SMSing obscene jokes can land you in jail

Think twice before you SMS that really funny obscene joke or blindly forward a photograph--you could land yourself behind bars or unknowingly act as a conduit for a terrorist gang, warn IT experts.

"Terrorist use the net for achieving their goals. An innocent man may be unknowingly drawn into the terrorist network, when he receives a photograph of a beautiful woman from a stranger, who then asks him to forward it to 21 friends to win a prize. The photograph could contain a hidden terrorist message encrypted within," Vijayshankar, consultant, Cyber Law and Techno Legal Cyber Security, warns.

The attack on Parliament was linked to hidden messages SMSed to various people in the garb of a beautiful photograph of leading Indian actress, he said.

"Hence, one should not forward messages received from unknown persons," says Vijayshankar who is part of the IT Professionals' Forum group which is organising a web seminar on June 29 on www.itpfindia.org to warn people on cyber crimes.

"Cyber crime is no longer happening only to people working with higher technology.It has begun to affect ordinary people and was reaching the smaller cities and towns as well," Vijayshankar told PTI.

Even a person who has never used the net could become a victim of cybercrime. Citing an example of housewife in Coimbatore, he said the housewife who did not know how to use a computer began receiving obscene calls.Investigations revealed that her phone number had been posted on the net by a relative from her own house since the two were not on good terms, he said.

Youngsters, who often threw caution to the winds and indulged in 'cyber adventure', could land themselves in the grip of law, says Vijayashankar, quoting an instance where an employee of a leading company hacked into the e-mail of his friend and sent an obscene e-mail to his friend's new employer even before his colleague could take up the job.

"The innocent colleague on landing at the office was handed over a sack order even before he joined the company. However, with subsequent help from the cyber crime cell, he was able to prove his innocence and track down the offensive e-mail to his friend, who has now lost his job," he said.

Sending obscene jokes also may no longer be a laughing matter, if a person offended by the joke decided to take action against the sender under the new cyber law.

"Anything within the domain of an electronic document, including cell phones, e-mail, blogs can provide evidence in cyber crime. An employee of a leading company, who wrote defamatory words against a rival organisation on his blog, was taken to task by the rivals, who demanded punitive action against him and the company was forced to ask him to resign," says Vijayashankar.

"Replace adventure with caution and do not 'freak out' on the net because in cyberspace there is no concept like anonymity. Anything and everything can be tracked down," he said, adding it was easier to track a cyber crime compared to physical crime because one left behind electronic documents and secondly because the investigator sitting in one place could track you down no matter where you are.

The virus 'I love You' which hit the net was tracked down to a student in Phillipines. "You can't escape no matter how smart you think you are," he said.

W Bengal: Maoists burn down railway station

Maoists burnt down Birandih railway station, 55 km off Purulia in West Bengal, and assaulted railway staff and whisked them out of the building as part of their economic blockade early on Wednesday.

Three railway staff and RPF personnel were asked to leave the station building at gunpoint before the Maoists burnt down the station building and damaged important documents and papers, K S Mukjherjee, Special Deputy Commercial Manager (Adra division), said.

Train services on the section were disrupted and many long distance trains were diverted through alternative route.

Mukherjee said the Railways informed both Purulia police and their Jharkhand counterparts about the incident.

RPF personnel have rushed to the station.

The two-day economic blockade entered its final day on Wednesday, with the CPI (Maoists) protesting against the state and central government's globalisation, industrialisation and SEZ policies.

Mumbai world's most densely populated city: UN report

Major cities in the world including Mumbai and Kolkata are witnessing a rare phenomenon as the number of people who are moving out of these metros are on an increase, contrary to what has been predicted.

A UN report said these cities have far greater number of people moving out than into them and few of these cities will be of the size that doomsayers had predicted for them in the 1970s.

Even though by next year more than half of the world population will be living in urban areas, the urban growth is showing a decline in most regions, the United Nations Population Fund said.

Population of towns and cities in developing countries like India is set to double in the space of a generation, while urban population in developed world is expected to grow relatively lower, the State of the World Population 2007 report, which was released on Wednesday said.

In comparison to the urban population growth rate, the world's rural population is expected to decrease by some 28 million between 2005 and 2030.

Mega cities are still dominant but they have not grown to the sizes once projected and has consistently declined in most world regions says, the report said.

Pointing out that large cities like Kolkata or Seoul have more people moving out than in, the report says few are close to the size that doomsayers had predicted for them in the 1970s.

Among the 20 mega cities, the population of only six grew at rates consistently above 3 per cent a year over the last 30 years.

The others experienced mainly moderate or low growth, it said.

The report suggests that over the next 10 years, the population of only Dhaka and Lagos are expected to grow at rates exceeding 3 per cent a year.

Pointing out that 52 per cent of the world urban population continues to live in smaller cities having less than five lakh people, it said small cities will dominate over larger cities when it comes to urban growth in the foreseeable future.

The report said 28 per cent of Indian population live in urban areas while 55 per cent of Indian urban residents live in slums.

Forty per cent of India's urban residents has no access to safe water source, it said adding Mumbai is the most densely populated city in the world with 29,650 per square kilometre and projected that Mumbai will be the second most populous city in the world by 2020 with over 25 million inhabitants.

Suggesting that poor people will make up a large part of the urban growth, it says most urban growth comes from natural increase (difference between the number of births and number of deaths) rather than migration.

Developing regions as a whole will account for 93 per cent of the urban growth while Asia and Africa for over 80 per cent.

The report also suggested that between 2000 and 2030, Asia's urban population will increase from 1.36 billion to 2.64 billion and both Asia and Africa will include almost seven out of every ten urban inhabitants in the world.

The report also suggested that more than half of the Chinese population will be urbanites in less than a decade with 18 million migrating from rural areas to cities every year.