CBEC warning: No Facebook posts on office matters

In a sign of growing apprehension over online posts on social media by tax officials, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has in a strongly worded letter asked all its chief commissioners and director generals to rein in officials who are using social media platforms like Facebook to post content on official matters...............
 
"Some officers are posting online comments relating to official matters on social networking sites such as Facebook, causing confusion and avoidable controversy among officers in different parts of the country. All officers under your charge should be advised to refrain from posting online comments regarding official matters in the public domain in violation of conduct rules. Non-adherence to these instructions should be viewed seriously by the controlling officers," the letter said.......
 
Giving examples of such instances, the letter said that personal views were posted on a Supreme Court judgement on April 30, 2012 on a special leave petition filed by the CBEC, including adverse comments on the seniority list relied leading to confusion regarding the apex court judgement among officers across the country besides causing needless controversy over seniority issues..............

According to the Internet World Stat, about 3.8% of the Indian population or 4.5 crore Indians access Facebook, the highest in Asia...............

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A funny mail can land you in jail now

Admit it. All of us love poking fun at politicians and their antics. But who would have known that forwarding an innocuous joke could land one in the police lockup? Calcutta-based professor Ambikesh Mahapatra found that out to his dismay last week. The professor, who forwarded a rather tastefully done cartoon of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee (which drew inspiration from Oscar-winner Satyajit Ray’s film) to his friends and shared it on his Facebook page, spent a night in police custody after being heckled by goons from the ruling party.

If this the end of free speech online? One would think so if one goes by the government’s actions....

First, we had the government hauling up social networking sites for objectionable content. While the Union Minister for Telecom and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, hastily clarified that it wasn’t an attempt to regulate the web, a self-proclaimed intellectual filed a case against a host of IT companies for content on social networks that “hurt” sentiments…………….

India has had a rich tradition of political humour. But if some politicians are so sensitive as to take offence at every sarcastic comment about them, the world’s largest democracy has had it…… 

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Cyber cell arrests man for siphoning off lakhs from elderly’s a/c

Mumbai: The cyber crime investigation cell (CCIC) of the city crime branch, on Monday, arrested a 24-year old man from Chennai for his alleged involvement in the siphoning of lakhs of rupees from the bank account of a 69-year-old retired senior government officer....................

The arrested has been identified as Vivek Manoharan, resident of Chennai.

The victim (name withheld) is a resident of Prabhadevi and has a bank account in the Churchgate branch of a government bank. In June last year, the victim learnt that several transactions had taken place on his bank account, which he had not been privy to.................

Investigations revealed that between January and June last year, nearly 300 transactions had taken place on the bank account of the victim. The logins and logouts were made from Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Chennai. In some cases cyber cafes were used, in others a data card. The said card belonged to Manoharan............

Railway ticket bookings were made through the siphoned money. Manoharan had booked a room in Hotel Heritage in Madurai, and had also stayed there. The booking was done through a transaction from the account of the victim. Three hard disks have been recovered from Manoharan. He had obtained the password and login ID of the victim’s bank account.......................

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BSNL enters cloud services with six internet data centres

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has launched six internet data centres to grab a bigger slice of growing demand for hosted and cloud services from government organisations and private enterprises in the country.

The centres would be managed and operated by IT solutions provider Dimension Data under a 10-year revenue share deal.Located in Mumbai, Faridabad, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Ludhiana and Ghaziabad at BSNL properties, the centres will offer managed co-location, managed hosting and cloud services.....................

The telecom provider said the services it offered like managed video, secure email for government organisations cater to current demand in India. Besides, the services are being offered on a utility — pay-as-you-go — model, which ensures lower capex spends. The centres have also been tested through five levels of security and certified on international security standards..........................

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इंटरनेट की अभूतपूर्व निगरानी शुरू

फेसबुक ट्विटर या यू-ट्यूब से ई-मेल तक पूरी वेब दुनिया पर शिकंजा कसने में सरकार को जरा भी देर नहीं लगेगी। देश में इंटरनेट मॉनीटरिंग की अब तक की सबसे बड़ी परियोजना पर अमल शुरू हो गया है। अब इंटरनेट का इस्तेमाल करने वालों की पहचान ही नहीं बल्कि वेब पर संवाद सामग्री [कंटेंट] पर भी पैनी नजर रखी जा रही है। एक-एक क्लिक, एक-एक सर्च, अपडेट, चैट और मेल को कोई देख रहा है। पूरी योजना को सुरक्षा मामलों की कैनिबेट कमेटी मंजूरी मिल गई है..................

इस अभियान में खुफिया एजेंसियों का पूरा दस्ता लगा है। स्थलीय नेटवर्क से लेकर उपग्रह और समुद्री केबल तक सभी जगह इंटरनेट ट्रैफिक मॉनीटरिंग प्रणाली लगाई जा रही है। देश में अलग-अलग जगहों पर करीब 53 मॉनीटरिंग मॉड्यूल स्थापित हो चुके हैं। उन्हें इनक्रिप्टेड [कूट] संदेश खोलने और कंटेंट को जाचने के एक केंद्रीय तंत्र से जोड़ा जा रहा है। लगभग 450 करोड़ रुपये के इस अभियान की तकनीकी कमान एनटीआरओ के हाथ है....

आतंकी खतरों, साइबर सुरक्षा और गोपनीयता की जरूरतों के चलते इंटरनेट मॉनीटरिंग का अभियान गजब की तेजी के साथ तैयार हुआ है.....................

धरती से आकाश तक

-जल, थल और आकाश में फैला मॉनीटरिंग नेटवर्क, देश में 53 मॉनीटरिंग मॉड्यूल लगाए गए।

-उपग्रह स्थलीय गेटवे, समुद्री केबल, सभी जगह निगहबानी प्रणालियों की स्थापना शुरू।

-एनटीआरओ को पूरी परियोजना की कमान सौंपी गई। खुफिया एजेंसियों को जिम्मेदारी बाटी गई।

सबकी जिम्मेदारी तय

-एनटीआरओ-स्थलीय गेटवे, सेटेलाइट, समुद्री नेटवर्क मॉनीटरिंग, क्रिप्ट एनालिसिस, कंटेंट एनालिसिस।

-सी-डॉट [सेंटर फॉर डेवलपमेंट ऑफ टेलीमेटिक्स]-वायस कॉल, बेसिक, जीएसएम, सीडीएमए, एसएमएस, एमएमएस, अंतरराष्ट्रीय कॉल, कॉल डाटा रिकॉर्ड।

-केयर [सेंटर फॉर आर्टिफिशियल इंटेलीजेंस एंड रोबोटिक्स]: इंटरनेट निगरानी की विशेष तकनीक विकसित करने में मदद कर रहा है...............

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Fake HC website mentor in net

Police claimed their first success on Thursday in a cyber crime case lodged last year by a resident who had been duped of money through a fake website in the name of Patna High Court.

Kumar Gaurav, a resident of Magistrate Colony, has been arrested for creating the fake website ' www.highcourtpatna.co.in (it has been removed)..............

The fake website had a link to a webpage which invited applications for recruitment in Group D posts.

The original website address of the high court is www.patnahighcourt.bih. nic.in.

The complaint was lodged on July 25 last year by one Praveen Singh, a resident of Saidpur Road in the Bikhna Pahari area, who was duped of Rs 7,000 on the promise of a job in the court..............

The police first got in touch with the service provider of the fake website. They came to know that 'net4india', a domain name, was the service provider for the website................

The fake website had a webpage ' "Employment notice number 07/2009". The page displayed a list of 175 people, who, it claimed, were already recruited.......................

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Students create mischief online

CHANDIGARH: In an unusual case of cyber crime, over two dozen students of class VII with a prestigious private school in Sector 8 made a false profile of one of their school teachers onFacebook and started posting cooked up comments about her. 

Though the posted comments were not obscene, they were directly linked to the professional conduct of the teacher...............
It is the first such case of cyber crime in the city where students, all juveniles, made a false online profile of their teacher..............  

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NTRO may check cyber crime cases

The government is contemplating making the country’s premier technical intelligence agency, the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), the nodal agency for all cyber-related crimes in the country.

Highly placed government sources said there was a growing view within the government that with the increasing use of technology, particularly computers, in terror related cases there was an urgent need to have an umbrella organization which can co-ordinate with all State agencies and police force on such cases..............


The National Technical Research Organisation has also been directed to expand its area of operation and a new unit within the agency has now been carved out to deal exclusively with what is being described as “increasing cyber threat from China.’’ It is suspected that China-based cyber experts are always attempting to hack into the data base and sites India’s sensitive ministries and departments to access information....

At a recent meeting of the NTRO top brass and senior intelligence and security officials it was believed that Indian agencies were far behind China when it comes to expertise in cyber related crime. Thus, the NTRO has been directed to immediately enhance it capacity to match that of China...............
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Union home ministry puts cops on duty to net young cyber criminal

The Union home ministry has issued an unusual advisory for cops across the country-it has listed out various measures to reduce growing instances of cyber crime among minors..............

According to the advisory, "if any cyber cafe owner allows minors to surf porn sites or carry out other crimes, he could be arrested". It has mentioned the kinds of cyber crimes children have been found to indulge in, such as stalking, harassment, defamation, character assassination and sending threat emails...................

A case in point is that of a young boy from Kashmir who sent out a threat email following the Delhi high court blast. The email's origin was traced and the boy arrested. Then, around half a dozen minors were caught by Mumbai's cyber police for sending terror or threat emails to television channels claiming to be members of terror outfits or just as attention-seeking stunts. A 16-year-old was convicted in one such case in the city. 

There have been cases where school-going children have been found to have written derogatory remarks about their classmates on social-networking sites. Some minors have been found involved in identity theft, hacking of emails or accounts on social networking websites. Besides, there is unwanted exposure to sexually explicit material.....................
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Prof, neighbour arrested over Mamata cartoons

Police arrested Ambikesh Mahapatra, a professor of chemistry of Jadavpur University for sending e-mails that show chief minister Mamata Banerjee, former railway minister Dinesh Trivedi and railway minister Mukul Roy in a poor light.....................


The cartoon in question has been doing the rounds in West Bengal after Mamata forced Trivedi out of the rail ministry and put Roy in his place. Apparently, the cartoon is a caricature of Satyajit Ray's detective masterpiece on celluloid Sonar Kella......................


Mahapatra has sent the mail to about 65 people. 
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With 82 percent of technology users concerned with webcam hacking

In the wake of several high publicity webcam hacking cases, 82 percent of laptop users expressed concern about the possibility of their webcams being 'hijacked........

Representing the latest trend in cybercrime, webcams provide an easy way for individuals and organizations to spy on users. Last fall, a Rutgers student committed suicide after a webcam secretly videotaped him kissing another man. Unfortunately, such incidents are not limited to college pranks....................

These cases illustrate that webcam hacking is not a hypothetical risk; it's a reality.........

Hackers can access a webcam in less than a minute, and would-be hackers easily learn the process with tutorials and free spying software available for free on the Internet. Since most laptops, tablets and an increasing number of gaming devices and televisions are manufactured with built-in webcams, the potential for webcam privacy invasion grows daily.

Webcams provide cybercriminals with access to potentially embarrassing information that could be used to bully or blackmail laptop owners. Beyond peeping, the technology also provides opportunities for cyber-stalking, hate crimes, burglary and identity theft.......

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Not working, only networking

Indians on vacation may keep away from official emails and phone calls but when it comes to remaining connected with their friends,social addiction will see them hooked on to networking sites, updating status messages, uploading photographs and posting comments. Cradling the ubiquitous smartphone in their pockets, social media addiction has taken over work addiction for the fast-growing tribe of tourists whose religion is to keep their friends updated on every minute aspect of their holiday................ 

The survey found that those from Kolkata were the most addicted to social media networking sites and so were likely to post regular updates when on a holiday. They were followed by people from Delhi...................

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Networking sites to the rescue

When a major tsunami hit the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004, newspapers and TV channels had gone into overdrive to explain what a tsunami is.

Seven years later, the word tsunami needs no introduction. Wednesday’s earthquake off the west coast of northern Sumatra triggered a wave of trends on social networking and micro blogging sites. Facebook witnessed thousands of postings alerting friends and near and dear ones while on Twitter seven of the top 10 trends were related to the tsunami.

Even national governments used Twitter and Facebook to issue alerts about tsunami. The Union ministry of external affairs posted updates about the earthquake and its aftershocks and alerted Indians living in tsunami-prone countries particularly Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore........................

Thanks to mobile phones, social networking and micro blogging sites, people started taking precautionary measures even before the governments officially issued tsunami alerts to warn citizens...................

Trends on Twitter alerted users of the earthquake which had its epicentre near the west coast of northern Sumatra. The trends not only warned people of a possible tsunami but also about the safety measures to be taken in such an eventuality. Ironically, the TV channels in their rush to give ‘Breaking News’ only seemed to create only more panic...........

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IPL 5: Bookies shift base to the internet

Cricket betting is making waves online. It is all set to cross Rs 75,000 crore mark this year, if some high profile bookies are to be believed. Last year, it is said they did a “business of Rs 50,000 crore.” The bookies, who fear constant police raids, have become active in ‘somewhat-safe virtual world’ than from operating in the ‘not-so-safe physical world’. It is said that the slow approach of the City’s Central Crime Branch (CCB) in tracking such cases are “helping” them flourish................

Some officials who work in CCB’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) are not even equipped enough to hack even an online account...............

"There are a lot of online websites and closed communities on social networking sites which deal with real money. On paper, during registrations, they pose as just gamers involved in gambling,” said an online bookie, operating from Mumbai, under the condition of anonymity.................

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Cyber war unleashed ahead of Gujarat polls

The Gujarat polls are still eight months away. But the cyber space has already become a battlefield between the supporters of tech-savvy Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and his opponents.

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogs, e-mails, websites, video uploading sites and every possible avenue on the internet is being used to attract the attention of the net-savvy, especially youths, towards Modi.

His opponents, chiefly the Congress, which calls him an 'internet manipulator' is not lagging behind this time in trying to match him on every step in the cyber space. Also, some NGOs opposed to Modi, have also been very active on the internet in the campaign against him......................

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Teachers abused on the internet

Teachers are facing death threats, abuse and allegations of serious crimes by pupils and parents through social networking sites.................

Online abuse of teachers is widespread, with more than two-fifths (42%) of those questioned saying they had been a victim of it, a survey by the NASUWT teaching union has found.

Of those, more than three-fifths (61.2%) said a pupil had written an insulting comment about them on a social networking or internet site, while more than a third (38.1%) said a student had made comments about their competence or performance as a teacher. And nearly one in 10 (9.1%) said they had faced allegations that they behaved inappropriately with pupils.

One teacher told the survey that a student had posted that they were going to "slit my throat", while a second said a pupil had written "my English teacher should actually die" and a third said a student had posted that a teacher "is a rapist".

And around 16% of those surveyed said that they had had a comment posted about them by a parent in the past two years. Of these, more than half (52.7%) said they had faced insulting comments, 47.7% said there had been comments about their performance, and 13.3% said there had been allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards students...............

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30 per cent of global web traffic is porn

Around 30 per cent of all internet traffic is pornography, and the biggest porn site gets over four billion page views and 350 million unique visits per month, a study has found.

The ExtremeTech website said the only other websites that surpass this figure in size are Googleand Facebook....

The report uncovered the viewing figures for porn website Xvideos from Google's DoubleClick Ad Planner, which uses cookies to gather information about users. It also used actual data from the second biggest porn site, YouPorn, to check how much data is being transferred out of the website's servers.

The average length of time spent on Xvideos was 15 minutes. Around 29 petabytes a month, or 50 gigabytes per second, of pornography is being transferred.

The YouPorn website hosts over 100TB of porn, gets 100 million page views and transfers 950 terabytes per day.

Earlier this year, over 6,400 passwords and emails of YouPorn users were hacked and details revealed online.......

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Taiwanese kills wife's Facebook friend

A jealous Taiwanese husband led an assault on a Facebook user who had flirted with his wife online, beating him to death with baseball clubs...............

Chou You-huang, a 34-year-old resident of south Taiwan's Pingtung county, told police that he had requested a meeting with the 40-year-old victim, Chuang Shih-chang, after he found out about the online relationship.

When Chuang turned up at the agreed spot outside a restaurant early Saturday morning, Chou and two of his friends attacked him with baseball bats..........

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BlackBerry to 'allow Indian government to monitor messages'

The secure communications of India's 400,000 BlackBerry owners could soon be lawfully accessed by government officials, the unnamed official said, adding that RIM is preparing for "providing live access" to customers' encrypted servers

"They have in principle agreed to provide us recorded data from their servers," India's the Mint business newspaper quoted an unnamed Indian ministry official as saying.

"Now they have assured us that they will discuss the issue first among themselves and find a way to meet our demands. Later, they would be providing live access to BES [BlackBerry Enterprise Server]," the official told the paper.

However, the threat of a blackout for the 400,000 BlackBerry owners in India still looms after months of terse, but largely fruitless, negotiationsbetween RIM and India's telecoms ministry.

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Youth pledges wife's jewels to pay online fraudster

A 26-year-old youth, who received an email that he was selected in a lottery draw and had won Rs 6 crore, replied to the letter, becoming trapped in an online scam. He pledged his wife's gold jewels and sent Rs 2 lakh to an unknown person's bank account. On Monday, when the youth realized he had been duped, he submitted a petition to the city police commissioner..........

The youth who refused to reveal his name worked as a manager in a two wheeler show room in Erode. He had received a mail in March stating that he had won Rs 6 crore and two lap tops in a lottery. The mail sent by James Grey from London stated that he had been chosen as the HP lottery award winner of the year.

The youth had believed the mail and replied immediately. He gave his mobile number and personal details to James Grey who asked him to send Rs 2 lakh, for him to send his winnings to India. Initially James had asked Rs 24,000 from the youth for customs clearance. Later, he demanded Rs 2 lakh. The youth pledged his wife's gold jewels and paid Rs 2 lakh in three installments. James then demanded Rs 4.5 lakh to obtain legality certificate to get clearance from the British High Court. Eventually, the youth realized he had been duped..............

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