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| Online Harassment of Women and the GitHub Issue |
News: Online Harassment of Women and the GitHub Issue
Recently, in
the case of online harassment of Muslim women, the name of an app has come to
the fore, this app called "Buli Bai" used photos stolen from social
media handles of women and used to buy and bid on women, invited to set up.
It is worth
noting that in June 2021, the same app called "Sully Deals" came to
the fore in which photographs of Muslim women were being stolen and auctioned.
The common thing in both these cases is that both the apps used in them were
developed through the US best online open-source software repository service
'GitHub'.
What is GitHub?
GitHub, a
USA-based company, is the world's largest open-source developer community
platform where users upload their projects and code for others to view and
edit.
Under this,
any developer i.e. software maker can upload any software code or app code, or
software idea to this platform, and others can also help them to improve them,
find errors and fix problems.
Any public project on this platform can be viewed by others and most of its features are free for users, the GitHub platform uses Git software, which was created in 2005 by Linus Torvalds, the developer of the open-source operating system Linux.
What was GitHub's reaction to all of this?
GitHub
removed these apps but did not reveal who was responsible.
GitHub
maintains policies against harassment, discrimination, and content or conduct
that incite violence; the User's account is suspended after investigation of
reports of similar activity.
Content must
be respectful and non-objectionable as per GitHub's stated policies.
It does not
allow the use of the Site to incite violence against others or to organize,
promote or incite acts of terrorism.
How does GitHub delete an account and what are the problems related to it?
If a user is
reported to have violated the Platform's Terms, GitHub may remove or block
their content and suspend or terminate the account.
But the
problem is that in GitHub anyone can open an account by just giving an email id
and uploading a code.
So even if
an account is blocked or terminated, a new account can be created with another
email ID, and the offending software code or apps can be re-uploaded under a
different name.
Several
women have confirmed that their photos were used in both the apps' cases.
Many experts
have also told the coding of both the apps to be the same; many cases related
to this in India have been registered with Maharashtra and Delhi Police.
Statistics related to cybercrime in India
According to
the data, there was an increase of 11.8% in cybercrime cases in India in 2020
and according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), there was a 63.5%
increase in the number of cybercrimes registered in the year 2019 as compared
to 2018. It has increased
According to
the Ministry of Home Affairs, only 2.5% of the total complaints registered on
the portal get converted into FIR. These figures are worrying about themselves.
Government efforts to stop cybercrime
CERT-IN:
CERT-IN full
form is the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team and It is a nodal agency
that deals with cyber security threats like hacking and phishing.
I4C:
The full
form of I4C is Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center and It helps in
centralizing cyber security checks.
Cyber Swachhta Kendra:
This is a
botnet cleaning and malware analysis center.
National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal:
It is a
citizen central initiative that enables citizens to report cybercrimes online.
Crimes against women, children, especially child pornography, child sexual
abuse material, online content related to rape/gang rape, etc. can also be
reported.
So this is a
variety of government efforts through which the government tries to deal with
cybercrime.
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