PUNE, INDIA: It was one of those normal evenings when Parmeet Kaur (name changed), a software engineer in Chennai, logged on to Orkut to unwind from work and catch up with friends.

But one and a half minutes later, the evening turned shocking and miserable for her. What she saw was a cheeky scrap and forward to a profile that had her semi-nude photo in another girl's profile, tagged as her sister who flagged joint hints of intimate advances and indecent invites.

Parmeet's photo had been brazenly and easily tampered with. After many weeks of tension and repeated requests to Orkut, the ID was removed. She vowed never to be vulnerable again.

Victims like Parmeet, are not one-off. They belong to the new breed of cautious Orkuters who either have said goodbye to networking or have got extremely careful with their communities and photographs.

This February, the father of a South Delhi schoolgirl suffered from the fake profile of his daughter posted on Orkut that not only described the teenager as a 'sex teacher', but also contained obscene photographs and her contact details. He lodged a complaint with the Cyber Cell of the Delhi Police's Economic Offences after his family started receiving calls following the appearance of the fake profile.

Two men even approached the girl's door claiming she had invited them through the Internet for discreet intimate relationship.

There has been a spurt in Orkut-related obscenity cases in various parts of India like Bangalore this year. Cases of misuse on Orkut have been reported widely. In Bangalore, there have been eight to ten Orkut-related complaints concerning pictures of young girls that have been posted on communities with lewd allusions and a listing of the victims' mobile numbers.

"Yes, such cases are increasingly visible," says a woman Orkut user.

Padmini V, another user tells that one cannot be reckless with personal information and photos in the wake of such incidents. "Females, specially, should be watchful and avoid networking that is at the cost of risks."

Another Orkuter, a 23-year-old girl student, admitted the gravity of this trend and remarked:" It's good that I haven't posted a JPEG picture so far. I have also refrained from creating a photo album and have never posted an individual picture. All my pictures are group photographs."

Bold and bawdy

Obscenity at social networking sites like Orkut is not a new phenomenon. Sixty-five to 70 per cent of the traffic on the Net is driven by pornography. Sushant Mahapatra IPS, Additional Director General of Police, Economic Offences (COD), Karnataka, says that in 2006, the cyber cell has received 188 cases with 124 enquiries being completed.

"We receive complaints every day and many cases are filed. Cases relating to Internet banking frauds rank first and next to follow are pornography, defaming cases (defamatory profiles on net), harassment and obscene messages."

As Talvinder Dogra, a manager in one of the dotcoms and an avid Orkut user shares, "Nude photographs are rife on Orkut. It is not rare when one clicks on a request and enters the given page only to be greeted with a flood of indecent photos. It causes a lot of irritation for users who come on Orkut for plain and decent catching up with friends. Ignoring and reporting such cases is the only way out."

While till yester-months, it were the likes of Aishwarya Rai, Ayesha Takia and Priyanka Chopra whose photographs were abused and posted obscenely, it is now the lesser-mortals and common Orkut users who are at the receiving end. Hardik M, a student in the Master's degree of Computer Science at Symbiosis says, "What is more upsetting is that often it is not strangers but ex-boyfriends or jilted lovers who play villains with a female's photo on Orkut and derive some weird, nefarious pleasure out of it."

In fact, some time back, the Kolkata police arrested jilted lovers who had posted obscene profiles of three girls they dated on an Orkut community site.

It's growing. Irresponsible users, who ignore Orkut’s request to keep it beautiful, are increasingly concocting phony (and going by the content, semi-porn). While bogus Ids are not a new sight for any Orkuter, what's disturbing is that this time around, these shamsters are pasting photos of innocent Orkut users.

A picture speaks a thousand words

Photo artist experts opine that if your photograph is on Net, it is always vulnerable. Specially, with formats like .jpeg, .epf, .pdf and .tif. As Swapnil Kumbhar, a senior design executive at a media concern, explains, "It just takes a while to save and bring the image on Photoshop. With options like cutout, merge, brush, it is very easy to paste a face over some one else's body. But tampering with .gif formats takes a while and effort."

Anil Cherukonath, another graphic expert and a creative supervisor at an ad agency in Bangalore, echoes the same view. "Photo-cropping for an expert takes just five to ten minutes. No matter what the kind of image is, image retouching can be easily done in Photoshop. And there are no common locking or freezing options that can protect one's photo technically. Hence, many people have simply resorted to stop using Orkut."

But then, there are many other spaces where photos are posted on Net. Photos, in fact, are the easiest and fastest way to locate and connect with one's friends, which is one of the prime reasons behind Orkut's popularity. The same applies to matrimony sites where having a photograph adds to faster and better matches.

Is there a security threat there also?

Uday Zokarkar, business head for BharatMatrimony, admits that the possibility of misuse of snaps on Net cannot be ruled out. "We have, however, put in features like photo-protect option and other privacy settings to ensure all possible security measures. Normally the digital photos are cleaned and posted on the site and are not readily downloadable like other sites."

But he concedes that saving the entire screen and then cropping can still take photos to wrong hands.

Screen capturing is the ready option for abusers and once your photograph is up on the Net, it is vulnerable and there for good, feels Pradeep Akkunoor, director, India Forensic Consultancy. Most of the times, it is the user's recklessness to blame too.

He adds. "If you forget to log out properly and walk out heedlessly from a Cyber Café, chances are rife that the next user on your seat will be automatically taken to your page on Orkut and then there is no stopping him. Many youngsters abuse such opportunities."

Fighting back

"Don't panic," is the advice Akkunoor gives. "If your ID has been tampered with, first go to Google and change your password there, since that is the common doorway for all Google sites."

The best way, in fact, is to play safe. The good news is that the responsible and nimble specie of Orkut users in India have already started acting against their wicked counterparts. Chain messages are alerting friends and community members about this trend.

This new wave of concern is not new to Orkut, an online community founded by Orkut Büyükkökten that was eponymously started in 2004 and has gathered phenomenal popularity in India (estimated to be 14.82 per cent of Orkut users lately).

Incidentally, in Brazil, where Orkut has the major global slice of popularity (around 55.81 per cent), the site has faced demands from the government to help identify users who encourage racism, pedophilia and homophobia.

The Brazilian authorities are particularly interested in Internet protocol addresses with time and date stamps that can help trace a specific user. Registration information Google could provide includes names and e-mail addresses. Indian authorities may also follow the line to trace users responsible for creating indecent nuisance at the site.

In India, Section 67 of the IT Act provides that publishing of information that is obscene in the electronic media is amenable for imprisonment for a term or extended to five years and with fine which may extend to Rs 1 lakh.

The cases that come under the IT Act Section 67 are punished accordingly. But law is not fully potent to deal with the malaise. Many cases are treated as petitions and are settled between the parties concerned. As Mahapatra admits, "Due to servers being located outside the country and lack of stringent laws, it is tough to curb the increasing cyber crime. This vulnerability did not exist in India earlier. Normally, the convict would be let off with a warning."

He stresses that there is a need for strong laws on cyber crime. For example, a proposal has been submitted to the Parliamentary Committee to amend the current IT Act to introduce stringent provisions against child pornography, and sexual exploitation of minors.

As he adds, it's time the central government should find out ways and best practices and bring out legislation on the same without sacrificing the benefits of Internet.

Orkut home page meanwhile claims that they have, in response to many such concerns raised in the recent past, have created tools to make reviews effective. It also professes to have increased the support staff that handles user-reported cases of abuse and illegal content by 1,400 per cent.

Though, there are no accessible Orkut contacts in India that can be reached for comment, the site claims that the networking portal is making efforts to tackle the issue. It says, "We regret any instance when our users see illegal or offensive content on Orkut. Since April alone, we've seen a 10x increase in how quickly we review and respond to user-reported instances of illegal or inappropriate content, and we continue to work on improving these tools and building new ones."

Orkut in its policy statement urges communities to take their share of responsibility. The site reads: "For those who manage communities, our new multiple moderator support enables to help you manage your community by removing inappropriate topics, messages, and events, and accepting, declining, banning and/or removing individual members and posts that violate your particular community's standards."

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Last update : 23-11-2007 10:23