Assignment:

Review the article linked with each individual motive. Rank the motives from 1 to 7 as the motives you think make the most sense (being 1) to the least sense (being 7). Explain why you rank each motive the way you rank it.

Answer:

In this journal I will be ranking 7 different motives from what I think make the most to least sense. The seven motives are ones of multiple reasons, money, revenge, boredom, political, recognition, and entertainment.

For me the motive that makes the least sense is entertainment. I kind of get how you could see this as entertainment but there are things you could do to entertain yourself that are more legal and do not harm others.

At rank 6 I have put political motives. While at first I thought I was going to put this pretty high up I realized that trying to change someone’s political view through hacking is not the best way to convince someone. Illegally taking down an opponents website by hacking it can give the political party you are for a bad picture. In the case of the article “hacktivists” also do not make very much sense to me because governments will just shut you down and might even arrest you.

Rank 5 will have to be recognition for me. This is because I understand how someone might want to hack something just to show how good they are. They might want to get social media coverage and would probably like to boast about their skills. I have only put this at rank 5 though because the other motives make more sense to me.

I have put boredom as a motive at rank 4, while I thought about it as lower the article changed my mind to put it higher in the rankings. When I saw boredom as a motive I thought there it was going to be lower because if you are bored you are just looking for ways to entertain yourself and as mentioned before there are better, more legal ways to entertain oneself. However the article talked about more and younger children being online due to Covid-19 and that hey are more willing to give out sensitive data like their name, age, and where they live. Many people were also more willing to give out their information during lockdown. These points made me change my mind to give this motive a higher ranking.

At rank 3 because revenge is a very strong feeling in us human beings. If someone had been wronged in a bad way almost everyone in that position would want to get there revenge, as seen by the many revenge stories on the internet. In the case of the article I could see how someone might leak or fake a revenge porn video not knowing how much damage they have caused to the victim. The internet has made it easier to take revenge on someone and many people have taken advantage of this and considering how strong of a feeling revenge gives you I have put it higher on this ranking.

At number 2 we have the motive money. Many hackers and scams go after money because for them it is a quick and easy way to get a lot of money with little effort. Whether you need the money to get diapers for your child or whether you want it to get a higher status money is a strong motive for many people.

At the top we have motives of multiple reasons. The human brain is something very complicated and in most cases we cannot say someone did something because of this or that. Most of the times there are multiple motives behind of an act. For example the money motive, hackers and scammers are not just trying to get more money but they are getting to provide for their family or to give themselves a better image. There are multiple motives behind wanting the money which in turn leads to them wanting the money in the first place.