Real estate mobbing as performed by those mobbing me in northeast Seattle, has required a corrupt neighborhood watch, a speculative climate, and unethical house flippers and developers. The mutual interest of the parties involved in profiting off of escalated housing values is more meaningful than the psychopathology of any one individual. Nevertheless, understanding the context within which mobbing occurs cannot, in and of itself, prevent mobbing.
Texts on workforce mobbing tend to describe mobbing as an expression of passive-aggressive or sociopathic behavior. I believe that’s true of the real estate mobbing in my own neighborhood, a phenomenon that constitutes an organized crime. In the case of my neighborhood, I suspect that some of those involved in this murder of crows may be psychopathic or suffer from malignant narcissism. But using psychopathology to explain events is usually a human attempt to come to grips with the “why” without addressing the “how.” Again, we lack information about how mobbing is put into place.
There’s no lack of greed and psychopathology in this world. And there’s not much a person can do to prevent encounters with those who suffer from both of these sicknesses. All we can do is understand how mobbing works. But once we do, we’ll be well on the way to ensuring it no longer does.
In the world of network security, the last years have brought increased awareness of social engineering. Wikipedia defines social engineering as psychological manipulation used to trick people into revealing information that can be used for wrongdoing (“Social engineering,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security)). The article goes on to describe “social engineering” as a “confidence trick” that has “the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or system access, it differs from a traditional ‘con’ in that it is often one of many steps in a more complex fraud scheme.” I’ve often described mobbing as a “white glove crime” that is a “hoax inside a con inside a scam.” But real estate mobbing also has certain features in common with cyber-mobbing (bullying), and uses the techniques of private investigators which, once again, are converging with those of hackers. In this case, what may be more revealing is to examine the cons of mobbing through the lens of social engineering. Real estate mobbing may not only be the real-world deployment of cyber-bullying, but a crime put into motion using some of the same social engineering techniques that cyber-criminals use to effect their crimes.
Take, for example, how the owner of the north mobbing house offered to share his WiFi network with me soon after he and the south mobbing house owner had moved into place. I wrote about how he showed up at my door unexpectedly, saying he wanted to see something on my router. (Invitation to invasion of privacy, https://onbeingmobbed.com/2015/11/19/invitation-to-invasion-of-privacy). Over time, I’ve talked about WiFi and radio security within the context of mobbing in other posts, for example, Unmotivated sound and the narrative of mobbing (https://onbeingmobbed.com/2016/10/29/unmotivated-sound-and-the-narrative-of-mobbing-part-3-continued-the-unreality-of-cyber-stalking) and RadioHead: Cell phones are radios (https://onbeingmobbed.com/2017/10/29/radio-head-cell-phones-are-radios-mobbing-is-radio-based-harassment). It became clear to me over time that inviting someone onto a neighboring WiFi network operated by a malicious agent would be a trick. It is easily a form of social engineering. And as to why the north mobbing house owner showed up wanting to look at “something” on my router, I eventually concluded that the model information from the router might have been useful for someone who wanted to know its vulnerabilities, someone who intended to do a bit of neighbor hacking.
In retrospect, the conclusion that a hacker would care about model information seems naive. Why would model information matter when the administrative username and default password are openly displayed on many routers, easily available to anyone who enters the home? There’s no need to hack when you have the credentials.
This is where social engineering comes into play. When guests in your home show interest in your router, beware. Don’t ignore the things you should do to protect yourself just because people are your neighbors. Always change default passwords. And don’t assume that unusual interest is benign. This is what neighbor crimes, like neighbor hacking and neighbor mobbing, are all about.
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