Tales Tinted With Imagination

Cyber Harassment and Her braveness

This is a tale of us about how we (my sister to be precise) entered into a web with foolishness and get out of it with braveness.

During 2012 summer holidays, we all six cousins went to our maternal grandparents home. We as children never got the chance to use smart phone. Our elders made sure that phone is out of our reach, except for study purpose and talking something important with someone. One fine day, as my other four cousins went to farming with our grandpa, me and my elder cousin sister decided to use social media for sometime. Though it was a remote area, we never had any network issue for BSNL. Although we never used facebook, we are aware of that application. Thanks to ads in YouTube and gossips of our friend circle.

Me being a curious cat there, urged her to connect with the virtual world. My obedient sister hesitantly yet excitedly downloaded the app and logged in with the required information. She created account with her name.
At that time for us virtual world means,
Perfect place to interact with people from the corners of the world,
Perfect place to make friends, to chill, to learn.
In short a little paradise.

After setting the profile, a pop of notification came, saying you've a new message from some Mr. X. Our little happiness has no bounds. He started asking all the basic details and even my sister enthusiastically started telling everything. Slowly they turned into friends from strangers. Sometimes, I also used to message him along with my sister. We both were happy at our place as we both want this. The online friendship. One good day, he asked for mine and my sisters photos. At first we denied. But he was reluctant in this matter. He already sent us his photo. So, we kept our insecure thoughts aside and sent our photos. But at that moment what we aren't aware was,
VIRTUAL world too can erase MENTAL peace.

From that day, his way of chatting was changed. One day, he asked my sister for money. She clearly denied saying she is still a final year student. The other day, he sent some stupid messages saying some non sense things. My sister got alerted with his behaviour and started regretting for sending photos. He started bugging my sister to meet him. He started behaving like bipolar. One time he say sorry and the next minute used to act as jerk. Giving both of us shock, he said he is in love with my sister. Sometimes he used to beg her to meet him, other times used to do emotional blackmail. Like a psychopath, he used to say I'll cut my hand or I'll slit your throat and all. Out of blue, he started harassing my sister by making her photo as his weapon. He used to blabber saying I'll edit this picture and put it publicly and even he said he'll make my sister stand Infront of public as a characterless girl. It seriously send chills down in our spine.

My sister was determined to save ourselves from that web which we both entered unknowingly. She took all the important messages screenshots. With screen recorder, she recorded their chat incase if needed. She started her reverse game. She messaged him that video. She politely messaged him saying "stop this non sense right there, if not I will report to police". In return, he questioningly messaged "do you seriously think I'll surrender and live my life behind bars?"
We kind of expected that reply. Luckily, one of our uncle is in cyber crime department. We turned that thing in our favour. We stopped giving empty threats. Then his and our duo conversation is as follows,

We(me and my sister): we have all the required proofs with us and yes if police can't do anything then we will report this matter to cyber crime people.
He: Good drama and nice acting 😆
We: see, there is nothing such as drama here. We are damn serious about it.
He: oh i see... You are some VIP that so called so cyber crime department will consider your case. You village silly girls😂
We: we know some very well known higher authority cyber crime officer.
He: As if I believe you. Duh😄
We: Do you want to see us getting into action with the proofs. We have all your details with us. Don't forget that.
He: haha village girls, along with my photo, all the details I shared with you are fake. Now what will you do with my messages when I'm going to delete my account. Remember I may delete my account but not your photos babe.
She: how dare you! May be whatever you shared with me is fake but don't forget here we are talking about cyber crime. The IP address from which machine I got all these messages can never be erased or deleted. We can trace you with just ip and Mac addresses.

And that's the last message between us. Later we both said everything to our uncle and my uncle made sure he pay for his deeds. Even though my uncle scolded us for our reckless behaviour, he appreciated for our (my sister) courage which we showed when needed and also he is happy because the person who chatted with us is a fraud and a player who was always behind girls and already have many cases on him. Unknowingly we helped them to caught him.
That incident thought us many things. Though we will get abundant knowledge, cyber space or virtual world is only the place for virtual temporary happiness with many scams in it.

Be careful and save yourselves from cyber harassments and crimes.

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