Friends worse than crooks, behind 80% obscene clips

Ludhiana: In 80% of the cases of indecent videos and pictures reported by women, their acquaintances are the accused. The cybercrime cell has found out that this material was shared during the period of friendship, while the actual cases of morphing are only 20%.
On Tuesday, police arrested a 35-year-old man for shooting an obscene video of his brother’s wife and uploading it on social media because of a grudge. In many similar cases, friends, fiancés, husbands, and other people in family and relations have harassed women. Assistant commissioner of police (cybercrime) Vaibhav Sehgal said: “Friends, boyfriends, fiancés, or husbands use pictures shared before the breakup to blackmail women. Doctored material (where a face is superimposed over a different body) is rarer in comparison.”
The ACP said that now even minors were involved in social-media crimes such as creating fake Facebook profiles and sending out vulgar messages. Recalling a case from a few months ago, he said: “We had received a complaint that someone had put morphed pictures of a minor girl on her fake Instagram page and sent vulgar and abusive text with her doctored profile. The accused was a boy, who had got the original images by befriending the girl and morphed those. He used a fake email ID to make that Instagram account.”
Police have found that the youngsters aren’t even aware that duplicating an email ID or social media account was a crime. They created it for fun or to harass their targets without realising the seriousness of the matter. They didn’t know they could be booked or arrested for this.
How to avoid cyber sextortion
Update privacy settings to share limited information, photographs especially
Android users should lock their Facebook profiles
Fix a daily time limit for social-media activity
Do not accept friend requests from strangers
Refrain from sharing personal/intimate pictures on social media
Report blackmail to the cybercrime cell ASAP
PREVIOUS CASES
February 24: Police booked a man for uploading objectionable pictures of his wife on social media. His wife alleged that her husband had an illicit relation with their daughter’s tutor, with whom he hatched a conspiracy to defame her
December 31, 2020: A 29-year-old resident of Shivpuri Road booked for stalking and harassing a woman after morphing her pictures and circulating them. The accused, who was a classmate of the woman, had tried to extort Rs 25 lakh from her
August 21, 2020: A man arrested for stalking and harassing his 29-year-old friend by sharing her morphed pictures on social media
September 22, 2018: A 20-year-old booked for uploading morphed pictures and cellphone number of a woman on Facebook and Instagram. He was a friend of the woman and started harassing her when she left the country to study abroad