ARE YOU A VICTIM?

Let me start this blog for the CCVC with a complicated question…………...

Are you a victim?

In India majority of the internet users know that they are “victims” when they find their email / profile has been “hacked”, or credit card users find their bank account is leaking without their knowledge. Some however feel that they are victimised when they see that a known / unknown id is repeatedly sending mails to his/ her email id and that of her close acquaintances also. Thanks to the numerous online articles about the nature of the *popular* cyber crimes ………………..these victims suddenly understand that it is nothing but “stalking”. In fact I have felt that hacking is the most dangerous type of cyber offence that can happen to ordinary individual. Once a hacker cracks in, he gets numerous ways to “create” more offences. The hacked email id can be harbor of identity fraud, pornographic sites and even an elementary school for “baby hackers” as well. With the passing of each day a new type of internet offence is being discovered.

But online victimization does not end here.

I feel online victimization can best be compared with melted wax, which when poured in different “shapes” , becomes “wax dolls” of various VIP personalities which attract visitors from all over the world; or even “wax candles” which burn out with time giving new stock of wax to prepare another candle …….. may be of different shape. Say for example, stalking.

You enter a social networking website, make friends and then take part in various discussions. Suddenly you find you are having a long list of follows who start giving their opinions, some even going against you and expressing their own points of views. Some visit your profile to see who you are, some extend their friendships and some just peep in and go off. Then suddenly you get to see some of these new found friends coming over to your “virtual home “to have a tete –e tat with you. And suddenly all hell break loose when you and he / she differ with each other. Finally it turns out to be a verbal war and it even goes public. You feel restless and keep on looking at your mail box whether he / she has replied you again, whether he / she has posted anything against you in the forum board.

Do you think you are an ordinary net surfer now? No, you have become a VICTIM of flaming words and bully. Perhaps you did the same thing to your “friend” too and thus you instantly become an offender too. Some of your “visitors” now start to follow your virtual whereabouts regularly and suddenly you receive an urgent call from your real life friend/ relative that some one has sent “very disturbing stuff” from “your contact”. Slowly this net reaches your office where half of the people come to know what is your "second self ". Don’t be surprised if you get to hear that you play “not mentionable games” in the virtual world. You wonder who did it. And how did he/ she get to know your friends/ relatives? ahoy…. You have become a Victim of stalking now.

Hence the “how you become a victim” probably only your virtual destiny knows (well jokes apart). But before being termed as a “victim” think twice what could have been led you to become one.