The internet is a very very vast place. And a lot of people are online… All the time… And the catch-phrase of the day for all of us: “Orkut“.
I’ll scrap you later is the lingo common to almost everyone. My mom has been dying to catch up with her schoolmates on orkut… But yeah, the story is not about Orkut…
The story is about the umbrella in itself… The world of Social Networking. The world of Socializing on the internet… The number of websites where people hang out these days is innumerable. Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, MingleBox, Yaari, and a whole lot more…
The most basic factor in all these websites is that people get online with the intention of meeting people, making friends, carving out relationships. Atleast, this is what the sites intend to provide you as their USP’s.
In layman terms, it’s the opening up of the self and providing information for the world to see. Free information is the keyword of the day… But, unfortunately, a lot of people take things to the next step… Infringement of the freely provided information and harassment. Shridhar Rao has a post here about a girl who committed suicide because someone took her fotos from her profile online and threatened to put them onto porn sites…
As a blogger and a person who is into a strongly built social network, I set my thoughts on what can be done for this kind of a menace… I’d like to add to the points shridhar has already written on his post… I guess these would go out especially to women…
Anonymity:
Try to keep anonymity online. This is one of the best defences that is possible… Try not to post all your colours online… Consciously realise that Adobe Photoshop is an extremely powerful tool… “I” can personally turn into Tom Cruise in a couple of minutes…
Help / Police:
Incase someone does still choose to put up their personal data online, and get called by a person who feels that you have to be put up on a porn website, DO NOT PANIC! Get the source of the call / sms / e-mail and immediately alert the nearest police station. The Cyber Crime Branch in any country is faster than any other sect of the police department around. They are “atleast” linux geeks!
The Cyber-crime branch police stations in various cities are listed here. Get the data across to these people. Proof is of utmost importance. I’ve personally seen this in a case I know, where the lady chose to delete the sleazy sms’es she had been receiving coz she thought they were dirty, disgusting and shameful. Evidence people!! Evidence… The cyber-crime team generally wont go on a hearsay piece of information.
Website Gurus:
It’s us dev guys that make the internet the place it is. Whether your site is just a mashup or a full blown enterprise thingy, HAVE LOGGING ENABLED!!! This ought to be made gospel! Log every bit of activity a user performs on your domain. Do not give website performance as a reason for disabling logs. All of the languages used for web programming have powerful threading models. They can definitely handle a couple of extra function calls.
This is mandatory for the most obvious of reasons. A person may choose to harass a victim and then delete the instances as a cover up. If logging is enabled, the database would have an image of his activity and this person can actually be framed. Get as much data as possible from the user activity. The IP, is byfar the most important piece of information. An IP trace can easily reveal almost everything about a user. Even if it is a dynamic IP, the ISP and the city is listed.
As a footnote, perhaps the only statement I can make on the whole issue is this: “We’re bound to be responsible individuals. If there IS a person who chooses to f&^k around, he / she is to be taken to the task immediately. And for that, we do need to stay together as a team. And be alert!”
Rightly mentioned Shridhar, and may she rest in peace…
Over and out…
Tags: Internet, Cyber+Crime, Social+Networking
-
The Cruisemaniac
-
Sridhar