The Flip Side of Social Networking !

The craze may be catching on across the country, but for three girls, 'orkutting' turned out to be a nightmare.

The Kolkata city police have probed at least three complaints — the last of them from Bilaspur (Madhya Pradesh) — where jilted lovers and spurned friends had turned to Orkut with vengeance, creating obscene profiles and lewd albums , making life living hell for the victims.

The three complaints, two of which were made by Kolkata-based girls and one from Madhya Pradesh, were received in the last three months. In each, detective found out later, the girls knew their tormentors.

However, no case was lodged, as officers felt the three ‘offending’ youth had a bright future ahead of them. If slapped with cases, either their careers will be ruined or they might land up in jail. They are young people who claimed to have done this in momentary madness.

For the victims, however, this hasn’t been easy. Take for example the latest complaint. This 23-year-old Bengali girl now doing her MA in Bilaspur (Madhya Pradesh) was quite depressed after her long relationship with a youth fell apart.

They’d called off their engagement . While the girl was trying her best to come to terms with reality, this youth was plotting revenge.

So what did he do? He turned to Orkut. He created a completely new profile of the girl — replete with her name and address (even her mail ID’s and cell-number ). Introducing the girl, he left nothing to imagination and in a bid to buttress the point; he even put up obscene photographs in her album and wrote lewd innuendoes in her testimonials.

The result was obvious. Within days the girl was flooded with calls. When she enquired , she realised what had happened but did not know who was responsible. Her next stop had been Bilaspur police. But they told her they could do nothing about it.

So she shot off a mail to Kolkata Police’s cyber crime cell. Pleading them to take action .
‘‘Though this didn’t come within our jurisdiction, we were moved by her letter and probed the matter,’’ said a senior officer.

The DC said, ‘‘ Most people don’t realise from the point they log on to net, to the time they enter data and send it, it’s being logged. “If only one cared to look in the address bar in the top, would they realise they are leaving behind a trail of everything they do. All we had to do is ask the service provider (in this case Google) for the details. They responded (in all these three cases) very fast.’’

The offender, in this case, was tracked down. A team of officers brought him to Kolkata. He was told of the consequences and let off. A senior officer said, ‘‘ In all these cases, we’d successfully managed to delete these profiles.The service provider is also very particular about such misuse. Now if you log in to Orkut, these cautionary notes flash constantly at the top of your screen. One can even report its misuse to the service provider directly.’’

Courtesy - Economic Times