Can criminals use Augmented reality to commit crimes ?

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Anonymous is like a flame, It is a boon as well as a bane

Augmented reality is a technology which collects a lot of data from the environment of the user to process and acts accordingly. Having said that, I think there is a real problem of crimes being committed with the help of Augmented reality. Let me give an analogy. I use Tor to access the dark web sometimes. I don’t do anything illegal per se. But I think there are a lot of really dangerous websites with illegal content in the dark web. From drugs to child pornography, the dark web which consists of sites that end with a .onion is a quagmire of the nasty stuff in this world. The really sad thing is that no one can trace these criminals as the Tor browser hides their IP address by rerouting them through random nodes across the world. Browsing through Tor itself is not a crime in most countries. Many journalists and whistle browsers use the Tor network to bypass the restrictive firewalls of their countries and to stay anonymous.

The similarities between the internet and Augmented reality are striking

Iam not painting Tor or the dark web as a hub of criminals.Even I use Tor to download the books of my choice  from .onion sites. Nearly 2 million people use Tor to access dark web and 98% of the traffic through the Tor exit nodes are for legal content. What Iam really trying to say is that people always find ways to circumvent the law. Augmented reality being a really sensitive industry where the user’s personal content is collected should do everything to protect the users. The first step would be to force every augmented reality device manufacturer to secure the data going to the website in such a way that third parties can never get hold of the data. For transactions with third party, AR devices can use a payment similar to the escrow service used in the dark web for bitcoin transactions.

It is time to protect every single device no matter how small

Recently, there was a Distributed denial of service attack on the US which brought down significant parts of the internet. To explain it in layman terms, the hackers used internet of things to send random data to Dyn network which runs many important websites like Twitter. Millions of Devices like Camera, TV’s, Toys connected to the internet were used to send data without the knowledge of the owner. It is time to learn from our mistakes. We should force AR device manufacturers to firewall itself in case of a hacker attempt to misuse it.

In conclusion, The future of communication lies in AR, let us secure it by staying ahead of this criminals.

About Author

An avid reader who loves to read books on psychology, politics and technology.