In the past five months, the cyber crime cell (CCS) of the Mumbai police has received 15 complaints against Orkut — the social site owned by Google.
Where there’s a bustling web, there are spiders. In the past five months, the cyber crime cell (CCS) of the Mumbai Police has received 15 complaints against Orkut — the hugely popular social interactive website owned by US-based online search giants Google. Most of them complained about how a million cheesy phone calls haunted them because of a mischievous user who flashed their contact details on the Orkut profile.
Prerna Kulkarni (name changed), a 20-year-old economics student in Mumbai University, went into hibernation after one day she woke up to a hundred phone calls asking her out for a raunchy date. It took her around a week to figure out the cause of this nightmare. “My sister found that someone had made a fake profile on my name and posted lots of filth on it,” she said.
Another victim, Nikhil Parpiani (name changed) a boutique owner in Mulund, claims that he was virtually on verge on being thrown out by his family. “A fake profile portrayed me as a porn seller. Some people came to my house to buy porn and bumped into my father,” he said. CCS officials claim that since the complaints are coming through e-mails they are unable register an offence. Deputy Commissioner of Police (cyber cell) Sanjay Mohite said, “We are tracking India-based locations of servers used for the crime. Details about these servers are sent to the computer emergency team which blocks them.”
Police sources, however, said that since many servers were based abroad, it was difficult to block them. “We had started a correspondence with US-based service providers through CBI and Interpol. However, since obscenity laws in that country are different, the US government did not take cognisance. Unless victims openly register a complaint we are unable to push the matter from our side,” said a cyber crime official. Navin Mittal, head of fropper.com, an upcoming social interactive website in India, said, “We have the technology in place to control abusers but users also need to be more prudent, just the way they are in normal life. We have told our users to inform us about any trouble because we have the mechanism to chuck spammers.”
Tushar Gandhi, former president of the Internet Users Association of Mumbai and an ex-member of the cyber crime advisory committee, said, “It is unfair to term this as criminal behaviour. Cyber crime cops should make people understand the difference between fun and crime. But I am not supporting the perpetrators. In the West, cyber policing began with basic counselling.” He added that most trouble-shooters in such cases were youngsters who go overboard while showing off their sense of humour.
A study conducted by fropper.com identifies people aged 18-25 as the target group. The study shows that the market size of social websites has grown in India from Rs2 crore in the financial year 2003-04 to Rs5 crore this year. The booming market is drawing new social websites like gazzag.com, jhoos.com and fropper.com. Despite of several attempts to contact Sundar K, head sales and operations of Google India, he was unavailable for comment.
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