Bhubaneswar: The increased penetration of internet into the state and the rising popularity of social media have also revealed a darker side of the usage of the internet which often makes the netizens vulnerable to cybercrimes.
In the past few years there had been an increase in cases of fraudsters misusing cyberspace for their vested interests.
Many digitally non-secured social media users, mainly girls, find their fake ids created on social media by using their pictures uploaded on their social sites. In a clear case of digital identity theft, several of their pictures are sometimes used to create other social media accounts to either defame them or for other reasons.
In extreme cases, many such social media users find their private pictures onto porn websites, adding trauma to the victims. In a similar hi-profile case in the state capital, a social worker, Linkan Subudhi, from the state found her photo uploaded on a porn site besides finding many other fake Facebook accounts on her name.
She now says that people need to digitally secure their social media accounts while the state government also needs to have some robust mechanism in place where a fraudster cannot steal the digital identity of a person illegally for wrong reasons.
Batting for such a body she said, “There should be an entity in each state which can ensure the digital privacy of the citizens to prevent misuse of someone’s digital identity. It needs to keep a tap on the cyber activities to keep such cases at bay. Internet freedom makes it easy to defame a woman with such activities. Such activities could be monitored and curbed timely,” she said.
Experts claim by ensuring some safety measures, misuse of one’s digital identity could be stopped. Dinesh Mohanty, a cyber expert said, “One can, on regular intervals, type their names on a search engine like Google to check if their private photos are available anywhere. In case it shows availability on sites where you have not uploaded them, the matter should be immediately taken care of.”
He also added, “One can also report such websites to Google and illegal usage of your private photos. The search engines, when they find unauthorized usage, also come in aid to get it deleted from such places whenever possible. Social media users also need to change the privacy settings of their photos to reduce chance of misuse of their photos.”
Legal experts claim that such acts can put the culprits behind bars for their actions.
Shankar Prasad Pani, a lawyer from the city said, “Several provisions either under the Information Technology Act or under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) deals with several such cybercrimes. Laws forbid capturing, publishing or transmitting ‘the image of a private area of any person without his or her consent. They can also be booked under defamation cases under section 500 and 506 of IPC. Based on the crime, the fraudsters can be punished upto 5 years of jail term and `2 lakh as penalty.”
Manish Kumar, OP