The city police receive hundreds of complaints every year regarding instances of cyber harassment and bullying through social networking websites such as Facebook. Solutions to these, however, are rare and the issues take a long time to resolve, police said.
The Kochi police receive about two complaints a day on an average, many of them about women and girls being harassed online using defamatory statements of pictures. Once they receive the complaint, the police alert Facebook with a request to take down the defamatory content. “The company earlier used to respond within a couple of days. Now, due to the sheer volume of cases, they take a minimum of one week to a few months to respond,” said a police officer. He said the social networking website followed a priority list for the thousands of requests they received seeking removal of content.
“While massive cases like terror attacks or murder cases receive quick response, complaints of defamation suffered by individuals may not receive much attention from the company. The State police, however, receive a large number of these complaints and these are very important for us. They also cause a lot of trauma to the complainant,” said an officer with the cyber police.
Cyber harassment was one of the issues that came up for discussion at the recently concluded C0C0N 2014 international cyber security conference held in the city.
Cultural differences between India and the U.S., where Facebook is based, was yet another reason for delay in resolving complaints of cyber harassment, the police said. An image posted on the website that a person in Kochi may find offensive would not appear so to a person outside the country, leading them to reject the complaint. The city police have developed one method to handle cases of cyber harassment where the culprit is based in the State itself. They find it much easier to track the person who posted the defamatory statement online and ask them to remove the content. The sheer volume of cases, however, hands them a disadvantage in this attempt.
