Terrorists are using Social Networks Site for their activities

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The new generation terrorists are using online forums viz. Facebook, Mysapce, Orkut, etc. to recruit people who align themselves with the mission of al-Qaeda, creating global networks of terrorists. This pose a growing threat to the world.

Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator and private consultant for Global Terror Alert, said at the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 in New York that Cyberterrorists are using a series of online forums and at least one social networking site to recruit people to their cause. Many of these people never actually meet in person, but conspire online to launch both cyberterrorist and physical terrorist attacks such as suicide bombings.

Global Terror Alert is an online clearinghouse of information for counterterrorist researchers, analysts and policy-makers.

Social Networking - Safety Tipsp to protect yourself

Social networking Web sites like Orkut, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live Spaces are services people can use to connect with others to share information like photos, videos, and personal messages.

As the popularity of these social sites grows, so do the risks of using them. Hackers, spammers, virus writers, identity thieves, and other criminals follow the traffic.

The following tips are helpful to protect from cyber criminals when you use social networks.

1. Use caution when you click links that you receive in messages from your friends on your social Web site. Treat links in messages on these sites as you would links in e-mail messages. (For more information, see Approach links in e-mail with caution.)

2. Don't trust that a message is really from who it says it's from. Hackers can break into accounts and send messages that look like they're from your friends, but aren't. If you suspect that a message is fraudulent, use an alternate method to contact your friend to find out. This includes invitations to join new social networks.

3. To avoid giving away e-mail addresses of your friends, do not allow social networking services to scan your e-mail address book. When you join a new social network, you might receive an offer to enter your e-mail address and password to find out who else is on the network. The site might use this information to send e-mail messages to everyone in your contact list or even everyone you've ever sent an e-mail message to with that e-mail address. Social networking sites should explain that they're going to do this, but some do not.

4. Type the address of your social networking site directly into your browser or use your personal bookmarks. If you click a link to your site through e-mail or another Web site, you might be entering your account name and password into a fake site where your personal information could be stolen.

5. Be selective about who you accept as a friend on a social network. Identity thieves might create fake profiles in order to get information from you. This is known as social engineering.

6.Choose your social network carefully. Evaluate the site that you plan to use and make sure you understand the privacy policy. Find out if the site monitors content that people post. You will be providing personal information to this Web site, so use the same criteria that you would to select a site where you enter your credit card.

7. Assume what you write on a social networking site is permanent. Even if you can delete your account, anyone on the Internet can easily print the information or save it to a computer.

8. Be careful about installing extras on your site. Many social networking sites allow you to download third-party applications that let you do more with your personal page. Criminals sometimes use these applications in order to steal your personal information. To download and use third-party applications safely, take the same safety precautions that you take with any other program or file you download from the Web.

9. Think twice before you use social networking sites at work. For more information, see Be careful with social networking sites, especially at work.

10. Talk to your kids about social networking. If you're a parent of children who use social networking sites, see How to help your kids use social Web sites more safely.

Orkut Trends - Indian women are among the world’s heaviest receivers of ‘scraps’

According to a new report from Orkut, Indian users are among the top five countries to get the maximum number of scraps posted on their Web pages. While globally, women receive just under half (48 per cent) of all scraps, Indian women score a higher percentage than men. Women from the Cayman Islands receive the most and Albanian women had the fewest scraps.


Another interesting fact is that the scraps are usually very brief. According to Orkut’s research the most popular scrap is ‘Hi’, which occurred 1,131 times out of a sample of 1 lakh short scraps. Short words such as ‘Ok’, ‘hello’, and ‘congratulations’ are the other most commonly used scraps.


Indian users on Orkut receive as many as 345 scraps on an average, which is quite impressive when compared to 423 scraps per user in the US. More than 16 per cent of members on Orkut are from India, which is the second largest community from a single country after Brazil.

Source: Orkut Blog, TheHinduBusinessLine

Two held on Orkut Abuse against Sindhu Joy, SFI State President.

The Kerala Police have arrested two persons on the charge of defaming Ms.Sindhu Joy, SFI State President through Orkut, one of the most famous social networking website in India, with the help of Kerala Police Hi-Tech Cell.

The students’ leader, who has been successfully using the friendship network portal to interact with SFI activists and spread the message of the Federation among her other friends, has approached the Cyber Cell of Kerala Police with a written complaint against activities on Orkut that are derogatory to her. In the complaint filed at the Cell, Sindhu Joy specifically mentioned two communities in Orkut that she felt were formed with the intention of tarnishing her image. “One of the communities ‘I hate Sindhu Joy’ has several messages to defame me. I don’t know who is behind this community,” Sindhu Joy told. She first took up the issue with Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, who advised her to approach the Cyber Cell.

The case was enquired by the Hi-Tech Cell Team and identified the suspects as Prasobh Kumar (Age 32), a lecturer of the Centre for Management Development at Thycaud, Thiruvananthapuram and Asok Kumar (Age 29), a project staff of the same centre, a Hi-Tech Cell official said. He also said that the suspects had used their office computers to create fake and defamatory communities of Sindhu Joy on Orkut. The case was then transferred to Thiruvananthapuram City Police for investigation.

Cyber Cell find out the creator of the defamatory community ‘I Hate Sindhu Joy’ as ‘A new Thought.!!!’ on 21 Oct 2007 and the second community ‘Sindhu joy time to defend’ was created by a user ‘Proper action’ on 19 Oct 2007. They traced the details of the creators of the two communities using Cyber Forensics software tools and information collected from Google Inc. and Internet Service Providers. The two fake communities were created from the computers of Center of Management Development, Thiruvananthapuram, an official said.

Thiruvananthapuram City Police arrested the accused persons and seized the computers that are used to create the communities and fake profiles from the Centre for Management Development at Thycaud, Thiruvananthapuram. The seized computers are being sent to C-DAC (Center for Development of Advanced Computing, Thiruvananthapuram, for forensic analysis, a City Police official said.



Related Articles: NewIndExpress, ThatisMalayalam

Kerala Chief Minister's fake profiles in Orkut.com

Cyber Police have received a number of complaints against social networking sites like Orkut that’s teeming with fake profiles of women and Ministers of Sate.

In a recent development, the State Police have requested ‘Google’ to provide the IP address and other details of fake profile creators. This will stop cyber crimes to a great extent. Fake profiles inviting the company of women have been the major attraction in Orkut recently.

The first complaint registered by the Police was from Adarsh, a web developer in Kochi. He found that another profile has been created with his name, photograph and phone number. The issue became grave when he found that the other person has been posting obscene pictures and messages in this profile. The Police was successful in tracing the culprit.

There’s another group targeted by fake profile-makers - ministers. Profiles of Co-operation Minister G Sudhakaran - describing him as a friend and a man of eccentricities - are already in Orkut. This is in addition to a number of communities (groups of members on specific topics) on him.

While some of them merely give his personal profile, a few have gone to the extent of terming him a ‘lunatic’. Profiles of the Chief Minister are also available online.

Even though there has been a flood of Cyber Crimes, Police find it difficult to deal with them as only a few complaints come under the Information Technology (IT) Act. ‘‘Section 65 of the IT Act identifies hacking as a crime. In Section 66, unauthorised access is a crime and Section 67 identifies exhibition of pornographic materials as a crime.

Source: Newindpress