#FactCheck - Fake Image Claiming Patanjali selling Beef Biryani Recipe mix is Misleading

Introduction

In the era of digitalisation, social media has become an essential part of our lives, with people spending a lot of time updating every moment of their lives on these platforms. Social media networks such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube have emerged as significant sources of Information. However, the proliferation of misinformation is alarming since misinformation can have grave consequences for individuals, organisations, and society as a whole. Misinformation can spread rapidly via social media, leaving a higher impact on larger audiences. Bad actors can exploit algorithms for their benefit or some other agenda, using tactics such as clickbait headlines, emotionally charged language, and manipulated algorithms to increase false information.

Impact 

The impact of misinformation on our lives is devastating, affecting individuals, communities, and society as a whole. False or misleading health information can have serious consequences, such as believing in unproven remedies or misinformation about some vaccines can cause serious illness, disability, or even death. Any misinformation related to any financial scheme or investment can lead to false or poor financial decisions that could lead to bankruptcy and loss of long-term savings.

In a democratic nation, misinformation plays a vital role in forming a political opinion, and the misinformation spread on social media during elections can affect voter behaviour, damage trust, and may cause political instability.

Mitigating strategies

The best way to minimise or stop the spreading of misinformation requires a multi-faceted approach. These strategies include promoting media literacy with critical thinking, verifying information before sharing, holding social media platforms accountable, regulating misinformation, supporting critical research, and fostering healthy means of communication to build a resilient society.

To put an end to the cycle of misinformation and move towards a better future, we must create plans to combat the spread of false information. This will require coordinated actions from individuals, communities, tech companies, and institutions to promote a culture of information accuracy and responsible behaviour.

The widespread spread of false information on social media platforms presents serious problems for people, groups, and society as a whole. It becomes clear that battling false information necessitates a thorough and multifaceted strategy as we go deeper into comprehending the nuances of this problem.

Encouraging consumers to develop media literacy and critical thinking abilities is essential to preventing the spread of false information. Being educated is essential for equipping people to distinguish between reliable sources and false information. Giving individuals the skills to assess information critically will enable them to choose the content they share and consume with knowledge. Public awareness campaigns should be used to promote and include initiatives that aim to improve media literacy in school curriculum.

Ways to Stop Misinformation

As we have seen, misinformation can cause serious implications; the best way to minimise or stop the spreading of misinformation requires a multifaceted approach; here are some strategies to combat misinformation.

• Promote Media Literacy with Critical Thinking: Educate individuals about how to critically evaluate information, fact check, and recognise common tactics used to spread misinformation, the users must use their critical thinking before forming any opinion or perspective and sharing the content.
• Verify Information: we must encourage people to verify the information before sharing, especially if it seems sensational or controversial, and encourage the consumption of news or any information from a reputable source of news that follows ethical journalistic standards.
• Accountability: Advocate for social media networks' openness and responsibility in the fight against misinformation. Encourage platforms to put in place procedures to detect and delete fraudulent content while boosting credible sources.
• Regulate Misinformation: Looking at the current situation, it is important to advocate for policies and regulations that address the spread of misinformation while safeguarding freedom of expression. Transparency in online communication by identifying the source of information and disclosing any conflict of interest.
• Support Critical Research: Invest in research and study on the sources, impacts, and remedies to misinformation. Support collaborative initiatives by social scientists, psychologists, journalists, and technology to create evidence-based techniques for countering misinformation. 

Conclusion

To prevent the cycle of misinformation and move towards responsible use of the Internet, we must create strategies to combat the spread of false information. This will require coordinated actions from individuals, communities, tech companies, and institutions to promote a culture of information accuracy and responsible behaviour.

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Introduction

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The recent cyber-attack on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), one of the world's best-known car makers, has revealed extensive weaknesses in the interlinked character of international supply chains. The incident highlights the increasing cybersecurity issues of industries going through digital transformation. With its production stopped in several UK factories, supply chain disruptions, and service delays to its customers worldwide, this cyber-attack shows how cyber events can ripple into operation, finance, and reputation risks for large businesses.

The Anatomy of a Breakdown

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Jaguar Land Rover, a Tata Motors subsidiary, was forced to disable its IT infrastructure because of a cyber-attack over the weekend. This shut down was already an emergency shut down to mitigate damage and the disruption to business was serious. 

• No Production - The car plants at Halewood (Merseyside) and Solihull (West Midlands) and the engine plant (Wolverhampton) were all completely shut down.
• Sales and Distribution: Car sales were significantly impaired during a high-volume registration period in September, although certain transactions still passed through manual procedures.
• Global Effect: The breakdown did not reach only the UK, dealers and fix experts across the world, including in Australia, suffered with inaccessible parts databases.

JLR called the recovery process "extremely complex" as it involved a controlled recovery of systems and implementing alternative workarounds for offline services. The overall effects include the immediate and massive impact to their suppliers and customers, and has raised larger questions regarding the sustainability of digital ecosystems in the automobile value chain.

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The Human Impact: Beyond JLR's Factories

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The implications of the cyber-attack have extended beyond the production lines of JLR:

• Independent Garages: Repair centres such as Nyewood Express of West Sussex indicated that they could not use vital parts databases, which brought repair activities to a standstill and left clients waiting indefinitely.
• Global Dealers: Land Rover experts as distant as Tasmania indicated total system crashes, highlighting global dependency on centralized IT systems.
• Customer Frustration: Regular customers in need of urgent repairs were stranded by the inability to order replacement parts from original manufacturers.

This attack is an example of the cascading effect of cyber disruptions among interconnected industries, a single point of failure paralyzing complete ecosystems.

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The Culprit: The Hacker Collective

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The hack is justifiably claimed by a so-called hacker collective "Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters." The so-called hacking collective says that it consists of young English-speaking hackers and has previously targeted blue-chip brands like Marks & Spencer. While the attackers seem not to have publicly declared whether they exfiltrated sensitive information or deployed ransomware, they went ahead and posted screenshots of internal JLR documents-the kind of documents that probably are not supposed to see the light of day, including troubleshooting guides and system logs-implicating what can only be described as grossly unauthorized access into some of Jaguar Land Rover's core IT systems.

Jaguar Land Rover had gone on record to claim with no apropos proof or evidence that it probably did not see anyone getting into customer data; however, the very occurrence of this attack raises some very serious questions on insider threats, social engineering concepts, and how efficient cybersecurity governance architectures really are.

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Cybersecurity Weaknesses and Lessons Learned

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The JLR attack depicts some of the common weaknesses associated with large-scale manufacturing organizations:

1. Centralized IT Dependencies: Today's auto firms are based on worldwide IT systems for operations, logistics, and customer care. Compromise can lead to broad outages.
2. Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: Tier-2 and Tier-1 suppliers use OEM systems for placing and tracing components. Interrupting at the OEM level automatically stops their processes.
3. Inadequate Incident Visibility: Several suppliers complained about no clear information from JLR, which increased uncertainty and financial loss.
4. Rise of Youth Hacking Groups: Involvement of youth hacker groups highlight the necessity for active monitoring and community-level cybersecurity awareness initiatives.

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Broader Industry Context

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With ever-increasing cyber-attacks on the automotive industry, an area currently being rapidly digitalised through connected cars, IoT-based factories, and cloud-based operations, this series of incidents falls within such a context. In 2023, JLR awarded an £800 million contract to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for services in support of the company's digital transformation and cybersecurity enhancement. This attack shows that, no matter how much is spent, poorly conceptualised security programs can never stand up to ever-changing cyber threats.

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What Can Organizations Do? – Cyberpeace Recommendations

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To contain risks and develop a resilience against such events, organizations need to implement a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity:

1. Adopt Zero Trust Architecture - Presume breach as the new normal. Verify each user, device, and application before access is given, even inside the internal network.
2. Enhance Supply Chain Security - Perform targeted assessments on a routine basis to identify risk factors in diminishing suppliers. Include rigorous cybersecurity provisions in the agreements with suppliers, namely disclosure of vulnerabilities and the agreed period for incident response.
3. Durable Backups and Their Restoration - Backward hampers are kept isolated and encrypted to continue operations in case of ransomware incidents or any other occur in system compromise.
4. Periodic Red Team Exercises - Simulate cyber-attacks on IT and OT systems to examine if vulnerabilities exist and evaluate current incident response measures.
5. Employee Training and Insider Threat Monitoring - Social engineering being the forefront of attack vectors, continuous training and behavioural monitoring will have to be done to avoid credential disposal.
6. Public-Private Partnership - Interact with several government agencies and cybersecurity groups for sharing threat intelligence and enforcing best practices complementary to ISO/IEC 27001 and NIST Cybersecurity Framework.

Conclusion

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The hacking at Jaguar Land Rover is perhaps one of a thousand reminders that cybersecurity can no longer be seen as a back-office job but rather as an issue of business continuity at the very core of the organization. In the process of digital transformation, the attack surface grows, making the entities targeted by cybercriminals. Operation security demands that cybersecurity be ensured on a proactive basis through resilient supply chains and stakeholders working together. The JLR attack is not an isolated event; it is a warning for the entire automobile sector to maintain security at every level of digitalization.

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References

• https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1jzl1lw4y1o
• https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/07/disruption-to-jaguar-land-rover-after-cyber-attack-may-last-until-october
• https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/jaguar-factory-workers-told-stay-073458122.html

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Introduction

In recent times the evolution of cyber laws has picked up momentum, primarily because of new and emerging technologies. However, just as with any other law, the same is also strengthened and substantiated by judicial precedents and judgements. Recently Delhi High Court has heard a matter between Tata Sky and Linkedin, where the court has asked them to present their Chief Grievance Officer details and SoP per the intermediary guidelines 2021.

Furthermore, in another news, officials from RBI and Meity have been summoned by the Parliamentary Standing Committee in order to address the rising issues of cyber securities and cybercrimes in India. This comes on the very first day of the monsoon session of the parliament this year. As we move towards the aspects of digital India, addressing these concerns are of utmost importance to safeguard the Indian Netizen.

The Issue

Tata Sky changed its name to Tata Play last year and has since then made its advent in the OTT sector as well. As the rebranding took place, the company was very cautious of anyone using the name Tata Sky in a bad light. Tata Play found that a lot of people on Linkedin had posted their work experience in Tata Sky for multiple years, as any new recruiter cannot verify the same. This poses a misappropriation of the brand’s name. This issue was reported to Linkedin multiple times by officials of Tata Play, but no significant action was seen. This led to an issue between the two brands; hence, a matter has been filed in front of the Hon’ble Delhi High Court to address the issue. The court has taken due cognisance of the issue, and hence in accordance with the Intermediary Guidelines 2021, the court has directed Linkedlin to provide the details of their Cheif Grievance Officer in the public domain and also to share the SoP for the redressal of issues and grievances. The guidelines made it mandatory for all intermediaries to set up a dedicated office in India and appoint a Chief Grievance Officer responsible for effective and efficient redressal of the platform-related offences and grievances within the stipulated period.

The job platform has also been ordered to share the SoPs and the various requirements and safety checks for users to create profiles over Linkedin. The policy of Linkedin is focused towards the users as well as the companies existing on the platform in order to create a synergy between the two.

RBI and Meity Official at Praliament

As we go deeper into cyberspace, especially after the pandemic, we have seen an exponential rise in cybercrimes. Based on statistics, 4 out of 10 people have been victims of cybercrimes in 2022-23, and it is estimated that 70% of the population has been subjected to direct or indirect cybercrime. As per the latest statistics, 85% of Indian children have been subjected to cyberbullying in some form or the other.

The government has taken note of the rising numbers of such crimes and threats, and hence the Parliamentary Committee has summoned the officials from RBI and the Ministery of Electronics and Information Technology to the parliament on July 20, 2023, i.e. the first day of monsoon session at the parliament. This comes at a very crucial time as the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill is to be tabled in the parliament this session and this marks the revamping of the legislation and regulations in the Indian cyberspace. As emerging technologies have started to surround us it is pertinent to create legal safeguards and practices to protect the Indian Netizen at large.

Conclusion

The legal crossroads between Tata Sky and Linkedin will go a long way in establishing the mandates under the Intermediary guidelines in the form of legal precedents. The compliance with the rule of law is the most crucial aspect of any democracy. Hence the separation of power between the Legislature, Judiciary and Execution has been fundamental in safeguarding basic and fundamental rights.  Similarly, the RBI and Meity officials being summoned to the parliament shows the transparency in the system and defines the true spirit of democracy., which will contribute towards creating a safe and secured Indian Cyberspace.

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