a thing, you can still blur enough to maintain SOME privacy while verifying nudity). While there is still room for abuse, it becomes not much worse than any photoshopped nude.
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.
It's only worthwhile as collateral if the consequence of defaulting is expensive enough, and that's culturally variable.
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.
I just registered nakedloans.io. Feel free to be prudes but I'm going to take this business idea to market and help reduce some of the friction in the peer-to-peer loan market.
If anyone wants to team up please leave a reply with some contact details.
The problem is that it's pretty seriously predicated on you caring about your naked pictures getting out in the world, which a lot (a majority, even?) of people in the USA and Europe do not. I know that if I could get money with the only collateral if I don't pay being that naked pictures get on the internet then I'd use that as an excuse to make money with my body without having to be sexually attractive.
Also there are some laws in the USA, such as the relatively new "revenge porn" laws that may have clauses that protect borrowers in the event that they can't pay up.
Credit where it's due though: "nakedloans.io" is a domain that could be pivoted to other purposes should this one fail.
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.
I wonder if this "hack" can be automated completely. Input a bikini pic and output a fake nude with some magical content aware fill that can stitch boobs on.
It should be good enough to fool the loaner but leave you with a clothed original for plausible deniability to debunk your nudes later.
The article says that they require all your information. A loan shark isn't going to be stupid enough not to confirm the details or else they wouldn't be able to squeeze you later.
While this might be a messed up concept (bordering something you'd see on Black Mirror), I feel like this is something that can be made safer with technology.
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).
> 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.
The big huge hole in this entire scheme is that there are clearly a good number of people who are ok with having their nudes available online. I mean, just look at the Internet.
How does this service avoid having a Suicide Girl sign up and then immediately bolt with the money?
Do you think a startup could legally implement this idea by acting as the trusted third-party to hold the photographs? Maybe the person uploading the photos could agree to a legal contract beforehand stating that the website can publish the photos if they default on the terms of the contract. There must be quite similar terms in the porn industry and I don't see a problem if they're over 18 (I'm not a lawyer obviously - would love to hear from anyone if they are.)
I guess you'd need a lawyer to get sorted but I don't think it'd be a legal problem.
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]).
Does China have something similar to a credit score? Or is this intended for people who would normally be denied after a background check of some sort?
The article isn't clear. I don't think this was the result of any official policy so much as individual authorizers making decisions based off the debtor's willingess to play along. The article ends suggesting that the companies issued a formal statement and command to their chats and branches to stop the behavior. Accepting this at face value at the moment for convenience, I would assume this means it was employees abusing their positions to get nude pics.
In developing countries for issuing business Visas, developed countries tend to ask for Bank account statements, tax declarations AND salary slips ad proof of solvency.
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
If a blurry faced pic alone can be used to verify that the person who receives the money is the same as the person in the pic, then probably other people can identify the person from the blurry faced pic. That at least partially defeats the purpose of blurring the face.
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.
Interesting that this scheme is aimed at university students and not (for instance) senior citizens that need short term loans. But I'm sure it's just about the money:)
>At best your joke is insensitive, and at worst it's ignorant of the harmful reality of the situation.
Please lighten up. I'm tired of this internet culture where people feel the need to reprimand each other for obvious (if sometimes awkward/immature) attempts at humor, complete with do-goodist posturing and condescension.
We get it, you're a good, tolerant person. Now try to have some empathy and realize that this particular jokester missed his mark. This particular joke is harmless.
Just downvote the joke you don't like and move on with your life, FFS. It's not normal to be this upset by such trivial things.
My problem with posts like that isn't that they're insensitive or whatever, it's that they're noise. I come to HN to escape the drivel that reddit's tech/programming subreddits have become due to comments like that outnumbering meaningful discussion.
>My problem with posts like that isn't that they're insensitive or whatever, it's that they're noise.
We're in perfect agreement about this, hence "downvote the joke you don't like and move on with your life".
Multi-paragraph reprimands are adding to the noise. And more to the point: the parent comment wasn't complaining about noise but rather adopting a nauseatingly moralizing posture.
Yeah I'm aware it's a joke, which you might have noticed with the three different instances of the word "joke" in my comment. And harmless to you maybe? It's as harmless as a joke about male rapes in prison. It normalizes the dehumanization of people and turns sexual exploitation into a punchline. Maybe you wouldn't find it so funny if someone was threatening to spread your (hypothetical) daughter's nude pictures and ruin her life. Downvoting doesn't do much when other people will agree with and upvote the cheap joke, you're just basically telling me to "tsk tsk" under my breath and walk away; that's surely gonna have an effect on the commenter or anyone reading. (just like the -4 on my comment made me think twice about moralizing; it didn't) Btw in response to your other comment about "PC drivel", if it's PC to tell someone not to make light of other people's sexuality being used against them as collateral in debt, then I don't want to live in whatever your ideal non-PC world is like.
Is that so the loan shark can be even more shielded thanks to the pseudonymity? They require family information from the student. A pseudonymous coin is not going to change anything.
That's exactly what I was thinking when I posted it to /r/btc. This actually does have legitimate applications and the idea of using information as collateral can also be applied to other problems (most I can think of are illegal but there you go ...)
