Wednesday, October 12, 2011

A CASE ON CYBERSTALKING


Mithula 
II B.Com(MM)

                 A person called Lauren was friendly with a girl called Susan. They got into a huge fight and stopped being friends and even his group of friends did not talk to him and started getting weird awful messages and a set of E-mails from people he has not known before mentioning thing about even his personal life. it did not stop at this someone gave messages about him in the school notice board and asked the school authorities to shut it .there was also a blog set up with photos in his name and other things about him. Then he started getting text messages saying ’Why don’t you die’, I hate you’ this lead to the interference of police into the matter and knew that the message was sent to all other friends of his(cyber defamation).this mishap was mainly due to letting out of confidential information about his password and username which might otherwise in case of aggressive and egoistic ones turn out to be a total disaster(here Susan). 


CYBER DEFAMATION 

      This occurs when defamation takes place with the help of computers and or the Internet e.g. someone published defamatory matter about someone on a websites or sends e-mail containing defamatory information to all of that person’s friends. 

CYBER BULLYING: A CASE STUDY:SARAH 

         Here harmful messages and images can be communicated to a much larger audience. Sarah is a school student in a brand new school and to her delight she made friends with people in the class. Here came the strange sequence of events where at class Sarah was laughed at by other students in the recess but she left the place to her classroom to her utter embarrassment. She had do some research report for school and so logged on to the net to check her mails and there was one email from a person that she did not recognize, but she opened the email anyway. Inside the email, was an embarrassing picture of Sarah in the lunchroom eating. Immediately, Sarah realized that this picture was the reason that all the students had been laughing at her when she arrived at school that day. Another student must have taken this picture in the lunchroom at school and sent it to everyone in her class. Sara was alarmed and began to cry. She thought that everyone in school really liked her, and she did not know of anyone who would do this to her. Sara immediately deleted the email and did not tell anyone about the email. 

      As the weeks passed, the incidents escalated. Sara received more and more embarrassing and sometimes even threatening emails from the person. As Sara did the first time, she deleted each and every one. One day Sara even received an email that contained a link to a website. To Sara’s horror, the website was about her and contained many upsetting pictures of her as well as threats and derogatory comments aimed at her. Sara was too humiliated to tell her parents even though her parents encouraged her to talk about her problems. Sara’s teachers even noticed that she had begun to fall behind in school and seemed to be very depressed. Like her parents, Sara’s teachers do not have clue to what is really going on. 

    The term “cyberbullying” is being applied to a wide range of hurtful situations, including interpersonal conflicts and “digital drama,” as well as situations that meet the traditional definition of bullying where more powerful young people target those with less power. 

Digital aggression may include: 
• Flaming - online “fights” between aggressors with equivalent strength. 
• Harassment - repeatedly sending offensive and insulting messages. 
• Denigration - sending or posting cruel gossip or rumors about a person to others. 
• Exclusion - intentionally excluding someone from an online group. 
• Impersonation - appearing to be someone to make that person look bad. 
• Outing - publicly sharing someone’s embarrassing information or images that they had send privately online. 
• Trickery - tricking someone into revealing secrets or embarrassing information, this is then shared. 
• Cyberstalking - engaging in online activities that make a person afraid for her or her safety. 

STEPS TO CYBER SAFETY 

In computers: 
· Use the latest security software, browsers and operating system 
· Turn on automatic updating in the security softwares if it provides for the same. 
· Protect all devices connected to internet like smartpones, gaming systems and other web enabled services all need protection from viruses, malwares. 
· USBs and other internet connected devices should be scanned. 

In case of personal information: 
· Make secure your account passwords through verification from the service provider 
· Combine capital and lower case letters with numbers and symbols 
· Separate passwords for separate account help to thwart cyber criminals 
· Chalk your password down in paper in a place away from your computer for a safer side. 
· Set privacy and security settings in websites for better information sharing also limiting the number of people of information sharing 
· Never leave your laptop unattended even for a minute 

Connect with care 
· Links in email, tweets, posts, and online advertising are often the way cybercriminals compromise your computer. Suspicious ones, even if the source is known, it’s best to delete or if appropriate, mark as junk email. 
· Get savvy about Wi-Fi hotspots: Limit the type of business you conduct and adjust the security settings on your device to limit who can access your machine. 
· Protect your $: When banking and shopping, ensure that the sites is security enabled. Look for web addresses with “https://” or “shttp://”, which means the site takes extra measures to help secure your information. “Http://” is not secure. 

Be web wise 
· Check trusted websites for safety information 
· Think before you act: Be wary of communications that implores you to act immediately, offers something that sounds too good to be true, or asks for personal information. 
· Back it up: Protect your valuable work, music, photos, and other digital information by makingan electronic copy and storing it safely.

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