Social Networking – Share Responsibly

"Man is a social Animal" and sharing information is a passionate hobby. With the current advancement in mobile phones and social networking, sharing has become more than a hobby. It has become an everyday task to share views on a topic or personal photos. Some of us even share their day to day tasks and hourly updates in twitter and Facebook. In recent days adding the location to photos (Geotagging) has also become common. Tagging photos with an exact location on the Internet allows random people to track an individual's location and correlate it with other information.

For many of us, posting a photo of one's daily activities may seem like a pretty common thing to do in the world of Facebook and Flickr and in no way as a security risk. I felt the same until I read these two stories about Geotagging and their security Risks.

And the Scary One….

By looking at geotags and the text of posts, you can easily find out where people live, what kind of things they have in their house and also when they are going to be away. Such patterns make things easy for stalkers and may be for burglars.

What is Geotagging Anyway???

Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification to photographs, video, websites and SMS messages. It’s like storing the place where photo was taken or from where a message is posted.

Geotags are automatically embedded in pictures taken with smart phones.  Many people are unaware of the fact that the photos they take with their smart phones and load to the Internet have been geotagged. Photos posted to photo sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa can also be tagged with location, but it is not an automatic function. Most modern digital cameras do not automatically add geolocation metadata to pictures, but that is not always true. Camera owners should study their camera’s manual and understand how to turn off GPS functions.

Location- based Social Networking Applications:

The other set of applications that can provide the location information is Locaton- based Social Networking Applications. Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla, SCVNGR are some of the examples. Most location-based social networking applications focus on “checking in” at various locations to earn points, badges, discounts and other geo-related awards.

For example foursquare users “check-in” at various places using a mobile website. They are then awarded points and sometimes “badges.” Users of foursquare use the service to share their location with friends, meet new people and get coupons. Users can also connect and publish their “check ins” to Facebook and Twitter. If someone is not a friend on foursquare they can still track your whereabouts through Facebook.

Location-based social networking is quickly growing in popularity. Foursquare has over 4 million users. The increased popularity of these applications is changing the way we as a digital culture view security and privacy on an individual level.

What’s the Risk??

Establishes patterns: Location-based social networking applications allow strangers to track your movements every day. If they watch someone long enough they will know exactly when and where to find that person on any given day.

Exposes places of duty and home: By tracking movements and aggregating information, strangers can determine where someone lives and works.

What you can do??

• Avoid geotags on photo sharing applications
• Turn off GPS function on phones
• Be careful when using Locaion-based Social Networking Applications
• Be conscious of what you tweet or share on facebook 

If you can't figure out how to disable the function, contact your smart phone provider, or the website www.icanstalku.com also has instructions for removing the geotag function on several different smart phones models. Check out the following link for the US Military Geotagging Awareness presentation, some of which applies to our social lives as well. http://dmna.state.ny.us/members/geotagging.pdf

Protecting your privacy is not just a matter of being aware and personally responsible since a friend may take a geotagged photo at your house and post it. You need to educate yourself and your friends but in the end, you really have no control.

PS: I don’t want to scare anyone by telling all this stuff, but just want to make sure our lives are safe & secure and warn about the potential security risks which can be avoided easily. So “share only what you want to share” and “share responsibly”.

International Women's Day – 100 th Anniversary

There is an adage in telugu "Yekkada sthreelu gauravimpa badataaro akkada devathalu poojalu andukuntaaru". (In Sanskrit - yatra naryastu poojyante tatra deva ramnataha) which means, “where women are honoured there the Gods rejoice”.

Indian tradition has generally respected womanhood and though we do find derogatory references to women, India has always given equal rights to women.

• We represent our country as our mother - Bharat Mata.
• Indian constitution gave the right for women to vote from the first elections itself unlike many of the now developed countries.
• Women were given an equal and important role during the struggle for Indian Independence.
• Indian women played a major role in Indian politics and economics.

This March 8^th marks the 100^th anniversary of the International Women's Day (IWD).
In these 100 years, a phenomenal change can be observed for this day, from an International Working Women's day to protest the inequalities in work to a day marking global celebration of women. Like every year many events are organised around the world to mark economic, political and social achievements of women.

Why dedicate a day as International Women’s Day???

To paraphrase what United Nations General Assembly says, the day’s significance is to recognize the equality and development of women and to acknowledge the contribution of women in strengthening the society.

For women this day signifies an occasion to review the progress achieved in their struggle to achieve equality and development and also an opportunity to unite, network and mobilize for a meaningful change. India has achieved a considerable success in attaining the equality status for women by providing special quotas for upliftment in Education, Employment and Political sectors. Indian woman has made their mark in every field whether its Art or Sport, you name it and you can find a woman on the top list. India has come a long way in eradicating girl child killing, the domestic violence but still a lot of issues are to be addressed.

The global theme for this year’s Women’s day is “Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women”. Though there is a significant progress in Indian community in terms of woman education, economic and political empowerment, there still needs much to be done. The access to technology for Indian women has increased drastically but still the literacy percentage compared to men is less. There are many places where education is not viable for girls or the drop out rates is very high because of inadequate facilities in schools.

The other areas where significant improvement is required in developing countries like India is the healthcare and security. In the health care sector special care is needed towards maternal health and eradicating congenital diseases. In India, every year about 78,000 mothers die in childbirth and as per WHO, around 65% of deaths across the world are from 11 countries including India. To put the statistics in a different view one in 120 mothers of South Asia die during childbirth.

Just imagine one among 120 has to die just because she is a woman and this is happening in this age of Internet and great medical advances. It seems that preventing congenital heart diseases cost around 100 crores per annum and these are peanuts compared to our total budget and this can save around 1.5 lac children every year. The problem is not with the money but lack of vision and sensible policies.

Gandhiji once said “Our Nation will have achieved true independence and freedom when a woman can walk in the midnight all alone and feels safe”. 

This is not the case in current India and doesn’t seem to be achieved in near future considering the number of violent attacks that are happening against women. Though we have strict laws against these cruel acts, implementation of strict law becomes the problem. Media is playing an important role in exposing such events, but is more concentrating on TRP ratings than fighting till end to bring justice to the victims.

There is still discrimination, though diminishing now a days, among boy and girl child. It’s the duty of every one of us to honor every girl/woman and make sure they get an equal opportunity. I heartfully thank each and every woman in my life who has directly or indirectly inspired me and helped me.

PS: While writing this blog I realized many great things about Indian women, but to keep the post short, thought of writing about it in a separate post.