Cyber Crimes and Women

Introduction:

Cybercrime against women is on rise and it may pose as a major threat to the security of a person as a whole. In India the term “cybercrime against women” means and includes mainly sexual crimes and sexual abuses on the internet.

Cyber Crime:

Cyber crime may be defined as “Any unlawful act where computer or communication device or computer network is used to commit or facilitate the commission of crime”.

Various cyber crimes against women:

The various types of  cybercrimes that basically happens to the women in the cyberspace are harassment via e-mail, cyber-stalking, cyber defamation, morphing, email spoofing, hacking, cyber pornography and cyber sexual defamation, cyber flirting and cyber bullying.

1. Harassment through e-mails: Harassment via email, includes black mailing, threatening and constant sending of love letters in anonymous names or regular sending of embarrassing mails. Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and sections of IT Act deal with the protection from cybercrime.
2. Cyber stalking: This is one of the most popular internet crime in the modern world. Cyber stalking can be defined as the repeated acts harassment or threatening behavior of the cyber criminal towards the victim by using the internet services. Stalking in the internet happens when the perpetrator follows the victim continuously by leaving unwanted messages. The motivation of stalkers may be considered less than four reasons, (i) sexual harassment, (ii) obsession for love, (iii) revenge and hate, (iv) ego and power trips. The stalker disturbs their targets through private emails as well as public message. Most of the cases are reported where the target of cyber stalking are women especially of the age group of 16 to 35. Section 354D of Indian Penal Code deals with the offence of stalking.
3. Cyber defamation: Cyber defamation occurs when with the help of computers and internet someone publishes derogatory or defamatory information to all of that person’s friends or the perpetrator post defaming stories about the victim. Although this can happen to both genders, but women are more vulnerable.
4. Cyber sexual defamation Cyber sexual defamation happens between real or virtually known people who out of frustration start publishing defaming stories in obscene languages on various social websites subsequently it turns into cyber pornography. The accused can be booked under section 67 and 72 of the IT Act as well as IPC Act.
5. Morphing:  When unauthorized user with fake identity downloads victim’s pictures and then uploads or reloads them after editing is known as morphing.
6. Email Spoofing E-mail spoofing is a term used to describe fraudulent email activity in which the sender address and other parts of the email header are altered to appear as though the email originated from a different source. By changing certain properties of the email, such as the From, Return-Path and Reply-To fields, ill intentioned users can make the email appear to be from someone other than the actual sender. Email spoofing is possible because Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), the main protocol used in sending email, does not allow an authentication mechanism. Although an SMTP service extension allows an SMTP client to negotiate a security level with a mail server, however this precaution is not always taken. One of the best examples of Cyber spoofing is Gujrat Ambuja’s Executive Case, in this case the perpetrator pretended to be a girl for cheating and blackmailing the Abu Dhabi based NRI.
7. Hacking: Hacking means unauthorized access to computer system or network, and it is the most predominant form of cyber crime. It is an invasion into the privacy of data, it mostly happens in a social online community to demean a woman by changing her whole profile into an obscene, derogatory one.
8. Cyber Pornography: Internet may be considered the facilitator of crimes like cyber pornography; women and children are becoming the main victim of this flip side of technology.
9. Cyber bullying: Cyber bullying means the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. The main aim and objective behind such crime may be to defame the target out of anger, hatred or frustration or secondly when the perpetrator wants to make simple fun of his friends, classmates, juniors or unknown net friends.

Few Measures for Online Safety:

1. Choose a safe online name. Pick a name that doesn’t reflect your complete identity or location.
2. Have a strong password with alpha-numeric symbol and special characters for your online account..
3. Secure your computers with anti-virus, anti-spyware and other cyber security tools.
4. Be selective about what information you make public. Be cautious while posting online any information that can personally identify you, a family member, or friend on a public site.
5. Never, try to meet a person with whom you’ve interacted only online without taking somebody else along and such meeting must always be in a public place.
6. Pay attention to privacy policies on Websites and in software.
7. Guard your email address.
8. Last, but not the least, trust your instinct. If you are being subjected to any form of cyber bullying or harassment, report it at once

Conclusions:

Most of the cyber crimes remain unreported due to the hesitation and shyness of the victim and fear of women for defamation of their family’s name. Many times women believe that she herself is responsible for the crime done to her. The women are more susceptible to the danger of cyber crime as the perpetrator’s identity remains anonymous and the accused may constantly threaten and blackmail the victim with different names and identities. In India, women still do not go to the police to complain against sexual harassment, whether it is in the real world or the virtual world, and they prefer to shun off the matter as they feel that it may disturb their family life. There are laws to punish the accused but it is only possible if women come forward and report the crime to the police station.