▲ The first objective of cyber attackers is to disturb sensitive audiences, such as women or minors, says activist Mariel Domínguez.Afp photo
Carolina Gomez Mena
La Jornada newspaper
Sunday, November 28, 2021, p. eleven
A new form of violence, which mainly affects women and potentially minors, reached worrying levels: it emerged with the Covid-19 pandemic and it is the zoombombing or trolling, committed during virtual school, family, social or work meetings.
It is an attack directed at digital spaces in real time that have predominantly female audiences and consists of taking control of what appears on the public’s screens and thus showing unsolicited content on explicit sexuality or other disturbing topics, such as those related to sex. xenophobia.
Mariel Domínguez, a member of the Luchadoras collective and one of those in charge of the Support Line against Digital Violence, commented that these irruptions are not exclusive to the Zoom meeting platform, although because it is one of the most used, that violence was baptized What bombardment in Zoom
. Therefore, this application added security features to prevent unwanted guests.
He specified that even in coordinated attacks
not only show photos of pornography, but live sex scenes, such as acts of masturbation
.
When presenting the report Against virtual toxic love: a year of the Support Line against Digital Violence, prepared by Luchadoras, he maintained that, according to the reports received on those bombing
, these were exercised in most cases by men
and they are intended for female audiences, by “taking control of the video function or ‘screen sharing'” and thus show those surprising content. This practice has occurred in various parts of the world.
Wendy Figueroa, director of the National Shelter Network (RNR) told The Day that We are not safe in any space, we find it alarming that 26 percent of the boys and girls who have arrived at the shelters commit violence to us when accessing their school platform, it is extremely regrettable
.
She acknowledged that she herself has experienced this hostility, and has had to close virtual sessions.
“When we participate as human rights defenders in a conference on a virtual platform, and we do not control the technological aspect, we have had invasions of trolls, of very explicit cybernetic sexual violence; it is bombing and sabotage.
“We usually leave the forum, and create another league, because not only is it the subject of what they exhibit, but they can enter any of the computers of those gathered there.
“We know that patriarchy is unfortunately like humidity: it is in all spaces. Therefore, in the digital workshops that we teach in the network of shelters, virtual income is highly controlled, it is not a public access league, we (in the RNR) have applications that detect software malicious ”, in order to prevent the hackers enter the devices, violate and even cause other damage.
