The Facebook way of saving “face” : The profile picture guard by Facebook

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

Long back in 2005 when I was newly introduced to a very popular social media “orkut”, I proudly showed off my profile with my own picture  which was clicked during a family wedding. Internet communication technology was new to India and we women were regularly being targeted because of the easy availability of our presence. This was largely due to lack of security in the social media as well as internet. We did not have two step verification for Gmail; Yahoo chat messenger, which was extremely popular during those days, almost made everyone’s personal information that were uploaded for the website, available to anyone who wanted access the user. It was during that period that I learnt about cloning of profiles which were made to harass individuals, especially women. The profiles may not be hacked, may neither be directly accessed by way of sending friends’ request; but the profile pictures may be downloaded and a new profile may be created with the available profile picture and profile information. Way back in 2006-7 I already had several women victims who contacted me for help and guidance. Almost all of them had common problem : harassment by way of creation of fake avatars. I have been part of the feminist movement which vehemently protested making women as ‘sex object’ on internet. Indeed women are made as ‘sex objects’ and they are regularly targeted by  misogynists, perverts and online traffickers who may selectively pick up women and girls by seeing their profiles, profile pictures and shadowing their online activities.

Let me go back to my own experiences where I received the first harassing comment (which was not stalking, neither resulted due to hacking) which was plainly nothing but ‘bullying’. My first profile picture in Orkut received a remark which mocked at my supposedly ‘over made-up   face’ and ‘blood red lipstick’. I knew this was just the beginning and if reciprocated, the bully may be extremely provoked to reply back. But this was not the first and last incident. I have received various negative comments, I have had my own period of being victim of a female stalker who monitored me and did send defamatory mails about me to my husband and again I had noticed several attempts to open Facebook accounts with my name and email ids. The later was detected and prevented by me because I never neglect the security messages sent by websites in my mails.

In my research I have seen that often the police and lawyers refuse to help the women victims and start the blame game. This is because they may not be aware of the mechanism to help and counsel the victims. In my opinion, websites must also be made responsible for third party victimization of women especially when the genuine reports of violation fail to move the websites.   However, the websites concerned, may constantly develop safety policy guidelines for users to make the users take self prevention mechanisms. I have been part of Facebook women safety program for quite some times now.  I continue to demand for more liability on the part of the websites especially for women and this time my concern was safety of profile pictures of women.  I was extremely happy to see the developments in the security and policies of Facebook which was introduced in India on 22^nd June, 2017: ‘The profile picture guard’. Every woman must avail this opportunity to safeguard their profile picture since this is the most chosen target of all the images that may be uploaded by a user. The step by step guide to how to use this ‘guard’ is explained by Facebook team @ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/06/giving-people-more-control-over-their-facebook-profile-picture/

However, I understand that it is not the women only, but children are also extremely vulnerable targets of sexual predators. Men are neither excluded. All users must use this facility and it may definitely help to reduce ‘image stealing’ for various malicious purposes including morphing, hacking and creation of fake avatars. But we need to understand that is not the ultimate answer to prevent revenge porn cases. While image of an individual may be saved because Facebook may detect the particular stolen image easily after receiving the report, there is a still remains a lacuna for other photographs which are in the personal albums. We must also note that the website will not suomotu take action for the cloned or stolen images. The victim must report the profile and the concerned profile picture along with the “shielded picture” as evidence.

Its nonetheless a big step in the history of cyber security for women and I congratulate Facebook for taking this initiative. But again, ……… accidents do happen and we need to be stronger to recover.
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. (2017), "The Facebook way of saving “face” : The profile picture guard by Facebook”  23rd June, 2017, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com

How ‘yellow journalism’ and internet is failing the women victims of online harassment and revenge porn

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

Almost a month and half back the whole south India woke up to a rather “juicy news” of “Bhavana” molestation case. She is not “Nirbhaya.” Her name was not given by the any legislator or judge or executive to protect her identity. Bhavana is a Malayalam female cine-star whose real name can be found in Wikipedia and numerous film magazines. She was apparently molested in a moving car by some including her former drivers. As the news report suggests, the perpetrators also took ‘objectionable’ photos of her while the incidence was going on. The news surfaced exactly when I was enjoying the sweet success of publishing my latest article “Celebrities and cyber crimes:an analysis of the victimisation of female film stars on internet” published in Temida: Journal on victimization, human rights and gender Volume 19 • Issue 3-4• 2016 .

We the movie fans often understand that actors or actresses may themselves attract negative publicity by voluntarily getting into troubles or playing the victim card. But in some cases this may not be true. Women actors may face numerous problems, harassment and threats in real life as well as virtually. One of such problem is facing voyeurism and revenge porn almost on daily basis. Some actors turn numb to such harassment as they take these as (negative) part of  their work. Some may reach out to police to show genuine concern. In Bhavana’s case, a minute analysis would show that she was not only physically violated, but also she became a victim of ‘revenge porn’, a term that our laws still do not recognise and tries to cover it up by numerous legal provisions which may not provide  the actual answer. I call it ‘revenge porn’ because once such ‘objectionable’ pictures were taken; it would not take more time to get it  circulated through WhatsApp. These contents may then land in various ports including to the secret sellers of porn clippings and obviously to the XXX rated sites. No one, not even the police may do anything to prevent secondary victimisation of the victim in such cases.

What concerns me more  is publication of her name. S.228-A of the Indian Penal Code prohibits publishing, printing etc  of the name and information of the victim/s who may have been victim of rape or sexual molestation. This protection is brought in to protect the privacy of the victim and more so, to encourage women victims of sexual violence to come up for reporting of crimes without the fear of ‘recognition’ and resultant possible social exclusion. But this provision also has a loose noose : when the victim herself allows to publish her name or identity, this provision will cease to help the victim. We don’t know whether Bhavana herself permitted the reporters to use her name and photograph but I can definitely understand that this has again created a bad example of ‘no identity protection’. Common people who may not be expected to know the pigeon holes of law, would understand a completely different story: reporting would bring media highlight which will destroy the physical and mental   privacy of the victim and her family. But this does not mean that I am ignoring the provisions of S.228-A, IPC. Women victims must also be made aware of this twist of law relating to identity protection. We may expect good and bad results of this: the provision may be misused, women may be able to take a rational decision.

Let us, the civil citizens take a preventive decision to not to spread any offensive videos/still images of women actors even if it may surface as apparently (ugly, unethical movie promo) genuine. Let us respect all women as equal irrespective of their job.

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. (2017), " How ‘yellow journalism’ and internet is failing the women victims of online harassment and revenge porn”  1^st April, 2017, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com

Hacking is no fun

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

This December we got to see a bout of hacking attacks on renowned politicians, journalists, business magnets in India. Apparently their purpose was to reveal corrupted people who are disrupting good governance in India. Almost all the news media channels ran stories on who these hackers are, why the targeting specific people are and what may be their next target etc.  Very recently I got to meet  a group of people who hack for various reasons. While most of us are concerned about our own digital data security, it is interesting to know why our accounts in social media or email may get hacked.  There is a difference between unauthorised access of financial data, social media profiles, emails and digital data that may be stored in our own devices. They may be interconnected. But definitely their motives may be different. In my recently published monograph “Cyber crime against women in India’ (https://in.sagepub.com/en-in/sas/cyber-crimes-against-women-in-india/book253900) I showed that  revenge porn may be a result of unauthorised access of social media profiles as well as digital albums for revenge to destroy the reputation. Similarly there are hackers who may access  financial data for illegal monetary gain.

However, there is a group of people who hack for fun. This ‘voyeuristic pleasure’ is exercised especially when the hacker/s may want to establish how an organisation or particular individuals may poorly maintain their  cyber security . I do often get to hear from senior citizens and women that their social media accounts or emails or Whatsapp profiles have been hacked.  An in-depth research may reveal that hackers may have done this for fun. To me, it relates to those pre internet  days when youngsters took pleasure in peeping into well guarded private diaries maintained by young girls and boys or individuals who loved to treasure their secrets. But hacking is no fun especially when the information thus gathered can be used for various detrimental causes including extortion and sextortion. Especially Women may feel extremely traumatised when such hackers for fun target them. The reason is, if a woman’s digital data is unauthorisedly accessed, it may misused and damage to her reputation may compel her to take extreme steps like suicide due to fear of social taboo. What I strongly condemn is teaching school children about hacking with the tag line that hacking is for fun. It is like giving a loaded gun to children to experiment it and learn it for fun. It is indeed a fact that ethical hackers are used for many positive reasons and internet companies may pay them a hefty amount too. But, teaching hacking to children must be done with utmost concern. We definitely do not need Frankensteins . It must be understood that any individual who may not understand the responsibilities attached with power may definitely misuse the power.  We need to understand that our Information Technology Act, 2000(amended in 2008) has recognised unauthorised access to digital data, tampering of the data etc as penal offences and the provisions are wide enough to cover offenders of all age. Further, our Indian Penal Code also recognises cyber stalking and voyeurism as an offence which may necessarily involve hacking. Any child psychology expert or educator may understand that children tend to experiment (often with disastrous first few results) for a better understanding of the subject. Hacking is such a tool which may at the outset show the child how to gain illegal profit by using it if he/she is not told about the risks that may be caused to others as well as to his target victims.  

This Christmas let all take a vow that our knowledge must be used for positive purposes and not for victimising others. We must remember that if we use our knowledge and expertise to check the weakness of others, that must be done in a prescribed way and not to humiliate the later.

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. (2016), “Hacking is no fun”

25^th December 2016, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/

What should we learn from the case of Ray Rice?

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

One of the trending news in Facebook and Twitter now is that of Ray Rice. He punched his the- then girlfriend, made her unconscious and dragged her from the elevator in inhuman ways; so what is the big issue in it? As the media reports say, he is now married to his ‘victim’ Janay Palmer, even though there are records that he had had the most dangerous ‘punch’ delivered on her which many women consider a good ground to not to continue any relationship, leave marriage. I was going through Professor Mary Anne Franks’s Facebook posts regarding this. I, like many of her fans who follow her scholarly write-ups, at first thought that this was an issue of another celeb-scandal. But when I went through the media reports that Professor Franks shared and her comments on that, I felt shocked. One of the ‘comments’ that I read in her posts stated that Rice was taught to blow punches to knock down hardest man and also was taught to not to use these for anyone other than his opponents in sports or for self defence. What drew attention of the world was the cctv footage of the whole act and the actions that had been taken or should be taken against him. What drew my attention was, pleading from the sensible people including Dr.Franks to not to watch or share this video as this may add more humiliation to the woman who has been victimised. I agree. In India after the Badaun case, many started sharing the images; some for showing genuine concern and some for using it as a warning message for women who dare to break the obnoxious rules setup by some societies to restrict women’s rights  to speech, to life and to choose a partner of her own choice. I was one of the many who got requests from Facebook friends and acquaintances to share the images. My answer was my blog @ http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.in/2014/06/what-does-social-media-has-to-do-with.html . I had this realisation especially after I did my research on online victimisation of Andaman Jarawa women (the online version can be found @ http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/05/05/bjc.azu026.abstract?keytype=ref&ijkey=3XNPIViieFGse4G ). Why only Badaun case? In the internet one can find thousands of footages which show humiliation of women in various ways and I am not talking about pornographic sites only. There are videos of kicking, hitting, verbally abusing, dragging women or even unwanted and unwelcome touching. There are also footages of kissing or love-making which may have been uploaded either as a secret leak of cctv footage or as planned uploading of revenge porn materials.

The common behaviour that can be expected from the people in such cases is, they glance those audio-visual or still images to satisfy their own inquisitiveness and may also share them to show concern (both in positive as well as negative meaning) and may also add their own ‘comments’ to make the ‘items’ more enjoyable for the trolls. In our latest article “Revenge porn by teens: a socio-legal analysis”(International Annals of Criminology, 51(1-2),85-111), we had shown how revenge porn becomes an offensive material the same way. Many don’t understand that by contributing more ‘hits’ to these clippings they are actually contributing more towards the humiliation of the victim. I remember couple of years back there was this YouTube clipping which was doing rounds in the internet : of an angry young woman with a small child in her lap, hitting, punching and violently pulling the hair of another woman and the husband, who were ‘caught red handed’ having a extra marital affair. The abuser was not alone; she was accompanied by some of her women relatives who were also hurling abusive words to the ‘other woman’ and the husband. Whether this was an amateur ‘YouTube short movie’ or a genuine incidence recorded by an agitated relative of the wife whose husband was denying her the love and care for another woman, is unknown to me. But this video was instantly spread in the internet attracting hundreds of comments, for as well as against the ‘wife’. If this was a genuine video, it needs to be understood that this could have reduced the ‘wife’s’ chance to claim justice as the ‘other woman’ could win over her due to the physical as well as online humiliation she may have got. Due to the tremendous developments in the laws, especially in evidence laws in India, influenced by availability and genuineness of the   digital records and also the human habits of depending over the digital communication technology for positive as well as negative gains, the perception of the society and the criminal justice administration towards direct digital crimes and indirect (sometimes it may be non-voluntary as well) crimes have also changed. On the positive side, let us hope that soon the prosecution would also start including the liability of those who add more insults to the victim by ‘enjoying’ the visual images of victimisation. Unless people show concern by not seeing, commenting and spreading of such humiliating images, victims would continue to be victimised.

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. (2014), “What should we learn from the case of Ray Rice?13^th September,2014, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/