CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER
When an individual gets a virtual home through his/her profile in the social networking
sites it is most expected that he/she will open the windows to showcase his/her
own self. While this can be an extremely positive gesture to let people know
about oneself and market oneself to be one of the potentials, this can be
extremely dangerous as well. As the US report on the internet and computing trend
suggests, Indians are the second largest sharers of personal information after
Saudi Arabians( See http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Indians-second-most-likely-to-share-everything-online-Study/articleshow/20376051.cms),
I partly justify it with my own observations in the internet. Many women in
India tend to reveal personal information in online pockets including social
networking sites, groups, news forums etc. I was one such exposure when I first
entered this big (bad) World Wide Web. The typical ways may include revealing
residential address, phone numbers, school names, pet names to even secret
bashes. Not to mention, the regular updates themselves may make private life
revealed for many women. I had this chat friend couple of year’s back, who
insisted to know what I eat in the breakfast, what I wear for formal gatherings
and why do I wear them. Slowly, I understood that I was feeding this particular
individual more than what is needed. Well, I had sensed danger. But not many
can really sense it. At the best, many women protect their information by
making their profiles open for ‘friends’. But what these women may not
understand is, these ‘friends’ are neither ‘anti-chambers’ from where
information can not be leaked.
Similarly, this
sharing tendency can prove beneficial for online phishing teams who can easily
track out the potential victim. It needs to be remembered that women are
equally becoming victims of phishing as men and may be this may be one of the
reasons. Off course, how can one forget about other typical online crimes which
happen mostly to women like stalking, creation of defamatory profiles etc ? All
of these may be results of too much sharing.
But then what
can be the solution? While opening the windows, you can not close your doors
and expect the ‘unwanted’ to show up any-time. Only thing is, you need to be
prepared to face the unwanted and learn from your mistakes. I have some
wonderful friends who had learnt from their past experiences due to too much
sharing; some have stopped frequent updating, some preferred to maintain
offline connections than carrying on virtual connections. What I have learnt
from them is, the more you expose yourself, the less you should expect from privacy
shields; for nothing can protect your privacy when you yourself have opened
doors to let the world know what they should not have known about you.
Please Note:
Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations
provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article,
please cite it as “Halder D. (2013), “Too
much exposed too less to expect
”, 5th
June,2013, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/
