Google India to face Criminal Defamation charged in India

Google to face Criminal Defamation in a case filed by Vishaka Industries :

Google India Private Ltd v Visakha Industries and another. Criminal Appeal No. 1987 of 2014 Judgment date : 10.12.2019 

‪Indian Supreme Court said No Protection For Intermediary Under Sec 79 of the IT Act, 2000 From Criminal Defamation Before 2009 Amendment which was as a result of Shreya Singhal Case .

Visakha Industries filed the complaint after the company said it issued legal notices asking Google India to take down the write-up. Google then moved the Andhra High Court for quashing the proceedings, but did not get any relief.

Visakha Industries a public limited company, claimed that it manufactured asbestos cement sheets in all its plants in an environment-friendly manner, but was still targeted by the coordinator of the Ban Asbestos India group. The coordinator wrote a piece against the company, which it claimed injured its reputation. Google had made it easier than ever before to disseminate the defamatory statements to the worldwide audience over the Internet, without taking any due care and diligence to prevent it.

Google India may face Multiple Criminal Defamation cases in India for all cases arising before 2009, Other websites also can face the same fate if courts with jurisdiction agree for delay condoning.

Since Criminal Defamation is allowed for Google, all those bitten by allegedly blackmailing and extortion ist websites like Consumer , Grahak etc should immediately file criminal defamation cases with delay condoning against these websites 

OTP Bombing A New Cyber Crime

OTP SMS Bombing : A new type of revenge cyber crime technique  by people who just get sadist pleasure.

Victim‘s Mobile Phone will start getting hundred/thousands of SMS in his message box from different SMS gateways like Flipkart, Ola, Uber, Zomato, Goibibo, Redbus etc. It can be from any sms gateway via a website which has 'Forgot Password' option on it. 

Earlier, culprits use to run a script which had Forgot Password URLs of 6-7 websites in it and they had to just enter a mobile number of the target victim in the software script, the mobile number gets punched on that website forgot password option for the maximum times the website allows (10 times in many cases). So  now the victim gets 10 OTP messages from that gateway/company whoose 'Forgot Password' link was used and victims mobile number was punched by the culprit several times.

Now a days, Black Hat Developers had developed free bombing apps (namely : Bomb-It-Up) which do the same job automatically having a smart graphical user Interface . The culprit just had to enter the victim's mobile number, no. of messages he want to send and click on a single button 'send'.

These apps are not available directly  on google play store or on IOS App Store but their apk files are easily downloadable from websites when you search for it on google.

Consequences : 

Sometimes people gets thousand/lakh of SMS in their inbox and their memory start filling up, their mobile phone hangs at so much so to the extent that messaging app doesn't even open. This victim person is only left with the option of hard reset with the mobile phone.

Legal Remedy : Section 43(e) read with Section 66 of the IT Act,2000 along with Section 425 of IPC is applicable. This attracts maximum punishment upto 3 years of imprisonment or upto ₹5 Lakhs of fine or both. Remember this is a cognisable offence, so police can arrest the culprit without warrant.

Prevention :

The only prevention to this attack is that 'as soon as you came to know about this attack on your phone, start blocking all the SMS gateways' Generally there are 15-20 gateways at max, block all these gateways once in your messaging app. You'll get no more messages from that gateway.

Know how to Block the SMS

https://www.wikihow.com/Block-Android-Text-Messages

Precaution: Next day  you need to UnBlock the SMS Gateways so you start getting Authentic OTP, PIN ans SMS.

Be Cyber Safe

Adv (Dr.) Prashant Mali

Cyber Security Expert

+919821763157