Cyber Chatting:

If you dare, BEWARE!

Amalshan GUNERATHNE

Pictures by Lalith C. Gamage

Sometimes nothing beats the exciting pulse that rushes through your veins as your phone or PC beeps to say that you have got a new chat message. In anticipation, you would rush into check your inbox. The world is in your palms and it is great, you may think. Chat with the right person after a stressful days work, and suddenly you will feel elevated and refreshed. Whether it is Facebook, Skype or WhatsAPP, many would admit that online chatting is fun. True, it is exhilarating and fun, and the internet does bring the world to you, but on the contrary what many fail to realise is that by allowing yourself to be a cog in this vast cyber universe, you make yourself vulnerable and expose too much of yourself to the world.

Virtual relationship

Chatting with one of your own buddies may not involve any risks, but as you explore your chat mediums, you are bound to run into strangers and may be even manipulated into form friendships with people that you have not even seen in real life. However, at first even the very prospect of meeting an unknown friend online and forming a friendship with that person may sound exciting and adventurous. Also since you are not directly in contact with the person, you may even feel a sense of security about opening yourself to a person that you meet online. And if by chance if things go smoothly, there is no reason why you should not be able to make solid friendships through such means, we even hear wonderful stories about people who expand their virtual relationship as far as marriage, after meeting through cyber mediums. But even after that, the fact remains that such chat services have often caused more harm than good. The technology at the hand of the ‘wrong’ could be used to cause all sorts of mayhem.

Internet crimes

Needless to say that with the evolution of the internet, the crimes that happen with it has also escalated. The hackers and cyber criminals too have become masters at abusing the system. Fair enough, the cyber predators do loom at large. But often it is up to us to act smart and avoid them with prudence. With this regard a comment made by one of my friends who happens to be a computer geek comes to mind, “Technology is solid, but it is people that are stupid. They are stupid enough to share their Facebook passwords with others. And people expose too much of themselves through cyber mediums. It is easier to hack into people’s brains than it is to get into their Gmail account. If you are smart enough, there is very little chance that someone can hack you.”

Chat with caution

Knowing that what you type or talk gets recorded in the other person’s computer, it is of utmost importance that you chat with caution, especially if you are chatting with a relative stranger. Scary as it may sound, the possession of such records could even be used as potential material for blackmail later. Scary thought, but such cases are known to happen. For instance such abuse is often seen in girl-boy relationships where couples breakup after sharing their Gmail and Facebook passwords. May be they share their Facebook or Gmail passwords with each other as a token of trust. And all is fine as long as the relationship stays stable, but in the instances where the relationship starts to fall apart, often the one party is known to use whatever personal information, photos or even Gmail chat messages he or she has as a means to threaten the other, a means of emotional blackmail you could call it. There have even been instances where after the breakups the male party fabricated abusive, fake Facebook profiles of the girl to insult her character.The cyber chatting also provides introverted people with a medium to communicate. Since they are reluctant to socialise themselves with the real world, they opt for virtual mediums to socialise which ultimately prevents them from developing their social skills to the full. This even goes to the extent that sometimes they make fake profiles and impersonate others.

The common excuse being that they are doing it for the thrill of it and that they do not mean any harm. At a recent conversation, a friend was pumped up when saying, “It is fun. I made a fake profile with photos of a girl I took from net and the next thing you know, the profile started to get so many friend requests, most of them from overseas people. I sent some requests to them as well for which they responded eagerly. The guys started chatting with me and few even claimed that they love me after just few days of chat sessions. It was fun.” But even such mild pranks could later cause dire consequences, as the others could get manipulated into communicate with a person that does not exist.

Monitoring cyber crimes

With all that being said, in Sri Lankan context, a burning need is very much prevalent to establish a stable, functioning mechanism that can monitor cyber crimes, a one that provide specific attention to crimes committed against teen and youth. As Universal Periodic Review of Sri Lanka done by PEaCE and ECPAT International on October went on to note, the cyber crime monitoring system in Sri Lanka is far from ideal.

The ECPAT International who specializes in handling issues regarding Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for sexual purposes went on to report in their review that, “In 2008 the Government of Sri Lanka introduced the Computer Crime Act addressing all kinds of computer crimes or criminal activity resulting from use of internet.

“Unfortunately, there was no provision included in the Act which referenced crimes committed against children through the use of the Internet. The Cyber Watch programme aimed at monitoring the Internet for child pornography and child sex tourism related crimes was discontinued and the Cyber Crimes Unit closed due to lack of funding.”

Enough has been said about how much of an affect the technology has had on modern youth. Therefore a note that needs to be taken into account is that while it is important to evolve with technology, it does not necessarily mean that you should allow it overwhelm you completely.