What Every Woman Should Know About Orkut

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER
 

In the late 2006 when I joined Orkut on the pursuance of a very close friend of mine, I found this particular site as an open gallery to show case pictures, and friend’s comments. Nonetheless, I found out very good  “communities” to discuss about varieties of affairs too. But in 2006 /7 the security of the data fed in the social networking sites was very poor compared to today’s security measures taken by these Social networking sites. As such, I had many “visitors” who wanted to befriend me in weird types. No doubt, those who have been using Orkut since then must have experienced similar things. But the irony is, in 2011 also, women have to experience similar  bad encounters in Orkut. Nonetheless, Orkut has developed quite a few security measures for the users, but many of the users may remain oblivious of them. Hence, when in Orkut, check the followings:

1. To protect your wall from being viewed by others including your friends, use the new version of Orkut. You may notice a “lock” sign after each post that is made by you. That is the privacy sign. Once you click “lock”, the communication would be visible to you and only the person to whom you have communicated.
2. Recheck your privacy settings. Do not let others “find” you from the web. You can control this by reediting your privacy set up.
3. If you wish to show your pictures to the world, make sure that you do not exhibit your private pictures. Create separate album for the public and separate album for your friends only.
4. Use pseudo names if you need to protect your identity .
5. Do not let others to handle your account.
6. In your favorite community, use the words carefully. Remember, provoked men and women may see you as a perpetual ‘nuisance’.
7. There will be men and women who may have ‘adult contents’ in their profiles. Do not try to befriend them to know why they have created such profiles unless you are seriously interested to fall in the trap. You may see requests from these profiles to befriend you. Besides saying “No”, you must also ignore and block them so that they do not disturb you in future. The profiles pages of these profiles will show you the options to ignore /block them on the left hand side.
8. If you see your profile has been hacked or your pictures had been misused, do not try to hack the faulty profiles. Remember, it may not serve any purpose and it will anger the mischief monger more.

Happy Orkutting.

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. (2011), “What every woman should know about Orkut ”, 6^th May,2011, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/

PROMISES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

In this digi-courtship era, the worst nightmare one may expect is to break the promises for eternal love. But this is what every digi-lover must be prepared for. There are umpteen numbers of ‘love-windows’ ; for example, the SMSs, mobile phone  calls, internet chat options like the Yahoo chat messengers, Gtalk, etc to name a few. Easy accessibility to the private contact numbers and  the usage of proper language, be what vernacular medium it may, and enchanting human voice( in cases of audio chat options) could make the trick. And the human mind…………………………..how easily it can be duped.. Not very long ago I read news clipping in one of the regional newspapers that one person attempted to commit suicide when he understood that he can’t really go ahead with this “platonic” relationship. True, man or woman ………both can be duped by beautiful communicative, persuasive languages. However,  not to forget, sometimes some clever ‘romeos’ and even ‘juliets’ also provide good pictures which may or may not be their own. The heavenly feeling of being in love breaks when one partner dumps another for no valid reasons.

I had once read a very good scholarly article by Monica Whitty on online romance and cheating. Ironically, we Indians used to think that this happens only in the US. But look at the reality now, almost half of my readers in India would have experienced such false cupid attacks either directly or indirectly. In India, we women especially, can’t take this sudden hollowness in the relationship as strongly as our counterparts in the western countries may do. The feeling of being in love is the most sacred and purest feeling. Our mythology tells how Meera and Andal loved Krishna. None could really enjoy his company as his consort Radha did. But these two women are worshipped because of their unconditional pure love to some one whom they believed to be the truth of their lives. I find  digi-love affairs quite the same as that of Meera’s love for Krishna. The lover feels heavenly even if she has not seen the partner or she could not enjoy his physical company ……….. but with one big difference… Lord Krishna kept his promises to make his love immortal; the digi-age lovers break their promises to make the immortal feeling very much mortal. The hard and bitter truth is, the heavenly feeling has been reduced to merely earthly feeling when communication was made much easier through digital technologies. When in a stressed office atmosphere, a good female voice could really feel like a splash of fresh cool breeze.. This is vice versa for women walking on tight ropes as well. We humans tend to fall on unknown shoulders when we need to express our anxiety, expectations etc.In these circumstances, I have noticed that men and women often feel like running away from the existing relationships , perhaps to find some one new, who had never heard about them. Problem begins here. When such communications turn to lovy dovy chats, one may obviously feel that a peculiar feeling of trust is being born every time he/she talks with this stranger. In women this feeling could be stronger. But when this trust suddenly evaporates, it hurts; for, there are so many new ways to suddenly close the windows…. The man on the opposite side may change his SIM to avoid the calls, may change his virtual identity, and may even treat the duped woman ghastly by shattering her image in front of the whole world.   Well, known devils are better than unknown ones, and this maxim stands true in the digi-age, because law can probably compensate for the broken promises, but the broken heart takes it very long to understand that promises in this digi –age are not to be kept.

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. (2011), “Promises are made to be broken”, 6^th May,2011, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/

  

Grooming the woman for bad

CYBER CRIME AGAINST WOMEN BY DEBARATI HALDER

Grooming the adult women had remained a much unrecognized trend of unethical cyber conduct. Often it is thought that it is the children who can be groomed for the purpose of cyber pornography. I defy such theories, for I have experienced myself how a new internet user can be groomed for  evil purposes. It is particularly very disturbing especially when the user is a woman and who needs emotional supports from outside her own family. The grooming sessions can take place in the public or even in private chat rooms, personal walls or scrapbooks of social networking sties like Orkut, Facebook etc, message boxes and even emails. The typical grooming lesson starts with warm friendly conversations between the harasser and the victim. the groomer may slowly overpower the victim to obey the ‘orders’ such as posting personal pictures, personal informations including financial informations etc; and  to restrain  her from discussing about her internet activities with her immediate family members like her husband, children and/or friends and relatives etc . The victim then becomes confident about her relationship with the groomer and may not accept any resilience as such when she is restricted from using the internet for reaching the groomer.

The grooming session may end when the victim is finally ‘exhibited’ in the internet in a very derogatory form and the perpetrator starts search for another ‘fresh prey’.

True, online grooming of the modern adult women is not an easy task……………..But I can neither accept the fact that these women who may be well educated, can not be groomed. I am using internet for several years for now and I have come across several women who come to internet with a crave to have friends , a good listener (read ‘reader’) of their every day routine of  juggling between husband, children and may be professional work. Home makers especially take internet as a real window to the outside world when their domestic chores are over and husband and children leave home for office and school college purposes. Mostly their status message in their networking profiles are construed as green signals for the groomers.

But do remember, adult female victims of online grooming may never get a favorable position when it comes to comparison between child victims of online grooming and adult victims of online grooming. The obvious reason lies with the level of maturity of the victims. Hence, it is best to be aware of the malpractices in the internet………….. ‘do not talk with strangers’ still stands good for adults especially when the stranger suddenly wants to make one more confident by his warm soothing words.

Wishing all women users a very happy women’s day

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. (2011), “Grooming the woman for bad

”, 8^th February,2011, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/