How To Make The Most Of The Meta-Universe...And Thrive Unscathed In It

Natasha Jog-Head, Public Policy, Instagram, Facebook India (Meta)-lists the company's safety measures, and tells us how to make our favourite apps work in our favour.

- Pratishtha Dobhal

Nightmare scenario: You log onto your Meta universe of applications (WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook) that seem essential to your daily existential shenanigans, and find yourself or your business intercepted by mushrooming fake profiles and the very significant threat of identity theft. What next? Panic stricken, you alert your family, friends, and community members, and wait anxiously for order to restore in your social space—trying to rebuild the trust factor—now that you have been forced to relinquish control of your online identity. Or worse, you find yourself being harassed by a follow/friend request you never signed up for.

According to the India Cyber Threat Report published in 2023 by the Data Security Council of India, an alarming 400 million threat detections across 8.5 million endpoints (users) were registered last year. In 2022, Karnataka had the highest number of registered offences related to online identity theft in India, according to a report published by Statista.

In an op-ed published by Sima Bahous, UN Under-SecretaryGeneral and UN Women Executive Director, in 2022, online violence against women and girls—which now included sexual harassment, stalking, and WhatsApp- and Zoom-bombing (disrupting and infiltrating video conference with objectionable content by unexpected participants)—was evolving and expanding. And that’s even more frightening.