Are strangers stalking your network?

MUMBAI: When Radhika Nair, 21, joined Orkut, she was looking for a way to keep in touch with her wide circle of friends.

What she had not bargained for was some stranger getting his hands on her picture and making a sexually-loaded fake profile in her name. “My friends came across the site first. Just seeing the page with my picture on it was horrible and nerve-racking.”

But such dangers do not seem to deter new or existing members. “Such incidents happen all the time. The onus of providing security rests on sites,” says 23-year-old Trisha Mukherjee, a member of Orkut, Facebook and Batchmates.

Radio jockey Nilesh Ojha, 26, uses Orkut as a medium to interact with his listeners and friends. “Some of my listeners have actually tracked down my friends from my friends’ list and have tried to contact them to get information about me. It’s scary because I can’t monitor who is checking the profiles of my friends.”  

It’s not just Orkut that allows random people to see your profile or contact you. Gargi Sheth, 22, signed up on MySpace because she had read a lot about it.

“None of my friends was there. My inbox would be flooded with messages from people, not just from India, but from all over the world, asking me inane or sexually-loaded questions. They knew where I worked and lived, because I had foolishly posted that information.”

Shomik Roy, however, is still a staunch Orkut fan. “All my friends are on it, it’s a great common ground. It doesn’t matter if someone downloads my profile picture.

While strangers can view my profile, there’s nothing they can take from there.” For Priya Shah, 26, who works in a production house, Orkut is not an alternative, but a viable means to stay in touch with people she would otherwise never meet. “It helps me stay in touch with people who live in other cities,” she says.

Today, MySpace, Orkut and Facebook have become virtual hangouts of youngsters. A typical profile page showcases your interests, personal information, images, video clips, a blog, your friends, and the conversations you have with them. They allow you to interact with people you know in the real world. The danger creeps in when you interact with strangers.

But security has become an issue, and an increasing number of users are moving to safer online communities. Says 21-year-old Elroy Pinto: “Orkut makes it possible for those people whose friendship requests you reject to still access your profile and view conversations with your friends. You have to be careful about loading your photographs on Orkut as they can be downloaded by anyone.”

But do school-goers know that they should be careful about who they add on as friends? Tejal Sinkar, a ninth grade student, says, “My friends warned me about posting pictures of myself on Orkut, so I’ve removed mine. I also keep conversation as impersonal as possible,” she says. 

Sinkar’s parents weren’t even aware of the dangers of social networking until they read about the murder of Adnan Patrawala. “Now they have started questioning me about it,” she adds.