It is easy to make thoughtless posts to the mobile phone app Yik Yak because users are nameless, but these posts are not as anonymous as they seem.
Chief of the Bradley University Police Department Brian Joschko said many students think posts on Yik Yak cannot be traced back to them. However, that’s not the case.
“I’d really like to caution the students that social media is not just this little blip, and then it gets down-voted, and it’s gone,” Joschko said. “It’s there, and it resides out there, and through the legal process, we are able to obtain it. Through good background investigations, future employers may be able to obtain that information.”
Joschko said over the past academic year, BUPD officers have investigated two harassment cases involving Yik Yak.
Last October, a female student reported sexual posts about her were being written on Yik Yak, so officers filed a search warrant with Yik Yak and received the results of the warrant within a week.
“The posts were made by two different people, but the vast majority came from one individual,” Joschko said. “The one who made the majority of the posts ended up being one of [the victim’s] friends.”
Search warrant results include a device’s IP address, the exact longitude and latitude of the device’s location when making the posts, the time the posts are sent and the telephone number for the device.
The victim had initially reported the incident to Student Affairs, where the office down-voted the posts so they would disappear from Yik Yak’s feed.
“[The posts] were still obviously retrievable because even though they had been down-voted and they were gone off the screen, they weren’t really gone forever,” Joschko said.
Joschko said the suspect claimed her boyfriend had written the posts, but later changed her story and said it was actually her posting.
“It seemed to be a disagreement between the two friends,” Joschko said. “The victim had indicated that she didn’t care for the suspect’s boyfriend and wasn’t very supportive of that relationship, and to get back at her for not supporting the relationship, [the suspect] went ahead and sent the messages on Yik Yak.”
Harassment by electronic communication is classified as a Class B misdemeanor, which means guilty individuals face up to six months in jail and a $1,500 fine.
“In this case, the victim was a little taken aback that it was one of her friends, and she ended up declining to prosecute,” Joschko said.
However, there were repercussions in the second case officers investigated this year.
A male student stole a greek letter off the outside of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house and posted a picture on Yik Yak, with the caption, “Hey Delts. I think you’re missing another letter.” The male student was arrested and transported to the Peoria County Jail.
“I’m sure the young man thought when he was posting this that it was anonymous, but the reality of it is that it’s not anonymous and that students need to be careful about what it is that they post and how it is that they post it because those types of things can come back and rear their ugly heads down the road,” Joschko said.
Joschko said he want students to think about the content of their posts before putting them on social media.
“If it’s something you don’t want traced back to you, you probably shouldn’t send it because … there must be a reason you don’t want it traced back, and it most likely is able to be traced back to you,” Joschko said.
