Table of Contents

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my teacher Mr.

Manoj George, who has given us the golden opportunity to express our
thoughts and combine our opinions with the help of research and analysis
in order to do this wonderful project of English Core on the topic “Social
Media – A Sophisticated Means of Stalking”

This topic has not only helped us to understand how useful social media is
but also how dangerous it can be. This project has allowed us to learn about
the history of social media, various uses, role of social media in the society
and also various crimes that are committed by the people online. We the
group members have tried our level best to gather all the information and
present it in a way that it is easy to understand and beautiful.

I would like thank Ameen Rasheed, Aaron Thomas, Murtaza, Rihan

Siddiqui for their cooperation and hard work in order to present this
project in front of you within the given time frame.
Objective

 To access incidence data on Social Media through the internet.

 To educate others on how social media has evolved throughout the

years.

 To highlight various features of social media through real life

examples.

 To encourage the safe and legal use of social media.

 To create awareness among the young audience on the dangers of

social media.

 Increase the overall understanding of people on social media.

Introduction – What is Social
Media?

Social Media can be defined as a collective term for all the websites,
applications etc that allow the users to interact, communicate, share their
content etc. People use social media to stay in touch with their family,
friends, colleagues and others. It is an interactive technology that can also
be used to promote their business by advertising their products on
platforms such as Instagram, Threads (An application by meta),
Facebook, Twitter etc. It helps
businesses track, measure and
analyze the attention the
company gets from social media,
including brand perception and
customer insight.

A few examples of social media

are as follows:

1. Instagram
2. YouTube
3. Facebook
4. Twitter
5. TikTok
6. WhatsApp

These applications can only be used

to interact with people if the user is
connected to the internet. Otherwise
the user may not be able to interact
with others.
History - Social Media Then vs. Now

Billions of people have been using social media since so many years, but
where did it all start? It all started on May 24, 1844, when Samuel Morse,
an American painter and inventor had sent the world’s first electronic
message from Baltimore in the state of Maryland to Washington D.C. in
which he wrote “What hath God wrought?” While the roots of digital
communication run deep, most contemporary accounts of the modern
origins of today’s internet and social media point to the emergence in 1969
of the Advanced
Research
Projects Agency
Network — the
ARPANET.

BBS, Bulletin
Board System
are one of the
first forms of
social media in
the late 1970’s.
They are hosted
on personal computers and are accessible to one person at a time. Then we
had the Internet Relay Chat which was first introduced in 1988 and it was
usually used for link and file sharing between various users. Later we had
one of the world’s first social media platforms, the Sixdegrees. It was
launched in 1997, a year before Google was launched. In its prime time
between 1997 to 2001, it had reached 1 million users (Users could create
profiles, either personal or professional, and also add friends. However it
was shutdown in 2001.
 This is a screenshot of the application IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

The use of global social media has increased since past few decades
How Did Social Media Advance in
2000s?

In terms of modern social media,

Friendster was the first very popular
network. It was launched in 2002
and had registered over 100 million
users. This platform could be used to
discover friends and express their
growing networks.

LinkedIn was founded in 2003,

which was the first used mainstream
network for business.

Another social media network published in 2003 was Hi5. It has a million
users active currently. It is mostly popular in Central Africa, Asia and Latin
America.

Facebook started its history when It was first launched in Harvard in 2004
by Mark Zuckerberg. It quickly spread
to other schools and by the year 2008, it
had already become the most famous
social media platform and it is still
currently used by millions of users. It is
still by far one of the most famous social media platforms. It allows users to
create an account and post their photos online, make friends, post videos,
interact with their family, friends and strangers, grow their business by
promoting, advertising. It can also be used for private messaging as well.

MySpace was launched in the year 2004. It was a platform which allowed
users to customize their profiles, embed videos and post music.

By the year 2005, YouTube, A free

online video sharing website was
launched which allowed the users
to upload and create videos. It is
owned by Google and is the second
most visited website after Google
Search. It is free and available on
every smartphone, laptop etc.
Role of Social Media in Society

Role of social media has increased due to various factors such as the
increase in the number of users, development of social media through the
20th and 21st century, introduction of devices such as Mobiles, laptops etc.

As you can see, more than half of the population around the world has
access to social media.

Social media has also allowed people to shop online rather than go to the
stores themselves. Today, people can buy groceries, drugs, electronic
devices etc online. Almost all companies and brands have their own
websites and applications for business and advertising purposes. Shopping
is made easy as it is just one click away.

The rise of influencers around the world for example Andrew Tate has led
to an increase in attraction towards social media amongst the teenagers.
Today, everyone knows who Andrew Tate is even the kids.

Social media has also allowed people to arrange meetings,

video calls, conferences etc online rather than meeting
offline. Companies now can arrange meetings virtually
instead of having it in their own offices. They don’t need to set up a place
and come from different long distance locations.

There was a time when people were not able to go to courts and ask for
justice. But today, social media has become so powerful that we can easily
create awareness over something by just posting it on social media. For
example, the YNW Melly case, people got information about the case by
just scrolling through social media. The Andrew Tate case where he got
imprisoned unjustly. The Benjamin Mendy case where he was accused of
6 rape accusations but he was recently proven innocent. He was in jail for
over a year. People got to know every bit of information about these cases
but how? Was it by investigating the case themselves? No. Was it by
attending the trial in the court? No. It
was just by scrolling on social media
and coming across these cases.

As you can see, it is quite easy to

scroll on social media and come
across these things. In short, social
media allows u to have freedom of
speech and freedom of opinion and
post everything and anything as long
as it does not violate the policy of the
particular platform where you’re
posting it

This is a screenshot of a person

searching ‘YNW Melly’ in order to
learn about his case. Look at the
amount of videos and the views on
each. This is how easy it is to know
about a case or any other event that
is currently happening

This is another screenshot of a

person trying to learn about
Benjamin Mendy, a professional
footballer and how he was in jail for a year due to the accusations of sexual
assault which were later proven false.

These are not the only cases that you can find on social media. The events
that are happening all over the world are easy to find on social media. For
example if you open twitter.com, and click on explore, you will find the
hottest or the most trending topic of the day.
The most trending topic about football on 22/07/2023 was about the
transfer of Kylian Mbappe and how PSG (Paris Saint Germain), a
professional football club in Ligue 1 had put Kylian Mbappe on sale in the
transfer market of football. As you can see, over 193K tweets are just about
his transfer.
Pros & Cons of Social Media

Since the beginning, we’ve been discussing about what social media is, the
history of social media and the role of social media in society. But
obviously, as social media allows everyone and anyone to use these
platforms, misuse of social media and these platforms is bound to happen.
Just like how a knife can be used to cut meat, vegetables and also for
inhuman activities.

Here are a few Pros & Cons of social media:

Advantages Of Social Media Disadvantages Of Social Media

1. Freedom of speech : Anyone can 1. Though freedom of speech is a

post anything they want as long as powerful tool in social media, it can
they do not violate the policy or post also lead to people posting
content that is inappropriate. inappropriate content or fake news,
rumours etc.
2. People have the opportunity to be 2. This can be useful but harmful at
anonymous or to be an identified the same time. People can imitate to
user of the platform be someone else and can put these
innocent people in trouble.
3. It is a free source of information. 3. Though it is a free source of
As we saw in pages 11-13, we got information, people tend to believe
plenty of information just by a click whatever they see on social media
on Twitter and TikTok. without verifying whether it is true
or a fallacy.
4. It can help us make social 4. While this can be helpful when we
contacts. Platforms like Instagram, want to be socially active, it can also
Facebook, TikTok allow u to view lead to harming yourself. You may
other peoples accounts (if they be contacting a hacker or a stalker
choose to make their account or someone who might want to
public). This allows people to harm you. They might ask for your
interact and learn about others. personal information and you might
They can even follow them and trust them with it and give it to
message them. them. But you were ignorant of the
fact that they were trying to trick
you into scamming you.
Social media itself can be very dangerous as millions of people are victims
of cybercrime. The map above shows the amount of money that the victims
have lost due to these cybercrimes.

According to TechJuice, The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) revealed

that the scam call centers in India have stolen more than $10 billion from
American citizens. These scammers usually target the elderly citizens since
the elderly citizens do not have much knowledge of the modern technology
and it is easy to fool them into these scams. Due to this, the FBI had decided
to appoint a permanent delegate in the US embassy in Delhi. This delegate
will mainly work with the government agencies of India to crack down
these scam call centers.
SMS Scams

These are a few examples of how a scammer can trick you into giving your
personal information to him so he can either steal your money or commit
any other crime:
As you can see in the above images, these fraud SMS’s sent by the
scammers are trying to trick me into clicking on the link and giving my
details to them so that they can scam me.

A few more examples of scam messages, emails etc.

How to Protect Ourselves From Scams?

1. Guard your online information: Make sure you do not give your
personal information to anyone. Avoid entering your personal details
on a public computer. Make sure you do not message anyone about
your bank card details or passwords etc.

2. Monitor your accounts: Make sure you monitor your accounts all
over the internet regularly. Try not to keep your account passwords
same on all platforms. Use different set of characters when making a
password. Use https://www.passwordmonster.com/ to ensure that
your password is strong or not.

3. Report suspicious activity: If you think you are a victim of

cybercrime or if anyone is trying to scam you, report it to the
authorities and block the number.

4. Scam Calls: Don't be intimidated by high-pressure sales tactics. If a

telemarketer tries to get you to buy something or to send them
money right away. Cut the call.
5. Gift Cards: If anyone calls you and asks you to buy a gift card from
them, do not purchase anything as companies will not ask you
directly on a phone call to buy a gift card from them.

6. Random Links: If ever you receive any links from a random person,
never click on them as just by a click, all your account details could be
snatched by the scammer.
Social Media – A Sophisticated Means of
Stalking

Now that we are aware of what social media is, its history, its role in the
society, it is clear that social media allows billions of human beings around
the world to communicate and interact with each other. But in page 13, we
read that social media has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the
most dangerous crimes online over social media is scamming as we
discussed. But social media can also be used to commit crimes such as
murder, theft, rape, stalking etc.

According to Forbes in 2019, the Japanese police charged a man with

assault as he used his victim’s Instagram selfies and used the reflection in
the victim’s eyes to find her local train station

Californian police had arrested a 21 year old man on September 2019 after
he allegedly broke into the bedroom of an innocent 13 year old girl. He had
discovered her location by stalking her Instagram posts and other social
media sites.
On April 2018, the police in Florida revealed to the public about the case of
a Pennsylvanian man who for several years, had trawled social media for
young girls to stalk online. He came across a 12 year old girl and then 7
years later, he sent a love letter to her home address.

These are not the only cases. There

are millions of cases where young
girls and boys are being stalked and
are a victim of these crimes.

According to CDC, Center For

Disease Control around 1 in 6
women and 1 in 17 men will
experience stalking during their
lifetime.

“People stalk because they want something from the victim — an

apology, a relationship, sex, fear. In that sense, stalking is goal-
directed and purposeful,” says expert Troy McEwan, an expert in clinical
and forensic psychology from Swinburne University of Technology in
Australia
How to Protect Ourselves from Being
Stalked Online?
According to a January 2020 survey, 44% of internet users had suffered
some form of online harassment. Specifically, 28% reported a severe form
of online harassment, including physical threats and stalking. Moreover,
77% of victims said that they had been harassed or stalked on Facebook.

Cyberstalkers use various ways to intimidate, humiliate and control

victims.

1. They usually comment excessively on a target’s social media posts.

2. They try to blackmail the target by sending threatening or sending

sexually explicit messages. Today, it is even possible to edit and create a
fake picture of a person being naked. These people have misused the
modern technology to threaten their targets.

3. Hacking or hijacking devices the victim on social media.

4. Cyberstalkers usually lie about their age and personal information in

order to fool the victim into giving them their home address or other
information.
To protect ourselves, we must follow these guidelines strictly so that we do
not become a victim of these cybercrimes.

1. Try Googling yourself to find out what information a stalker could find
about you online. If you feel like you have too much of personal information
online, remove it immediately.

2. Enable strict privacy settings on social media platforms such as:

3. Limit online sharing with individuals outside your close friends or family

4. Review friend lists and remove or block unknown individuals

5. Turn off location services metadata when posting photos online, as it

may allow the stalker to trace your whereabouts.

6. Use a security solution and VPN to protect yourself from malware

attacks and eavesdropping on your network.

7. Don't provide sensitive or personally identifiable information such as

your full name, phone number, home address or workplace to individuals
you meet online, in chat rooms, social media or gaming platforms
Use of Social Media in India
India embraced the internet with open arms, and its digital population has
been growing rapidly in the past decade with crossing 600 million active
internet users . What started with simple email correspondences has
expanded to a digital universe with social networking platforms by tech
giants like Meta and Twitter becoming a part of everyday life for millions of
Indians.

India has witnessed a rapid increase in internet penetration, driven by

affordable smartphones and data plans. As more people gained access to
the internet, social media platforms became easily accessible, leading to a
surge in usage.

The availability of affordable smartphones has played a crucial role in the

increased usage of social media in India.
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