Social media being misused as a tool for sexual predation
TIME TO ACT Around 957 cases were registered under IT Act for transmission of obscene and sexually explicit content through social media and Internet, as per NCRB’s 2016 report . UP ranks top on the list of states where the cases were reported
LUCKNOW: Lives today are wrapped around information technology, through smartphones, tablets , computers and what not. No doubt this provides important learning tools and also helps people stay connected through social media platforms. But it is a doubleedged sword: the flip side is that misuse of such platforms and access to porn sites sometimes lead to sexual predation in the virtual world.
To cite a few recent examples, Uttar Pradesh police arrested an imposter Himanshu Singh in early 2017 from Lucknow for allegedly duping and sexually harassing girls through social media.
According to police, the imposter posed as a major in the Indian army on social networking sites where he forged friendship with more than 25 girls, ending up harassing them sexually on the pretext of marrying them.
In the same year, a social media platform user approached the UP Police Cyber Cell in the state capital, with a complaint that his account had been hacked and the hacker was sending obscene messages to his female friends.
On investigating, police found that his account was not hacked but someone known to him had cracked his password that was his mobile number.
As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2016 report, around 957 cases were registered under IT Act for transmission of obscene and sexually explicit content through social media and Internet. UP ranks top on the list of states where the cases were reported.
The data said that in UP, around 284 cases were reported, in Assam 114, in Maharashtra 98, in Karnataka 73 and in West Bengal 64. Other than these figures, in UP around 138 cases with motive of sexual exploitation and 13 cases of insult to modesty of women were also reported the same year.
UP STF’s Cyber Cell staff said on an average they got more than a dozen cases in a month, which is a big number. “Crimes against women through social media are on the rise. And in most of the cases, they fall victim due to their own mistakes while handling their social media accounts,” said additional SP Triveni Singh, nodal officer, UP STF Cyber Cell.
Singh said one of the most common mistakes netizens made was while creating their password for social networking sites and e-mail accounts.
People often chose easy passwords like date of birth or mobile number that were easy to guess and this made the account vulnerable to cyber criminals, he said .
Other than password, the social media users should refrain from accepting friend requests from unknown people, he advised. The unknown users could enter into the account holder’s profile and misuse his personal details— photographs, mobile numbers and friends’ list.
Other IT experts too endorsed the view and termed social media as a catalyst in crime against women and circulating pornography.
A cyber security expert and cyber security consultant Rakshit Tandon said, “No doubt technology has changed the world but has also brought along a nuisance. It has created a sort of window, allowing people to peep into the lives of others while staying miles away. And this is turning out to be dangerous for the fair sex. “
He said social media was also misused to circulate pornography.
“Only recently the CBI busted an international child abuse pornography racket operating on a social media platform, arrested an unemployed youth from Kannauj in UP and booked him under various sections of IT Act,” he added.
Another IT expert Himanshu Rai, professor in IIM Lucknow, however, had a different take on the issue. “I don’t find social media and accessibility to porn sites the main culprit. In fact, porn was available in other forms even before the Internet era,” he said.
Rai also said going by the recent scenario when social media was misused for sexual harassment, there was a need to strengthen the laws.
“Presently, we have the IT Act to tackle cyber crime but things are still hazy. There is a need to define up to what degree the punishment will be or what shall constitute harassment and so on,” he said.
Rai said that intervention from the government level was also required to stop the circulation of porn material through social media.
He also said that the government should constitute a separate body to check cases of harassment that were on the rise.