WHEN MEN TURN VICTIMS AND WOMEN THE OFFENDERS

http://www.cybervictims.edu.tf/

Many times I get to see women complaining about harassments in the cyber space where the main offender is generally a man/group of men. How about thinking it in the opposite way?  Surprising? Well, not always… women too play parts of offenders to tease and harass men; however, the impact may not be that deeper like in cases of men harassing women, but it is neither “never happened before” case. While I was going through some newsletters, I came across several cases where women are booked for harassing men. Men also fall victims of cyber stalking or defamation or even bullying, hacking and economic crimes and the offender may not be men always.  But probably men do not care to report such incidences unless it is becoming “too much”. For example, women fans often become obsessed with male cine stars /tv actors/players and the truth “pen is mightier than the sword” still plays good when an obsessed female fan tries to reach her hero by hook or crook. Well, I pick up celebs just to give an example. I know many of you male readers are giving mischievous grins as you read this, but this is also a hard truth that cyber behaviors such as being an obsessive stalker or bully or using harsh language/ false statements  in the internet for defaming  some one is very much common for both men and women. Well, the law remains the same when the victim cries for justice and blind towards pleas like “I am woman, spare with me” while awarding the sentence. Hence men and women both should be careful for using internet. Gentlemen, do not always get carried  away by ladies, better have a safe distance ……..Ladies, do not push yourselves towards the extreme steps of becoming ‘accused’….remember you set an example to others.

A Note to readers: Please do not violate the copyright issues  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. (March 2010), “When men turn victims  and women the offenders”, March 2010, published in http://cybervictims.blogspot.com

First conference of SASCV

http://www.cybervictims.edu.tf/

With immense pride, it is announced that South Asian Society for Criminology and Victimology is going to have its first international conference at Jaipur, India.Centre For Cyber Victimisation (CCVC) is one the proud knowledge partners of SASCV. Students, academicians, professionals ...........all are welcome to  participate in the conference. Please visit   http://www.sascv.org/conf2011/ for more informations.Please note, you can present your paper/s on any one of the  themes which are announced in the website and not necessarily cyber crime alone.The  papers would be selected after a high level peer review and you may even get a chance to publish your paper in the "International journal of criminal justice sciences" ( Please visit http://www.sascv.org/ for more informations). 


Debarati

Centre for Cyber Victim Counseling (CCVC): A committed organization to help Cyber Crime Victims

It had been eight long months since we started Centre for “Cyber Victims Counseling” (CCVC). http://www.cybervictims.edu.tf/ felt this is the right time to write a few words about this brain child of ours……me and my husband. We are basically a “Trust”, an all voluntary not for profit NGO with social service agenda, working towards betterment of cyber space. Our primary concern is Indian cyber space. Being a lawyer myself, I felt this is the best way I could contribute to my country and countrymen. Indian cyber space has become more secured than before due to several organizations and individuals who are working on cyber crime issues since couple of years. On behalf of CCVC, we are proud to follow their footsteps. 


When we conceived the idea of CCVC, I never knew there would be so many responses. Many contacted us for different sorts of help and guidance from within the country as well as outside the country. We in CCVC are thankful to all of you who consider us “worthy friends” to tell your problems. While we were building CCVC, we received many criticisms too. We consider them as treasures in disguise. Feedbacks, guidance and criticisms make CCVC stronger to help the victims, individuals, students and the researchers as well. We are growing in handling each experience of yours. I take this opportunity to thank Jayne Hitchcock, whom I consider as my mentor. I got to learn basic cyber ethics from her. WHOA and Hitchcock were our “motivators” behind starting CCVC. 


I know, healing a patient with physical pain is a tough job. But healing a victim of cyber attack is neither an easy task. The pain one goes through remains for long, some times for life. Besides providing counseling to cyber crime victims, what satisfies me more is the blogs I run as a part of CCVC’s activities. These blogs creates awareness about cyber crimes and victimisation. I would be extremely happy to help all who need to know about cyber crime and laws . In the CCVC, we are planning for more activities in the coming months. Do keep an eye on CCVC’c blogs @ http://cybervictims.blogspot.com/ and http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/ to know about our further plans and activities.

A tale of few cities: Cyber harassments and reactions of the police authorities

http://www.cybervictims.edu.tf/


No, I am not going to re-run the famous story, but I adopted the “legendary” title with a word replaced by mine, to tell my readers a rather pathetic story of cyber crime victims globally.
When a man or a woman is hit by an offender in the cyber space, the first common reaction is to “report” the incidence to one’s family or trusted friends. The post mortem of the offence begins when the effect of the harm seems to be very deep and hurtening………..and what are these situations? Mine , as well as my other friends’ (who are cyber crime experts) experiences say, that these situations include severe online bullying, stalking, impersonating and creation of fake porno-profiles, hacking ( well, by hacking I don’t mean to include official -website hacking, but hacking of personal email id), morphing , stealing and distributing personal informations ( again , not only economic , but *personal* as well) and off course , offline promotion of the online offences. Well, these are but a few examples of vast categories of offences that target ordinary individuals.
The next step of the aftermath of the offences generally results in encouraging the victim to contact the police to prevent further escalation of the victimization. In many cases, here begins the next episode of the victimization of the already victims. Even though many metro cities of developed as well as developing countries, do have police –offices equipped with efficient men and machines to deal with cyber offences, many easily approachable neighborhood police stations do not have such facilities. The question which many of you would ask is, why should an ordinary police station be approached when there are cyber police stations in the city? Hey, come on , if you stay in Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu and you get to see a “phishing incidence” which took a chunk of your bank balance ; or if you stay in Malda , West Bengal, and you find out a dirty Orkut /facebook profile of yours, you may straightaway enter the local police station to lodge the complaint . You ask “why”? And the answer could be :
a. you do not have a separate cyber police cell in your own city;
b. you may have lodged an online complaint , but you have not received a “quick response” from the main cyber crime cell of your state. In between, the harasser has gone one step ahead to publicize you in worst manners;
c. You do not know the difference between ordinary police stations and cyber crime cells.
Further, even if the cyber harassment has occurred in the main metro city which boasts of a cyber crime cell, the victim may run from pillar to post to lodge the complaint as the jurisdiction- issue will insist that you first contact the local police station for reporting the harassment.
Saddening for a country which has millions of internet users ..isnt it? But wait.. don’t blame “Indian system”. You may get to see these incidences in other parts of the world too.

To give a few examples …..
i. A male victim of cyber harassment goes to the local police station in the greater part of Calcutta; he insists that his complaint must be registered as it has been ‘tagged” as a “criminal offence” in the Information Technology law. The officer in charge at first turns a deaf ear to his pleadings , and then suddenly realizes the characteristics of the offence is a bit difference from the regular offences he is dealing every day. He asks the victim to come back a day later for further discussion.. Note, he didn’t register any case.
ii. A female victim of cyber harassment in the northern part of India, got so disturbed by the nonchalant attitude of the local police, that she decided to never to face the police again.
iii. In an interior part of Southern England, a middle aged woman reports to the police about ongoing severe bully by some of her ‘unwanted virtual visitors”. When the local police wants to check out those public bullying messages, they were perplexed to see no “evidence”, ( it is obvious that after the harassers came to know that the woman is going to the police, they had removed the thread for the time being) .The police asked the woman “ do you believe in ghosts?”
iv. An American internet user got a life time suggestion from the police of her area: ‘stay awake and don’t dream’….
Do these incidents look similar to one of your own real life experiences? Well, possibility can not be ruled out. These distressing incidences run in almost every country even if they boast of well drafted internet security laws. I find a very simple reason behind this upsetting trend: the local police stations still treat internet crimes and harassment as one among the regular harassment crimes; the officials need to be well trained to handle cyber harassments; and over all, both the parties (the one who is complaining and the one who is receiving the complaint) must give a patient hearing to each other. Last but not the least, the victim must remember that “prevention is always better than cure”. Hence do not forget the wise men’s warnings before you depart with your informations in the internet.
Have a safe journey in the cyber space.


A note from the writer: The views expressed in this blog are exclusively mine. Some of the incidents depicted here are real life experiences of my friends'(who preferred to be anonymous) , who gave their kind permission to publish the experiences for spreading general awareness. I do not mean to hurt any officials. But still then, if any officer of the Police department of any country is hurt by this blog, I deeply apologise. It is not intentional and I have practised my fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression.To end with, I sincerely thank Jai, my husband, and my friends in the cyber crime-management field,Jayne, President of WHOA (www.haltabuse.org),Neelabh, Sanjay,"Cyber Cop"...... to name a few of them, who spoke about their own perceptions with me in friendly conversations as well as in their blogs and write ups.
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AN APPEAL TO ALL

http://www.cybervictims.edu.tf/

WE AT CCVC HAVE STARTED 2010 WITH A CAUSE.THE POPULAR SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITE ORKUT.COM IS BEING USED BY MANY TO CREATE FAKE PROFILES AND COMMUNITIES WHICH ARE DEFAMING , DEMEANING AND SOME TIMES CARRIES SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENTS. THIS PARTICULAR ISSUE IS NOT RESPONDED WELL BY ORKUT. AS PER THE INDIAN LEGAL STANDARD, SUCH PROFILES AND COMMUNITIES ARE ILLEGAL. BUT UNFORTUNATELY SINCE ORKUT IS GUIDED NOT BY INDIAN LAWS BUT BY UNIVERSAL POLICY GUIDELINES OF ITS OWN (WHICH IS MADE ON THE BASIS OF US FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND EXPRESSION), MANY TIMES INNOCENT VICTIMS HAVE BEEN REFUSED ANY POSITIVE HELP. HENCE WE HAVE FILED AN ONLINE PETITION. THE URL IS http://www.petitiononline.com/ccvc123/petition.html. IF U HAPPEN TO READ THIS BLOG, PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION BOTH IN THIS LINK AS WELL AS IN CCVC'S WEBSITE. WE ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR KIND RESPONSE.
THANK U
DEBARATI
JAISHANKAR

FOOLING THE WISEMEN: CYBER FRAUDS ON ACADEMICS

http://www.cybervictims.edu.tf/

Cyber media has become a good platform to do varieties of business including money laundering from innocent victims. We all know about the Nigerian phishing scams: a superb hi-tech way to get easy money by duping innocent people who take such false promises of sharing “blocked account” of huge sum of a dead account holder as true as Veda and get duped themselves. Well, I understand these are ignorant people who have more greed to get easy money than the understanding and observation power of these nasty cyber traps. But what can you say when these brilliant crooks nab the wise men, the professors, researchers or graduate students?  The finest way to fool these wise men is to allure them to publish their research papers, be key note speakers or present their works in front of international academic communities. There is no hassle for peer review of the articles or risk of  being rejected due to “low standard” of the work ; the organization name looks very genuine and the committee chair man always carries a smart “Dr.” in front of his name . Such overnight Ph.d holders sometimes create a perfect geographical map to show the exact venue, put up pictures of their institutions, very serious classrooms and a brochure of their institution. All “the wise men” have to do is, pay through their credit cards or online transfer modes to get their seat confirmed and papers published. However, the story doesn’t have a happy ending for the “wise men”, but definitely for those self claimed chairpersons and secretaries of “made up” academic institutions who, after receiving a good sum suddenly disappear from the world.  The “participators” begin endless wait to receive the acknowledgment note and finally only when the due date arrives they understand the reality.  

There can never be a bigger mockery than this, of the hard work for recognition of one’s academic intelligence. I have seen bright people from the academic world including the Engineering, Medicine or science departments to be duped like this. Suddenly the anger and frustration of these poor souls gets diverted towards the law and justice machinery and the reporting authorities, who in many cases fail to understand how the intelligent, wise people like the professors, senior students and even some professionals can fall in these pitches.  The nature of the crime remains bizarre; the distraught victim makes the whole case more confused by self analysis of the whole situation (which often turns out to be a perfect motivation for deep depression) and the local police station (who can often be ill equipped to understand as well as deal with such cases), fails to balm the pain of the victims due to these confused state of affairs. Well, truly speaking, the victim finally has to be the looser as he not only looses his money but also precious result of the hard brain work. What could be more painful than this?    

But the question which larks in our mind is can we prevent such crimes?   

On a casual conversation with Jayne Hitchcock, President WHOA ( www.haltabuse.org) , I felt the victim could very well prevent such “phishing” victimsation if he / she controlled his /her greed to get “bad money” in an apparent good and easy way. In my opinion, same advice  goes for victims of academic –cyber fraud. I being a researcher myself, can understand a rule or two for academic publications which I prefer to share here.

·        Give your research paper for peer reviewed journals for publication.

·        Check the website of the journal thoroughly.

·        Check out the past issues, volume numbers and the archive.

·        These journals will periodically call for papers submission.

·        Certain institutions or departments who run journals belong to good academic institutions.

·        Generally these journals or even book editors do not ask for payment from the contributors. They call for papers and it is peer reviewed. 

·        If you get to see any call for seminar or conference by any organization, other than well established renowned ones    , you must go for a thorough scrutiny of the organization, website and even the venue.

·        Never give your credit card numbers or even bank account informations.

·        Consult other fellow academicians about the credential of the said organization if you suspect it may not be genuine.

·        However, unfortunately if you get duped, immediately register a case with the local cyber crime police branch. Do not try to police the whole affair yourself.

·        Finally, be wise, observe the current state of cyber crime affairs and prevent such sorts of nasty money making business.  

BEWARE OF VOYEURISM : THE LAWYER SPEAKS

http://www.cybervictims.edu.tf/

 I am doing a survey on my friends on their cyber awareness. The survey has not yet completed but I got to see many of them came across pornographic sites accidentally or intentionally ...............well, our Indian law speaks nothing about viewing pornographic sites AT YOUR OWN WISHES; but many countries including the US feel that it is a RIGHT to check some pornographic images in your own PC if you are an adult and if you are not distributing it or harming anyone. 

But imagine if you get to see your own images in some pornographic sites ? The face of the nude "model" who is taking bath under a shower or the one who is changing her lingerie and that apparently looks like a "change room" in a garment shop; or of a sexy bikini suited "model" whose  private parts are *accidentally* showing ; or even a sleeping beauty whose breasts are showing ...................does it looks like  you? YES IT COULD BE YOU when you are photographed by a spy cam and the pictures are uploaded in pornographic sites. The technology has made it possible to watch any beautiful thing to view in its ugliest , abused form .......You just can't help it.. 

But wait.. now the law is with you. You may not feel like visiting the lawyer or the police  immediately after getting to see these "not so funny" staffs ,but you better know your rights. The amended Indian informations technology Act ( 2008) in section 66E do speak about not only securing your privacy in the internet , but also prevention of voyeurism .The Indian penal Code was a silent guard of the Indian cyber space, as many of its provisions were being stretched to cover these sorts of offences which were very new to Indian cyber space users.But now voyeurism which includes  capturing images of  private parts of individuals and distributing them in the cyber space, has got a legal tag as a  criminal offence.

Voila .... Indian laws are now at par with other domestic cyber laws to protect such attrocious works in the internet . But in reality this particular provision may need more nurturing to serve the victims.Many government  reporting agencies do feel that these new laws are half baked. This is true to a certian extent. A law should not be created just to tag an action as an ofence , but to balm the victim's pain and teach the wrong doer with strict punishment. .