Kota youths develop social networking site on lines of Facebook
Kota At a time when social media giant Facebook is facing a scandal involving its way of handling user data, two Kotabased engineering graduates have come with a social networking site, Friends Network. The interesting aspect, however, is that they claim that they can ensure the security of user data.
Tapan Kumar Jha, a web developer and cybersecurity expert, who runs a cyber academy, Advanced Security Department Network (ASDN cybernetics Inc), and his friend Ridhi Soral, an engineering graduate from Rajasthan Technical University,
Kota, have launched what they call “the Indian version of Facebook”.
“Our site does manual verification of users with their name, email ID and mobile number to avoid social account frauds and fake IDs. If a person wants to join Friends Network they have to enter their name, mobile number and email id, our networking team takes eight hours to verify the credentials instead of immediately allowing him or her to join,” said 24-year-old Jha, who too is an engineer from Rajasthan Technical University, Kota. He said that their team of ethical hackers traces internet protocols to filter fake IDs and social account frauds.
The site already has around 100 members.
“Users cannot create multiple accounts with the same email ID or mobile number on our site, which helps in making the site secure,” said Soral.
Jha said that soon they will implement the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) security, WAF (Web Application Firewall) to keep away hackers. Adding the site is the brainchild of two class 12 students, Rahul Chaudhary and Ishan Upadhyaya.
Speaking about the features of “Friends Network”, Tapan said that the site provides features like finding local friends, sending friend requests, messaging, chatting, photo sharing, likes and comments, profile picture and cover image, user biography, friends list (accept and deny), profile view (new feature so that user can see who look at their account), news feeds, photos album, blogging, groups, inbox, see friends profile, see the latest member added, video and audio chat. The site will also have a mobile app. Soral said that the app is only 2.5 MB with no compatibility issues. They plan to launch the app in the next few days.