Dear,
women and girls, men and boys,
Do not document your private moments, intimacy, your nudes or anything you want to keep within your personal space on electronic devices or share them via the internet on any condition, in any situation, whatsoever, period. Now let’s start the saga WHY so?
In a few words, it can be confined to the phrase “Trust Nothing”
In the era of technology where cyberspace is wider beyond one’s comprehension, Privacy is a myth in each sphere. It’s easiest for a person to fall prey to sextortion in seconds when someone gets access to one’s personal/private information either with their consent or without it, by hacking their systems.
According to a Delhi Police cybercrime official, in sextortion cases, the criminal uses malware to hack into a user’s system or network, grabs the browsing history and keeps an eye on his/her activities.
What is sextortion?
It’s a practice of extorting money or other sexual or physical favours by threatening them to reveal their intimate pictures or other documents of the same kind.
Now first and foremost, Trust Nobody, NOBODY. Do not share your private information, document or pictures with anybody whosoever. Even God doesn’t know what’s there in the mind of the devil. If your partner forces you to send nudes or on other occasions captures the moments of your personal space, get rid of him/her, ASAP.
Secondly, what’s that irrational urge and need of documenting your naked body, private moments and intimacy as souvenir in the era of technology where everything can be exhibited anytime, anywhere merely by using malpractices? People think that they can simply get away with things/activities that they do online using the internet or other electronic devices. which is not true. The world of the internet and technology is a thousand times more confusing and mysterious than a women’s mind. Once you unleash your things on the internet, assuming that you will delete them and they’ll disappear forever, NO. They don’t. They just get lost in it like plastic in the physical world.
Therefore, Things which enter the cyberspace are immortal and inevitable, they just never die like extremism in India. Whatever we watch, type, send, receive via the internet on electronic devices, they accumulate somewhere despite us deleting the same. The predators hence take advantage of this information by means of hacking, gain the personal data and end up soliciting people for money or other sexual favours. It is said that the mind of these hackers and cyber predators work a step ahead than technicians and computer professionals.
●How does the likelihood of being hacked increase?
We often resort ourselves to use assorted applications, to surf numerous websites and other links which ask permission of various accesses to our devices and we permit them anyways. As soon as these applications or other sites are given permission, our all personal information inter alia calling history, private messages, location, camera, microphone, become available in the hands of service providers and hence reach to these hackes or these hackers simply break into your devices and collect this information in other ways.
Eventually, the documentation of the personal things, that you never want to be seen, hence becomes lethal, scary and jeopardise in any ways.
● Here are some precautionary measures:
1. Ofcourse, DO NOT capture things you never want to be seen by anyone, be it your body, your private space or other alike things
2. Restrict access to your wireless network by only allowing access to authorized users.
3. Avoid surfing unknown websites.
4. Try to minimize giving access to everything or anything.
5.Create passwords that would be difficult for an outsider to guess.
6. Be cautious while downloading or clicking on any unknown links.
7. Aoid sharing e-mail IDs, passwords, user IDs etc.