Facebook’s all pervasive today. Some people begin the day with that, and end it too with some furious ‘Facebooking’. In such a scenario, it is almost easy to believe that the highest number of complaints received per day by the city police is often from those on social media, complaining about abuse.
And the list of complaints is as varied as the posts on Facebook: derogatory comments, sharing women victims’ phone numbers, con men who assure jobs. The social media has for sure kept investigators on their toes.
On Wednesday morning, Praveen Kumar alias Praveena, a transgender from Choolaimedu, approached the office of the police commissioner in Vepery to complain that she had recently lost Rs. 1.20 lakh to a Facebook ‘friend’.
“A man who identified himself as Jaffar Sadhik befriended me online and later promised to help me find a job in Singapore. I trusted him and transferred the amount. On October 29, I happened to see a news report on Sadhik being apprehended by Karaikal police for job fraud,” she says.
Sources with the Cyber Crime Cell of the city police’s Central Crime Branch revealed that they receive at least two petitions every day pertaining to social media and the victims are primarily young women. “We see derogatory posts including photographs and comments intended to slander the complainant,” says a CCB officer.
Cyber crime sleuths also warned about a new breed of Facebook fraudsters, who target women, mainly homemakers on the social networking site. According to the officer, many women who chatted with these criminals ended up being blackmailed by them. He explains that in a number of instances, cases are not registered as the complainant does not want to go that far.
Police have, time and again, advised social media users, especially women, to make effective use of the privacy settings on the sites and not post personal information, including contact details that could fall into the wrong hands.
