We now can relate easily to social networking in India, having much familiarity with it as these events have started to pop up very often. Recently, in Gujarat, a student pursuing MTech from renowned Nirma University was caught unawares, after he was found guilty of hacking into a girl's Facebook account and putting up obscene pictures on the same. He was caught very quickly, but he is just only single percent of the whole lot. Let me explain to you, via some of my favourite statistics and analysis.
Every day, we get at least ten calls on an average, which have reports ranging from fake profile impersonation to cyber pornography and posting of malicious content by minors, especially students from schools and colleges. Apart from that, there is a vicious rise of 10 % in such cases since beginning of year 2011, as compared to last year's cases. With increase in cyber crime cases in India, these contribute heavily to the number of registered cyber crime cases, as 50% of cases coming to police stations are having more or less the same tune to play.
So, are there any problems with the students or the youth culture of India? Well, to say the least, such cases have also been largely reported in various other countries including developed countries. The case here is not about the youth and the growing technology, but the tyranny lies in the very basic thing, which is nurturing of youth. There are some very strict and yet very essential and genuine steps for parents to take here, because, with effect of these steps, they can avoid falling in such situations and exempt the disrespect as well as the problems which they face later on.
What parents should do is like, they need not keep constant vigil on the child, but they need to know, on which sites he is creating a profile, where he is posting his photos, what he is sharing with his friends. The parents need to know and monitor the activities, but not by spying but by having a nice and easy-go relationship with them, so that they don't feel embarrassed to show you their profiles, and thus also they will avoid putting unnecessary information, data, as well as content, which may harm their profiles on the net, out in the open. Parents need to gather information about the social networking cyber space through seminars and expert lectures, organised at various centres in the city and across the country.
It is also the duty of the government to impose laws and regulations over the cyber space ventures of overseas companies, which actually don't physically exists in India, but are virtually present. The laws should abide each and every such company operating websites over Indian space. The government needs to close and create boundaries of Indian cyber space, which should be regulated each and every moment, to avoid such mishaps.
Apart from that, it is duty of the website operators, to see into such cases, as soon as a legal complaint is filed, and handover the culprit or any sufficient and required details on the case, to the authorities. But, help from Facebook, and many other such networking websites, still looks like a faraway dream, as there is still no hope of improvement in their behaviour and cooperation towards us.
Sunny Vaghela
The author is a city-based ethical hacker and specialises in cyber crime investigations and forensics.
Source:- http://www.dnaindia.com