Are you a Good Netizen

Feb. 19, 2010 - PRLog -- If you are a young executive, you are most likely to be hooked on to at least five of the umpteen social networking sites that populate the Internet today. You are probably signed in most of the time. You ensure to change your status message at least four times in a day, and tweet as often as possible with what are seemingly innocuous statements. But are you aware that even your seemingly innocuous statements can be offensive to someone, and that amounts as a cyber crime?

Our recent survey of young executives and graduates show that about 99 percent of the respondents are not aware of what constitutes as a cyber crime. They did know that hacking, theft, spamming, and spreading virus, and Trojans count as cyber crime and are punishable; however they did not understand that bad behavior on the net is equally punishable under Indian cyber laws.

According to the survey conducted by IT VAR News, only 4 to 5 persons per 1000 know the consequence of these crimes; and 2 per 1000 know how to take action against cyber criminals and in what cases. This shows that most of us are not aware about the laws and punishment mentioned for cyber world in our Indian Penal Code.
What makes for bad manners?

Today you are always present on the social networking sites. This is where behaving right becomes an important point. What you may think as a simple action or words can actually make a cyber offender. You can actually land up in jail under defamation charges. According Jaipur-based Cyber Lawyer, Mr. Vivek Tripathi, Impersonation, identity theft, fraud, extortion and breach of privacy all fall under the list of cyber crime.
In fact most of the respondents we spoke to were amazed to know that sometimes even an inoffensive post can land them into jail. In fact you even stand to lose your job based on what you think as a humorous posting. According to Mr Tripathi even your status message can drag you to unwanted legal processes.
Being the good guy

So how do you know what posts or tweets can be harmful for you? Mr Tripahti adds, there are no specific rules to regulate these kinds of tweets, messages in IT act of India yet but normally it has been used as evidence as follows. For section 39, the following section shall be substituted, namely: What evidence to be given when statement forms part of a conversation, document, electronic record, book or series of letters or papers. - When any statement of which evidence is given forms part of a longer statement, or of a conversation or pan of an isolated document, or is contained in a document which forms part of a book, or is contained in part of electronic record or of a connected series of letters or papers, evidence shall be given of so much and no more of the statement, conversation, document, electronic record, book or series of letters or papers as the Court considers necessary in that particular case to the full understanding of the nature and effect of the statement, and of the circumstances under which it was made."

While some countries especially those with Muslim majority have termed the social networking sites like tweeter and facebooks as ungodly, and criminal; in India we are better off. We still get to hold on to our right of expression. Mr Tripathi informs, Information technology act of India does not violate the right to speech and right to expression, it only regulates illegal content/images, data security, personal identity, fraud, objectionable websites, and privacy of any person, criminal activities and anti state activities on cyberspace.

But yes according to our survey those who spend quality time in cyber world surely want to learn the laws and want to keep them updated for their security. So here we bring some dos and don’ts when online.

The Dos
o   Always read terms and condition before agreeing any terms and condition.
o   Have a better comprehension of networking basics
o   Recognize the importance of policies
o   Manage information efficiently
o   Identify the proper use of electronic resources
o   Create and implement strong passwords
o   Learn more about Virus, Worms & Trojans and malicious code
o   Identify proper responses to security threats
o   Examine the issues of user privacy
o   Learn secure techniques of using email and surfing the Internet
o   Understand and implement security policies of our company
o   Express your emotions and feelings wisely
o   Be careful with your personal information
o   Respect the privacy of other users on the Internet
o   Be careful when you copy ("download") programs from the Internet.

The Don’ts

o   Don't give your password to anyone
o   Don't arrange to meet anyone you've met on the Internet
o   Don't try to break into computers
o   Don't make copies of any copyrighted material
o   Don't copy material that you find on the Internet and pretend that it's your own work.
o   Don't defame others
o   Don't use abusive language

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