To Click or Not?
Do youngsters still feel safe about using social networking sites following the Adnan Patrawala case? BT takes a look
- BERGES MALU
The shocking murder of Adnan Patrawalla, a 16-year-old collegegoing student is fresh in everyone’s minds. And the use of a social networking website played a big part in this. Today, with almost every college-going youngster having a profile on at least one social networking site, it is tough maintaining privacy and also protecting oneself from unknown predators. So how safe do city collegians feel with such incidents of crime increasing?
Confident!
Malvika Menon, who is currently studying to become a pilot, says she would plainly refuse to add any person she doesn’t know irrespective if it was a female or male. She claims that Orkut, Friendster, Ringo, Hi5 and the the like are a safe place if one “uses it responsibly” and doesn’t misuse it. Syna Soares from St Xavier’s college claims that the website is safe but in a day and age like this one can’t trust anybody and to trust someone on the net would be absurd. She feels Orkut does help in many ways and that once must always “play safe.” Natasha Salian from L Podar ISC school along with Aadi Rungta from Xavier’s College echo each others’ opinion by saying that social networking websites are fun places to be and that they “feel safe” since they haven’t uploaded any personally identifiable material while Natasha also claims that the pics in her profile are “group pictures and hence as such are not of much use to people out to do some mischief.”
Harried users
Tanay Sarda of KC College feels “scared” after the recent incident and he claims that having unknown people checking his profile and reading his scraps is unnerving to say the least and that such unwarranted acts of invasion of piracy should be severely dealt with severely. While Prachi Vasant from Jai Hind College shares Tanay’s views adding that any person can wantonly download images and even edit them for malicious purposes. Jaya Dewan from KC College too feels that strict filtering policy’s should be added. Rima Tellis, a student at another city college feels that this website is not doing enough to ward away anti-social people and she is even considering going off the social networking website now though she adds it’s a good place to catch up with old friends.
Open sky
Lorraine Nunes of Xavier’s college feels that “The website that deceased student Adnan allegedly used follows an open sky policy. I guess anyone has access to anyone else’s profile and therefore, how much you choose to reveal or find out about other ” She adds that adding pick up lines like ‘I am hot’ or ‘Meet the Devil’ make persons from the opposite sex get interested in the person. She adds nothing is foolproof and besides there are sex offenders in chatrooms any which ways.
Once bitten, but still confident!
Apoorvah Sankaran feels relatively safe even as she narrates a story of how a friends picture was supposedly manipulated to make her look like she was nude, Apoorvah claims that she doesn’t speak to random people who ask her for her “frandship” on social networking websites “no matter how good looking they are or how well educated they seem”. While Tanmay Bhatt from National College feels absolutely safe even though at one point of time a guy went out to make a impersonation of him and went to the extent of copying his whole profile. But Tanmay adds that he would feel unsafe if he were to be a female and have random men look at his picture.
Don’t blame the sites
Collegian Aadi Rungta feels that “One shouldn’t blame the sites for all of this since the websites are not responsible for how they’re used, especially with membership numbers reaching sixty crore. It is next to impossible to police the sites and with more and more people joining, nothing much can be done. Aadi feels that one cannot blame a social networking site for what’s happening and it’s just that some people with “nothing better to do” indulge in such activities. While Natasha feels that people who indulge in such activities are desperate for friends from the opposite sex. While Tanay Gives a more philosophical answer saying that social networking websites were built to expand one’s social connectivity and to reach out to long-lost friends.
Remedies
Nunes feels that for a person to be safe on social networking websites one must not keep their profile as a gold mine for spammers and other antisocial elements. She adds that one must never let out Email id’s or Mobile numbers as it could lead to major problems. She further states that most scraps helps in preventing a lot of personal stuff from being made public. Though banning social networking sites is surely not the option but the best option is not to let out too much personal information for unknown people and preying eyes to view.
