Who stole my identity?
By Tabrez Khan
Mumbai, Dec 21, 2007

The issue of data security on the worldwide web has reared its ugly head yet again. Yet another lawsuit has been filed against another errant company trying to device innovative ways of luring traffic to its website. This time its Facebook, the popular social networking website that has sued Istra Holdings, a Canadian company, and 17 other persons for creating bots that stole personal data of Facebook users. Bots, by the way, are software applications in which an automated script fetches, analyses and files information from web servers at many times the speed of man (Thank you Wiki!).

Istra Holdings allegedly used the bots to inveigle personal information of Facebook users and send them promotional e-mails about its portfolio of porn websites. Facebook is livid at Istra's brazenness in using data owned by it, if at all such a thing as owning user data present on the worldwide web exists!

Network security analysts, at least some of them, reckon the act is really not a crime! Data harvesting goes on in good measure on the worldwide web and this is nothing new. True, but the larger issue is of trampling on the rights of the users by stealing their personal data from other sites. This is a serious breach of trust and although it happens with a regularity that makes it necessary to be dealt with.

Telecommunications is another area where this irritant exists and India has recently woken up to this nuisance by clamping down hard on unsolicited commercial telephone calls through a 'do not disturb' regime. This will ensure that personal data will not be used to sell financial or any other kind of products to the user against his or her wish, not at least through the cell phone.

Another issue here is the controlling of data by a few players on the web. Some observers look at it as some kind of antitrust thing warranting anti-monopoly measures. Social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace are privy to an extraordinary amount of personal data, whether this ought to be the case is really a rhetorical question. After all it is a consequence of the user's right to determine where they go for their social needs and if some sites are popular among them, so be it.

Users on their part also need to be more responsible in the way they create profiles, post personal data on the web and be really choosy about the websites they visit.


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