New Delhi, India (BBN)-Sharing cool photographs on Facebook is always fun unless you are targeted by groups who are running social media pages to promote online sex chats or any other pornographic content, reports the Hindustan Times.
An investigation led by Mail Today revealed that thousands of pictures were being copied from accounts of girls on Facebook and then morphed to be used for promoting pornographic content.
The newspaper also revealed that a group of ethical hackers have started a war against this explicit social media pages in India and have reportedly taken down many accounts that were coping pictures and misusing them.
These vicious groups are also equipped with cameras and smartphones and are using them to click pictures of girls at public places and then sending them to administrators for further use.
The investigation quoted experts who said that more than 40 per cent female users on Facebook are victims of such crime in the country.
“This is the biggest online threat we face today. Criminals are copying and saving pictures of female users on social media.
They are using pictures of attractive women to entice users to connect on sex chats.
There are several such active pages, but cops are barely doing anything to take them down,” cyber crime expert Kislay Choudhary, who has worked with Delhi and Noida Police in several cases, was quoted as saying to Mail Today.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
1) First these groups copy or download pictures of female users from social media websites
2) Then they create fake profiles and pages by either morphing the pictures or use the original to entice people
3) While more often than not these pages are created for fun but some users are using them to entice an internet user to paid sex chat or use it to extort money from girls
4) Administrators are given the pictures to help them go viral
According to the report filed, such offences was just a way of getting back at the partner for a jilted lover but criminals are now using stolen pictures of girls to lure users to paid sex websites or extort money from them.
The newspaper, as a part of the investigation, also spoke to white-hat hackers known Kerala Cyber Warriors who told the paper that they have hacked at least 70 Facebook accounts and other pages running sex chats.
“From December 28, 2015, we have hacked over 70 profiles and dozens of pages. Our aim is to delete the objectionable pictures and posts which are tarnishing the image of innocent girls,” a member of the hackers’ group was quoted as saying to Mail Today.
The report also quoted a senior Delhi cop who said that number of such complaints were going up everyday.
He also said that though the content is removed after such an abuse is reported, there is still no foolproof solution for the same.
BBN/SK/AD