A group of around 30 women members of parliament (MPs) has urged the ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY) to work out a mechanism for the safety of women from adverse impacts of social media like photo morphing, cyber bullying and profile hacking.

Members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on empowerment of women, which is chaired by Bijoya Chakravarty, met senior MeitY officials last month in Hyderabad, where they were given a presentation on various issues that women face on social media platforms and how the government is dealing with them. These included sharing of morphed images on websites and platforms, trolling, etc., sources said.

During the presentation, the MPs asked MeitY officials about the measures the ministry is taking to counter these issues, to which the officials informed that there are several provisions in the IT Act, 2000 that help in protecting women on social media platforms.

Officials also pointed out that the government is constantly working on several fronts to establish better monitoring mechanisms for checking trolling and other subversive activities on such platforms as the internet space is huge and many a times the culprits manage to escape the law.

“MPs have requested the ministry to prepare a road map detailing the measures that the government, social media companies like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter and the general public can follow to check this menace. They also urged MeitY to establish a mechanism through which better tracking of trolling and other activities against women can take place,” a senior official said.

MeitY officials assured the MPs that the ministry will work on this and would also consult the social media companies for suggestions on how to make this space safer for women, he added.

Both men and women on the internet, including social media platforms, generally face issues like profile hacking, photo morphing, offer and shopping scams, romance and dating scams, link baiting, information theft, cyber bullying, etc., a MeitY official explained.

“Considering the dynamic nature of IT and emerging cyber threats, besides the government’s role, continuous efforts are required to be made by owners and users as well to protect networks and data by way of hardening and deploying appropriate security controls,” he said.

According to Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) data, a total of 44,679, 49,455, 50,362, 53,117 and 2,08,456 cyber security incidents including phishing, network scanning and probing, virus or malicious code and website hacking were reported during 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively.