Net ninjas fighting revenge porn

Sexually explicit content on the internet is just a click away, but some of it is not backed with consent and that is the catch. (Representational image: Charles Duvio via Unsplash)

The most complicated whodunits have moved to cyberspace. When the criminals are invisible, internet sleuths have their work cut out for them. Unlike the eccentric detectives we know, who fight felony in brooding or dashing ways – like Karamchand, Byomkesh Bakshi, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple – and unlike the most colourful and memorable of culprits on screen – like Don, Mr A, Lupin and Danny Ocean – the anonymous nature of misdeeds in the ether takes investigations deeper into tech orbits.

One of the slimiest heists is that of identity and impersonation. Paedos and pervs abound, online grooming of children by predators is all too easy. Click a link and lose all your money. Comps are hacked all the time, webcams can be spying on us from anywhere. Sextortion – a form of blackmail that involves putting up nude photos or compromising videos of former lovers/partners on websites as a punishment for being dumped – has been rampant ever since the net set itself up and smartphones were born. Revenge porn is a tool and toy in the hands of an irate Romeo.

Intimacy sours and intimate shoots in the bedroom are made public by the peeved party. In the tradition of acid throwing and roadside molestation, this form of blackmail, usually accompanied by the name and phone number of victims as if they have put this out themselves, is just keeping up with modern automation.

The target of such an attack must depend on her inner strength to get through this extreme privacy violation. The moral brigade will object to the pictures having been taken in the first place. If she has the presence of mind to report it, Instagram can take the photos down in no time. But the damage is already done. With no way of knowing where the images will pop up next and who all can see them, the mental torture continues.

A few years ago when Facebook asked revenge porn victims to send their nude pictures to them so that Facebook could turn them into a hash (a digital identity) and detonate the pictures by finding them wherever they could, it had sounded iffy. But this process did help to track and take down some of this content. Now that TikTok and Bumble have joined the Meta operations, cyber activism just got tighter. Machine is trying its best to become the knight in shining armour to a damsel in distress.

In India, where stalking is a way of wooing, posting such pictures online to persuade a former lover to return is only an organic follow-up. Not only do most of them get away with it, even if caught there are no legal procedures in place. The plot of the Malayalam film Drishyam hinged on just such a blackmail, where pictures taken clandestinely were threatened to be made public and all hell broke loose.

Sexually explicit content on the internet is just a click away, but some of it is not backed with consent and that is the catch. Watch out, offenders, cyber police will shoot at sight.