Social networking sites like Orkut, MySpace, Hi5 and Xing have caught the imagination of the netizens and many anecdotes are adrift in cyberspace as to how netizens have established contacts with long lost friends and loved ones. But these have a flip side. Creating a profile in these websites is an easy process and this has created many issues. Problems abound in the cyberspace because of its anonymous nature. Often the only requirement for creating a profile in these sites is a valid email address. As such there is no authenticating mechanism for verifying the details provided by a user.

Social networking sites like Orkut, MySpace, Hi5 and Xing have caught the imagination of the netizens and many anecdotes are adrift in cyberspace as to how netizens have established contacts with long lost friends and loved ones. But these have a flip side. Creating a profile in these websites is an easy process and this has created many issues. Problems abound in the cyberspace because of its anonymous nature. Often the only requirement for creating a profile in these sites is a valid email address. As such there is no authenticating mechanism for verifying the details provided by a user.

The secure feeling provided by the anonymous nature prompts many a person to commit crimes in cyberspace which he would not even dream of committing in the real world. In a case of ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ personalities, people who lead perfectly normal lives in the real world become criminals in the cyberspace.

Many crimes related to social networking sites involving personation, defamation and anti-national activities have been reported recently. In a recent case in the state of Kerala in India a youth copied the profile of another person complete with his family pictures and contact details. He befriended the friends of the victim and entered scraps (short messages in Orkut parlance) containing obscene and lewd remarks. The victim noted this when his friends complained to him. He complained to the local police and a case was registered under S.416 of the Indian Penal Code (Cheating by personation) and S.67 of the Information Technology Act,2000 ( Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form). Many such false profiles including those of Kerala Chief Minister V.S..Achuthanandan, Opposition leader Oommen Chandy and others exist in Orkut. The creators of many of these profiles do it without realizing the gravity of the crime that they are committing. They do not realize that they can be traced by tracking the I.P address of the computer from which they have accessed the site.

Another major cause of concern is the number of ant-national groups who have their presence in such social networking sites. But sites such as Orkut have rendered their co-operation to law enforcement agencies to crack down on such communities. Google has entered into an agreement with the enforcement directorate of Mumbai Police in India regarding objectionable matter on their site and to provide the IP address of the computer from which such objectionable matter has been posted on the site. Such co-operation between law enforcement agencies and the concerned websites will go a long way in cracking such cyber crimes