INTRODUCTION
“Cyber bullies can hide behind a mask of anonymity online, and do not need direct physical access to their victims to do unimaginable harm.” — Anna Maria Chavez
T he term cyber is a prefix which denotes a relationship with IT (information and technology), in other words, anything related to computers such internets, cloud storage, etc. falls under the category of cyber. Whereas the term crime refers to an illegal act which causes harm either to person physically, mentally or in any other way; or it harms the reputation of an individual. When these two terms cyber and crime meets and forms a single term “cybercrime” it is deadliest combination. Now-a-days cybercrime is the most reported crime in the country and we often see that not only teenagers but people of almost all age groups are present and connected on social media. People usually use social media to share their pictures, videos, thoughts, wishes, etc. with the friends staying far away and to get in touch with their friends with whom they have lost their touch years back and this is the purpose for which it is meant. But the people with evil mind anyhow manage to find that how they can misuse it and do the mischief. The people who either put spam comments or comments defaming others on social media or create fake accounts or follows any person or texts any person uselessly for the purpose of fun, but they seriously don’t know that they are committing serious crimes and can be prosecuted and punished under either the Indian Penal Code, 1860; or the Criminal Procedure Code, or; the Information Technology Act, 2000; or under any other law as per circumstances and facts of the case.
SOCIAL MEDIA DEFAMATION
For any person or any organization, his/her reputation is utmost important as an individual or an organization is recognized after its name or goodwill only, but if that goodwill or name only gets spoiled then the value of that thing often falls, trust of people gets migrated and many such things happens. For example if we think of clothing brand, then suddenly names like Adidas, SuperDry, Wrangler starts coming to our minds; if we think of mobile brand, then names like Apple, OnePlus, Xiaomi, etc. starts flashing into our minds, why is it so? This is because they have very good reputation in the market and their goodwill is very high because people have trust on them, and in case, if they breaks the trust of even a single customer, it’s pretty sure that no one is going to come back to them. But in case, if any person knowingly tries to spoil either the name of any person or any organization in the market on the false and ruthless basis, then under law, it is termed as defamation and it is illegal. The term defamation has been defined under section 499 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. In short, if any person who by either by writing, or speaking, or by making gesture tries to publish or do any act which harms the reputation, then that person will be charged for act of defamation.
Now-a-days, we often get to see good number of cases of defamation on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. But no one is interested in taking action as they enjoy it and feels it’s a good time pass and let it go on. But the person who is being defamed for an unnecessary cause only knows through which time he is passing. Some people are enough brave that have no effect on what people are saying about them but there is a majority of people who are very delicate and starts thinking of future consequences of it. This social media defamation has a very negative effect on each and every person who is being defamed especially on people who are very delicate, as starts suffering from diseases such as severe depression, overthinking, stress, etc. and some people thinks that they now they can’t face the society and there is now is worth of living more and at the end they take their own lives by hanging themselves to death.
Social media defamation is one of the most common crimes now-a-days that we see. Now the question is what is it exactly and where we see this? The answer to this question is very simple, lets understand with the help of an easy example:
There are two person namely Jatin and Yatin, both are very good very friends. One day Yatin clicked some funny pictures (in which he was made a girl with the help of an application) of Jatin on his mobile, and he posted that pictures on social media using hashtags suitable to the pictures, and that images got viral. Jatin was unaware of it and when he came to know, he was completely shocked to see them. He became totally upset after seeing the comments of the public on his pictures and decided to quit his life as his reputation was completely destroyed everywhere, in the eyes of his family, friends, university, etc. He feels that if he goes out, he will not be able to stand or face the people as they will laugh. Later one of his friend named Kunal stopped him to do so and said that it is defamation and instead of committing suicide, he should file a suit against Yatin for the same.
From the above example, we can conclude how serious crime defamation is. No doubt, defamation is just a one word, but it has that power that any can take his/her life, if it comes to him. People will have to understand that there’s a huge difference between defamatory statement and free speech. People also very well knows that have the Right of Speech, but they don’t know that how to use it. There are various crimes associated with the case of social media defamation and the same are as mentioned below:
CYBER STALKING
Basically the term ‘stalking’ refers to act of following a specific person from a long period of time whereas the term, cyber stalking refers to the act of the stalking that is done using internet. It includes harassment as well as threatening. In crime of cyber stalking basically there are two parties, where the person whoever do the act of stalking is called as the stalker or the attacker and the person on whom the attack is being made is called as the victim. Usually the under cyber stalking the stalker is the friend or known the person of the victim, he later starts following that person on his social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. in order to view his profile and pictures and in some cases the stalker becomes so violent that he starts harassing or threatening the victim by sending inappropriate pictures or videos or messages which makes them feel uncomfortable. Sometimes the stalking becomes so serious in nature that it even leads to murder or rape or some sort of physical assault on the victim. Now the question is how the act of stalking is dealt within the boundaries of the India? The answer to this question is very simple, in India, the act of stalking is governed under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013. Section 67A of the IT Act, 2000 states that if any person circulates or publishes any restricted con tent on internet, then such act will be considered as crime of obscenity and if it committed for the first time then the same is punishable with the imprisonment which may extend to the period of 5 year alongwith the fine of amount upto Rs. 1,00,000/- and if the same person commits it for the second or subsequent time, in that case it is punishable with the imprisonment which may extend to the period of 10 year alongwith the fine of amount upto Rs. 10,00,000/-
For the women who are the residents of Delhi and feels that they are being stalked, they can call 1096 and report the same whereas for women residing in the other parts of India, they can contact National Commission of Women by calling 011- 23219750. Women can also the report the case of cyber stalking by filing an online complaint on the portal of National Commission of Women (NCW) by visiting their website i.e. http:// ncw.nic.in/ and the same will taken by the commission with the help of cyber crime department and police of respective areas.
SOCIAL MEDIA TROLLING
“Sticks and Stones can break only bones. But words can kill you.
Why is said so? This is because if you got hurt by sticks and stones you will recover within sometime and the wound will be healed, but the if you are hurt by the words of someone, it is more dangerous as it can cause severe depression and can also take your life too. They hurt caused by the words of someone can also destroy your inner confidence, your selfrespect, your spirit and you might not even be able to stand in group. This was the blur picture of meaning of trolling, now moving to the actual meaning of trolling, it is somewhat similar to defamation, but is not exactly defamation. It is basically circulating the picture or video or message on famous and most surfed social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. which insults any individual or any group or any organization, or make them feel uncomfortable, or puts them under severe depression is known as social media trolling. Trolling also includes putting some text which is totally controversial in order to start unwanted debate, comments, etc. and the end result arising out of it always flags off the disputes between religions, genders, etc. Also sometimes this dispute crosses all the limits and becomes the spot of crimes. In short, we can say that trolling is the direct character assassination of an individual or any group or any organization, because it spoils the whole goodwill or reputation of the person or any group and they feels so insulted or gets so destroyed from inside that don’t even feel comfortable to stand in some group or some public place.
f Instagram – Suppose there’s a video posted, now on every comment thread there are users who say something like “this video sucks,” and these are those people who even don’t know what the video is mentioning about or sometimes we see people fighting uselessly in comments just to gain the attention of the audience on their profiles, and to do this they forget all the standards or common sense and falls to such a level, that no one can expect. But now the question is how can we report this type of users or posts trolling someone? It very simple to report such users or posts that create nuisance on social media. In order to report a post or user, we simply have to click on option of ‘more options’ and then we have to choose report, after clicking report, we have to choose whether its spam or inappropriate, and then have to select the best matching options (like what sort of content is posted) from the options available and then we have to click. It will directly be sent to the community, where they check that the post has actually adhered the guidelines or not, and then they take the appropriate actions against that particular post or user.
STEALING OF IDENTITY AND VIOLATION OF PRIVACY
Stealing of identity is also known as identity theft or identity fraud, so from its name itself i.e. identity theft we can presume the meaning. It is the combination of two words i.e. identity and theft, where identity means who or what a person is and theft means stealing, so, it’s basically stealing of identity of some person. Now-a-days, stealing of identity is a very common crime but is very serious in nature as an identity of an individual is being robbed by some person and then it gets misused. It is commonly of two types i.e. true name and account takeover. The true name identity theft means that the thief will use the name or identities of another person and can get issued SIM Card, open bank account, get debit or credit card issued for himself, whereas incase of account takeover he will just use steal the already issued stuff such debit cards, credit cards, etc. In both cases, it’s not going to cost him anything because the identity is of that another person and in case if he commits any subsequent crime, that person whose identity was originally used will be the accused once.
On social media also the cases of stealing of identity are increasing day by day as people create fake accounts of some other person, sometimes to take revenge from someone or to make fun. The person who creates such accounts is very familiar with the person whose account they are creating because they have all information like date of birth, place of residence, religion, etc. which is 100% accurate, so that it pretends to be the original identity of that person only. And this is absolutely an invasion on the privacy of the public getting connected to that account. Let’s clear this with an easy example.
“Tanu is a student of BBA and is also very beautiful girl. Mandeep is one of her best friend. One day one some matter they had a fight in the college and itself and their friendship came to an end as Tanu slapped Mandeep in front of whole college, so at that moment didn’t told Tanu anything but he felt he was insulted and in order to take revenge from Tanu, he one day created a fake account of Tanu on Instagram and started posting her pictures which depicts that her account was original. He started posting sexual content from her fake account and started sending obscenity contented messages to all her known, also at late in the night he as Tanu started chatting with boys and girls for long hours and asked for them their pictures and day by day the image of Tanu originally was getting spoiled and people started thinking she was a girl with bad nature. But in real life she was not.
From the above example we can conclude that the privacy of all the people who were chatting with Mandeep (who was pretending to be Tanu) was completely invaded as Mandeep was having all the sensitive information and pictures of all those persons with whom he used to chat. And also the personal identity and her privacy of Tanu have been attacked badly and she in a moment has become a girl with bad character in the eyes of the people.
So it rightly said that, “Think Once Before You Act, Twice Before You Speak and Thrice Before You Post on Social Media!
CONCLUSION
Whenever we post something on social media, we have always have to be vigilant, it’s not the matter that whether the user is a girl or a boy, he/she is wearing short length or long length clothes, he/she is fair or dark in complexion; instead the user should know the people on social media, who all are connected/ added with him on that platform. The government and the respective agencies are doing their piece of work, also, the Information Technology Act, 2000 is meant to deal with crimes such as cyber stalking, cyber trolling, phishing, hacking, etc. Moreover, we should also monitor ourselves that what type of content we are putting on social media and with all whom we are sharing the content such.
We should also keep our accounts secure by the way of changing the passwords regularly, updating the security policies made the respective agencies, not adding unknown people to the list of your known, not sharing the personal details such as OTP, passwords, etc. and the most important thing if you ever feel that you are being stalked or getting into the claws of such traps then all the true information shall be reported to the nearest police station or cyber crimes department of the city