#bringbackourgirls photo - She's Not Nigerian

Banners are pinned to a tree at a protest about the kidnapping of girls in Nigeria, near the Nigerian High Commission in London, Friday, May 9, 2014.

IMAGE: KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

BY BRIAN RIES

A woman whose face has become synonymous with the "Bring Back Our Girls" campaign online is not Nigerian, has not been abducted and did not give permission to have her photograph associated with the cause.

The viral image, which depicts a young woman named Jenabu Balde staring out from behind her hand, is accompanied by text that reads #BringBackOurGirls. It has been tweeted and retweeted hundreds of thousands of times since the early days of the campaign in late April, and has been appropriated for posters and signs that have been displayed at rallies around the world.

The campaign is focused on a group of Nigerian girls who have been missing since April 15, when a group of Islamic militants known as Boko Haram stormed a high school and took hundreds of girls captive. Some escaped, but 274 remain missing.

SEE ALSO: Bring Back Our Girls: Why the World Is Finally Talking About Nigeria's Kidnapped Students

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The Boko Haram Bidding War

While the world mobilizes to do everything possible to#BringBackOurGirls, let’s recognize that the ransom price will be very high indeed.

Almost lost in the international furor over the schoolgirls abducted in Nigeria (and the political furor in Washington over the Obama administration’s hesitance in years past to call the terrorists who abducted them, well, “terrorists”) one fundamental question is asked far too infrequently. What will it take, in fact, to set those girls free?

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There really is only one answer, deeply unsatisfactory and grossly unsavory as that may be: negotiation with Boko Haram and, almost certainly, the payment of a significant ransom.

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The critical impact of social media and the rise of mental illnesses

MARIEL NORTON

16 minutes ago

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Less FaceTime, more face-to-face time.

Tallulah Wilson was just 15 years old when she took her own life back in October 2012. The gifted ballerina had been receiving treatment for clinical depression, but whilst creating an online fantasy of a cocaine-taking character, she began to share self-harm images on social networking site, Tumblr.

Shortly after her mother discovered Tallulah’s account and had it shut down, the teenager jumped in front of a train at St. Pancras station.

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Cybersecurity Breach Costs on the Rise, Average $3.5M

Andrew Ramonas, Corporate Counsel

May 6, 2014    |1 Comments

The average two-year tab for a data breach at a U.S. company in 2013 climbed to $5.85 million, an 8 percent spike from $5.4 million in 2012, according to a privacy and data security think tank's new analysis.

For each breached record, the businesses spent an average of $201, according to the Ponemon Institute's “2014 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis,” [PDF] released Monday. The cost per compromised record is higher at U.S. companies than their counterparts in the United Kingdom, Germany and the seven other countries studied by the organization.

The 314 companies Ponemon reviewed paid out an average of $145 per breached record in 2013. Their typical expenses last year for a data breach were $3.5 million, a 15 percent uptick from about $3 million in 2012.

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