A case that has come up for investigation before the police cyber cell says a lot about the pitfalls formed around us by technology. A photograph, a young woman had posted on her Facebook page, reached YouTube without her knowledge. The photo was used as the cover picture for an audio clip of an obscene phone conversation. It was only a matter of time before the tirade started. Perverse imagination ran wild with stories titled ‘the woman in the picture’. If you think this is an isolated incident, read along.

The Dubsmash clip of a little girl who lip-synced with a funny Malayalam movie dialogue was posted on YouTube by an excited relative. The clip had a rather dubious transformation after that, we found out during an investigation into the abuses of photos and videos online.

The girl's face had become the cover photo of several videos featuring obscene phone calls and similar objectionable content. Naïve viewers could mistake the conversations to be made by the girl.

We also stumbled on YouTube videos of dirty calls with pictures of unsuspecting women as their cover picture. Some of them were shot talking over phone in public places. There were also selfies among these. When we copied the images and Googled them, many of them led to the Facebook pages of their rightful owners. Facebook profile pictures are stolen and used as a tag picture for obscene chats.

One of the photos, that of a beautiful girl in a Kerala sari, was tracked to a Malayalam blog post from 2009 which gave beauty tips. The sad part is, most of them would not have any idea where their pictures land up on the internet.

Delete all? Not quite

We chanced upon a seller of porn. His business thrives on the supply of fresh clips of Malayali girls. We made contact with him by sending someone to buy porn. He downloaded the clips to the buyer's mobile in a few minutes. "Come next week, if you want more. We are getting new videos every now and then," he told the new customer.

He got really candid midway during the conversation. "Guess you know how photos are leaked out when you give your phone for repair. There are apps which can retrieve photos even after you have deleted them permanently. Even "factory reset" does not help. Our network spreads over service centres. The technicians will take out the photos and videos we want. They then pass through experts who modify them, a certain kind of zooming effect on selfies or video effect on still photos, for instance. We then sell them to customers.

"They can get hold of the WhatsApp chat history too. They just have to scan the QR code of WhatsApp and enter it in a computer programme to access your account any time in future. You get a phone and you have access to many people. We will get all their photos and videos. We even use school boys to get mobile phones of others. All we need is five minutes to access the WhatsApp account". "We have experts who search Facebook for photos. We can upload them on other sites and use the photos to force the girls into having sex".

"We sometimes cut out only the feet from the pictures. Just look at Facebook and you would be amazed to see the number of pages dedicated to foot fetish".

We saw hundreds of images of feet on a Facebook page, including baby feet with a silver anklet. Another page was dedicated to images of armpits, mostly cut out from photos of women in sleeveless on Facebook and WhatsApp. The comments below them were even nastier.

For the porn seller these are just market opportunities. "Some women get disillusioned soon after the marriage. We would hit on them. We would keep an eye on the photos posted on Facebook and timings of her chat to ascertain if she is looking for company. Many boys are in our service because they get paid well. The most enterprising among them can hack into a Facebook account in two seconds and copy intimate photos meant only for the friends.

"Migrant labourers buy the videos for Rs 50 each," the porn seller added.

Anti-social media

A woman working in Infopark, Kochi, joined an online aerobics course with an intention to lose weight. The instructor, a Bengaluru-based woman, asked her to send a video of her practising aerobics so that she can give her feedback. The instructor had clearly told her to wear a tight-fitting dress. The student did so. A few days later, the woman came to know that a YouTube video with objectionable content had her face and dancing clips mixed into it. She complained to the police to get the video deleted but did not bother to pursue the case.

A girl from Aluva was getting ready for her wedding, ordering a gown for the big day from a designer in Bengaluru. She had met her online. The designer wanted the girl to send pictures of her in various poses to stitch that perfect dress. She also wanted the bride to send "exposed" pictures to make sure the colour of the gown matched her skin tone. The bride did so, since the designer was also a woman. She also sent the designer the money for the wedding dress. However, there was no sign of the gown as the wedding date approached. When she called up the number, the designer sent back her exposed photos and threatened her. The police could not trace the number. They suspect that the accused was someone living outside India.

A college lecturer in Aluva did nothing of that sort and still got defamed on Facebook. Her online activity was limited to posting poems and notes on contemporary issues. One day she got a call from a friend alerting her of a video someone had tagged on her account. The lecturer was shocked to see a dirty video on her timeline posted by a man she was barely acquainted with.

A student of a women's college in Kochi got a smartphone as a gift from her boyfriend on Valentine's Day. She could use it only when she was in the hostel and had to keep it with her boyfriend whenever she went home. He would keep the phone and recharge it for her whenever she wanted to. After a vacation, the girl was shocked to see several porn clips downloaded into her phone's gallery. She was too embarrassed to ask him about them. The lovebirds parted after the course got over. Later, the girl came to know that a YouTube porn clip had her face morphed into it. Various poses of face were taken from photos on her phone. The ex-boyfriend and his technician accomplices landed in police net for stealing her videos and morphing them onto a porn clip.

An IT professional from Kottayam got her boyfriend to create a Facebook profile for her. The man did so and kept the username and password. Everything went fine until they parted ways later. He posted on Facebook their private and intimate chats.

Take the legal route

You can register complaints with the police and the State Women's Commission if you find photos being abused on social media and internet sites. The local police stations will forward the complaints to the cyber cells as needed. Even the commission will forward the complaints to the police cyber cell.

The Kerala Women's Commission website keralawomenscommission.gov.in

Address: Kerala Women's Commission

Near the Lourdes Church

PMG, Pattam (Post Office)

Thiruvananthapuram

Phone: 0471 2302590,2300509, 2307589, 2309878

(To be continued. Reporting by Sandhya Grace, K Rekha, Remya Binoy, Gayathri Muraleedharan, Neetha Naveen, Gayathri Jayaraj, T S Divya, Anu Mary Jacob, Sreedevi Nambiar, K P Safeena, Juny Joseph, K Sreerekha, Ansu Anna Baby, Ria Joy, Linu Mol Chacko, Ninny Mary Baby and Shahala Kunjumuhammed)