Belles beware! Facebook bandits are on the prowl

Are you among those who love putting up your most flattering photos on Facebook? Beware - your pictures may be among the several thousands that are being morphed and misused to promote online sex chats and pornographic content.

A group of ethical hackers have now started a crackdown on explicit social media pages in India, revealed cyber security experts. They have reportedly brought down several Facebook profiles and pages engaged in copying pictures of girls from their Facebook albums and misusing them by morphing the images.

Hackers found out that the followers of these pages with explicit content are equipped with cameras and smartphones. Not only do they steal pictures of girls on Facebook, they are also taking photographs of girls at public places and sending them to the administrators of these pages.

Experts believe more than 40 per cent of female users on Facebook are victims of such crimes in India.

''This is the biggest online threat we face today. Criminals are copying and saving pictures of female users on social media. They are using pictures of attractive women to entice users to connect on sex chats. There are several such active pages, but cops are barely doing anything to take them down,'' said cyber crime expert Kislay Choudhary, who has worked with Delhi and Noida Police in several cases.

Earlier, such crimes were committed as an act of revenge, after a break-up for example, but criminals are now using pictures of girls to lure users to paid sex websites or extort money from them.

A team of 15 white-hat hackers of Kerala Cyber Warriors claims to have hacked at least 70 Facebook profiles and several other pages which are running such sex chats.

''From 28 December 2015, we have hacked over 70 profiles and dozens of pages. Our aim is to delete the objectionable pictures and posts which are tarnishing the image of innocent girls,'' a member of the hackers' group told Mail Today.

The team started the crackdown following the arrest of 11 people, including a model and her husband, by the Kerala Police for running an online sex racket.

Kerala Police sources said the racket was busted during an investigation into a complaint on a paedophile page on Facebook called 'Kochu Sundarikal'. Hackers are conducting cyber patrolling to hunt for such profiles and are trying to get complete access to block them.

''If the content is objectionable, it can be removed by reporting abuse, but most of the time this content is uploaded in such a way that it does not violate the community guidelines of Facebook. So, through social engineering, we get control over these profiles and pages and block them,'' a hacker who is part of the team explained.

The sites blocked by hackers have thousands of likes and can be accessed anywhere across the country. Hackers claim that these criminals are faking their identity to create such pages, but they (the hackers) are exposing their phone numbers, address and even their IP addresses, to shame them.

''We exposed details of the criminals' real identity along with their fake profile on our page. Taking legal action is not in our hands, but our work is to expose them. During our investigation, we also found that some are taking pictures of unsuspecting girls at bus stops, cafés and other public places,'' the hacker said.

Even police are flooded with several such complaints, but the action they take is limited – they just block the content.

''The number of these complaints is increasing by the day. We contact Facebook time and again to give us the details of such users, but the reply from them is not prompt. So, we mostly report abuse on the content which is further examined by the service provider following which they remove the content,'' a senior Delhi Police officer said.

The officer admitted that this is not a foolproof solution as the criminals can easily create a similar profile again.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that he used a free mobile application to morph the pictures and then used it as a tool to extort money from the victims.

According to experts, such crimes have become a way to earn easy bucks.

''Earlier such crimes were done by jilted lovers to take revenge but now criminals have made it a business. They first copy pictures of female Facebook users, morph it using basic tools available on Internet and then contact their target and threaten them to make these pictures public. Fearing social stigma, many girls fall prey to their extortion,'' cyber crime expert Kislay Choudhary said.

Cyber crime experts claim that there are many people who are selling pictures of Indian girls to international criminals who are further using it on international porn sites and sex chat network.

''Pictures of many Indian girls can be found on porn or sex websites but these girls are not part of the business. Their pictures are being misused. Shockingly, pictures of Indian girls are in huge demand in Chinese porn industry,'' Choudhary said.

''There are many websites and web tools available for professional editing. But basic morphing can be easily done on free mobile app available on play store,'' said a senior police officer.

Delhi has seen a steady rise in complaints related to such cases, but there have been a few breakthroughs.

''To crack such cases we need the IP address of the criminal and details of his log to track him down. It can be only furnished by the service providers. We repeatedly write to them and pursue the matter but reply from their end is rare,'' senior officer of Delhi Police cyber crime cell said.