Growing cyber crimes need attention

The workshop on “Cyber Crimes Against Women” majorly focused on various kinds of cyber-crime and cyber trafficking and its remedies to avoid becoming a victim. Tripurana Venkataratnam, Chairperson, Telangana State Commission for Women, headed the workshop.

Social activist Sunitha Krishnan, who is working against trafficking of women, discussed about the cyber-crime and cyber assisted crime. She said that there are two levels of web that involves cyber-crime - dark web and surface web.

The crimes that happen in surface web are detected much faster than the dark web. The dark web gives room to cyber criminals for extreme women trafficking. She also advised the girls to be mindful while posting their selfies and other pictures on social media website like Facebook and Instagram.

“The cyber criminals are well-versed in analysing the personality and the psychology within no time after scrolling series of their posted pictures. The pictures feed the culprit with information to target the girl with fake account and pretend to be a girl as it is an easy way to trap.

They perform deep social engineering and study the girls’ mind and weakness in the series of chatting. There is an instance where the girl freely spoke to a boy who claimed to be a girl and initiated conversation explaining about her unimpressive body parts.

Over sometime, she had shown her nude picture on a video call for the person on the other side to judge her personality, when he asked. This video was later posted on few porn websites and was known after a long time when she started receiving calls from unknown people for a date.

The sad thing is that the girls do not even know that they became victims of cybercrime. They come to know long after when they hear or see their pictures have gone viral online, feeding the desires of porn watchers”, the social activist added.

Discussing about child trafficking, Sunitha Krishnan said that parents should be conscious and be wary of cyber criminals when they post their children’s pictures on any social websites. She shared a few cases that she dealt with.

Further, she advised women to check and recheck the information before posting along with the pictures. “Once the private videos and pictures find place online it keeps floating, and is very difficult to remove it from the internet world.” She also suggested to be alert enough to immediately register a complaint with the nearby police station and never let low self-esteem stop you from doing so. No action can be taken unless the complaint is registered,” adviced Sunitha.

Dr KVK Santhy, Assistant professor, Nalsar University of Law, said, “The growing menace against women should be treated legally with stringent laws. Not understanding tht relation between pornography and sexual violence is another cause for cyber trafficking.”

She also said that there should also be legal provisions against the cyber defamation. “The private bill to cut down on cyber-crimes against women should be introduced in the parliament”, she reiterated.