Kathmandu / Schools, colleges, and various institutions have been hosting
webinars to make the best use of the lockdown period after the COVID-19 crisis began. Girls In Tech - Nepal in collaboration with Genese Cloud Academy has
been hosting webinars, three each week, since the end of March 2020. Over two
dozen of webinars have been already organized and getting encouraging
participation of around a hundred enthusiastic youths in each session.
Sadly, the webinars have started getting disturbed by spammers who
participate anonymously with the sole intention of disturbing these sessions.
After severe disturbances, some of the webinars hosted by Girls In Tech - Nepal had to be
terminated and postponed.
Girls In Tech – Nepal is not the sole victim of such
occurrences. Robotics Association of
Nepal (RAN) also faced similar spammer activity in a virtual panel
discussion hosted on 27 April by its Miss Tech wing. Few
spammers posted comments with vulgar words in the chat thread of the session’s
LIVE video making the situation awkward for all the guests and participants.
Similarly, NxtGen – a
non-profit organization under the Pulchowk
Engineering Campus also faced a similar incidence on ‘COVID-19 Preparedness for Students’
session hosted on 27 April. The session was hosted to prepare individuals for
upcoming uncertain times due to the COVID-19 outbreak. During the event, the
organizers noticed some audiences from fake emails violating cybersecurity laws
which left the audience and the speakers to misery. However, NxtGen was able to
immediately fix the lack of security on the platform that the individuals
exploited and promptly began working with law enforcement. Furthermore, the
NxtGen team has noted all the information of these breachers by tracing their
emails and plans to file a cybercrime case soon.
After experiencing disturbances by spammers in its webinars, Girl in Tech – Nepal team tracked the
fraudulent people involved in the activity.
Talking about how the group was successfully tracked and what steps the
team is taking to stop such incidences, Anjani Phuyal, CEO of Genese Cloud
Academy and founder of Girls In Tech - Nepal shared,
“After we faced such disturbances, we tracked
the users through their emails and we came to know they were doing it in an
organized way. They had formed a private Facebook group where they used to note
down all the webinars that are happening in Nepal and abroad. After the
webinars started, they would spam & hijack these sessions. Such activities
are cybercrime and punishable by law. After we tracked them and found that they
are young college students who didn’t know the consequences of such activities,
we contacted and warned them that we will take action if they continue such
behaviour. They have promised to not repeat such activities in future and provided
a written apology and hence we decided to forgive them as taking them with law
enforcement at this stage will ruin their career and life.”
Similarly, Shova Shedai, Miss Tech Coordinator at Robotics Association of
Nepal shared,
“We faced spammer activity during our virtual panel discussion live
through Facebook page. A Facebook user through an anonymous profile made
multiple comments using vulgar words in the LIVE video of the virtual panel
discussion. We had senior and respected speakers so we felt bad seeing such
comments, and had to delete the comments at that moment. Such spammer activity
is really disgusting and we don’t want to let this type of crime go as normal.
We are raising our voices for controlling this kind of activity.”
Internet security and cybercrime is a growing concern all across the
world. Because of lack of knowledge about laws, many cyber-criminals don’t know
what they are doing is a crime. Many of those involved in such activities are
doing it thinking they can’t be tracked if they remain anonymous and can get
away easily after committing such incidents. However, such activities shouldn’t
be taken lightly and we shouldn’t let them go easily after doing all the harms.
It’s high time we raise awareness about cybercrime and internet security.