Women beware of women centric cyber offences

Varun Kapoor *

Cyber space and the crime being committed on it, is today posing fresh challenges to the security apparatus in the country. Women are being increasingly subject to malicious crimes in this virtual world.

In fact, certain categories of cyber crime in India, is being exclusively directed towards women. This is an alarming situation and the security agencies are doing their best to tackle and contain this rising menace.

But there is another way that this can be battled and that is raising awareness of the specific dangers in the women of the community at large. And subsequently their taking remedial and informed measures for their protection. The most common offence that women are being exclusively targeted with is – Cyber Stalking.

Repeated text messages, missed calls, friend requests, checking status updates and internet monitoring constitutes this offence. This is punishable under section 354D of the IPC.

Another type of cyber offence is Cyber Spying. Punishable under section 66E of the IT Act, this involves placing recording devices in places where a person expects privacy – like changing rooms, ladies washrooms, hotel rooms and bathrooms etc.

The third type of crime that exclusively targets women is Cyber Pornography. This involves taking obscene photographs and videos of women and posting them online, as well as morphing photographs of women and again misusing them to defame, harass and blackmail women victims. Such offences are dealt with under section 67 & 67A of the IT Act.

The fourth category of crime which is now showing signs of being exclusively used to attack women is called Cyber Bullying. This crime occurs when cyber criminals befriend women and girl victims fraudulently.

This is done either by deceit or lures and once the victim is befriended certain secrets or photographs may be obtained and then these used to bully the unsuspecting victim for further compromises.

In certain cases young girls have been raped and sexually assaulted as a result of this bullying and older women are defrauded financially after such cyber bullying attacks.

It is time that women in the community understand the dangers that the above offences pose to them and become immediately aware and alert regarding their security in the cyber world.

They must not accept any friend request from any person they do not know and trust in the physical world. They must not in any circumstance divulge any secret information or share any compromising photograph with anyone on the internet or cyber space.

They must be alert while using any public convenience, to any kind of camera or recording device. They must also guard against repeated and unwanted contact in the cyber space (like sms, email, calls, friend request etc) and report the same to any elder person or a security agency as and when necessary.

The police and security setup is duty bound and committed to solve their apprehensions and provide them requisite security.

(Views expressed in the column are of the author himself)