TYPES OF CYBER CRIME WOMEN FACE

Cyber crime, a crime the domain of which can be extended to many unknown spaces, happens most rudely to women. In my article on Cyber crime against women, which was published in Cyberlawtimes.com, I had shown some major types of crimes which attack women only in the net. But here I would like to discuss it broadly. Cyber crime can be of two types, (1) attacking the economy, which is also called e- crime like phishing etc, (2) attacking the individual self through emails and social networking websites. I am going to speak about the second point.
All most all sorts of cyber offences like hacking, pornography, breaching of confidentiality and security which are narrated in our Information technology Act 2000, originate mostly from emails and social networking websites. Other than these, some thing more which many of us women suffer in the internet are stalking and harassment. Many cyber law experts explained stalking as “following” the netizen, each of her steps, her conversations, and her activities are followed silently. And then one day she receives an email revealing all her past activities, (some of which she may have wanted to do secretly) and then continuous blackmailing begins. I would say cyber harassment is even more annoying than any of these. A girl keeps on receiving emails from some known person, well, to be precise, NOT SO WELL KNOWN, asking her many embarrassing questions. How about this case where a girl is having an affair secretly and some one constantly blackmail her on her boy friend? Or she feels a threat that this emailing person would tell the world, especially her parents about her love affair? Or even in case of “jittery Ex- boy friend” who keeps on mailing her putting some bombarding words? Seems you too have heard of these sorts of cases? The other window of inviting headaches is the online chatting. Yahoo messenger, AOL, G talks etc gives us opens ways to make friends and speak with them. The girl slowly opens her heart, gets involved more and more and becomes addicted to chatting. She never knows when these girli girli chats become little mischievous and the person sitting on the opposite may not be a REAL FEMALE. She sends her photos, and the “SHE” too ……of some other female net user and the friendship becomes deeper than ever. Now the story takes a U turn when the girl this side suddenly finds her picture or her story in a very “dirty” forum with her real name publicizing her “naughty desires”. The story can be a bit different too when she gets involved with a male in the chatting box. Many of us have heard about internet chatting – partners turn into real life couples giving a fairy tell finishing of the whole story. The other side of the story is there are some instances also when the girl becomes a FOOL by her net boyfriend who could be even of her father’s age. The male partner one day asks her to step in in the real world from the virtual world at some destination. Imagine the situation where the girl in question finds herself in a DEN or even in a DITCH . If she can escape luckily, she becomes so traumatized that she may even refuse to come back to her normal life

Effects of cyber crime in real life

While many of us know what cyber crime through many write ups is, I am going to discuss here what the effects of cyber crime are:

The first reaction of a person who has seen himself in a “smelly ditch” is SHOCK. He can’t believe it is the same old self he knows for so many years... since his birth to be precise. The next thing which comes in mind is “OH …... I HAVE BEEN SEEN IN SUCH AN EMBARRASSING STATE BY MILLIONS OF NET USERS BY NOW …. WHERE DO I HIDE MY FACE?” the psychology of the poor victim is easily understandable. But can any one guess what far reaching effect these after effects and shock would have on the person? Some gets panicked. He can not confide it with his family or friends. The thoughts of making her “secret self” public, bites him day and night. Some start loosing their basic interests in life like eating, socializing or even working the daily chores. The most dangerous of all these is turning himself into a cyber criminal to take revenge of his insults and then slowly the passion of destroying other’s peace at the cost of his happiness grips his mind. Do you remember Kaushambi’s case? The famous Orkut girl who was killed when she tried to confide her love forcefully on her virtual boyfriend? Or the Adnan case? The poor teenager fell into trap due to his own nuisance in the social networking websites. None of these victims or their friends or millions of readers of this news had ever thought cyber socializing could have such far reaching effect. Could we term it “Cyber murder”? Unfortunately in both these cases the accused some where felt the tinge of insult by their victim and took extreme step to teach lessons to the harasser. The school children were overjoyed to read about Bombay Scottish school scandal where some students messed up with their teachers. What a wicked way to teach the teacher!!!!! But what did it teach? The boys can tease their teachers in an open forum now and the police will simply warn them and leave them by strict note “NO NEXT TIME”. Well, this encourages the naughty boys to become more dare devil in the internet and experiment their evil workshop with the fairer sex from an age when they are not even matured to understand “WHATS WRONG IN IT”? Crime gives way to more crimes and a breed of highly intelligent criminals.

THE NEW TRENDS OF CYBER CRIME

This morning when I was browsing the news paper , the news on cyber crime Bill made me extremely happy . the new Bill would give the creators of pornographic messages a good punishment to remember for life . But would this help curb the victimization of women in the net? well, to a certain extent , yes . Now the bad boys of the Indian Internet scenario would feel their life time more dearer. But pornography is not the only crime in the internet which haunts millions of women netizens. The internet crimes are spreading their net even out side the virtual world and the IT Act just stands dumb struck here. Many netizens who dont know the laws ( well, all are not well informed), feel shocked , panicked and even MAD. I wish to help those who are going through these terrible times. Please read my next entries to understand what are the trends of cyebr crime now a days and how can you save yourselves.
Untill then... bye for now and enjoy the Xmas eve.