#FactCheck-RBI's Alleged Guidelines on Ink Colour for Cheque Writing

Introduction

Snapchat's Snap Map redefined location sharing with an ultra-personalised feature that allows users to track where they and their friends are, discover hotspots, and even explore events worldwide. In November 2024, Snapchat introduced a new addition to its Family Center, aiming to bolster teen safety. This update enables parents to request and share live locations with their teens, set alerts for specific locations, and monitor who their child shares their location with.

While designed with keeping safety in mind, such tracking tools raise significant privacy concerns. Misusing these features could expose teens to potential harm, amplifying the debate around safeguarding children’s online privacy. This blog delves into the privacy and safety challenges Snap Map poses under existing data protection laws, highlighting critical gaps and potential risks.

Understanding Snapmap: How It Works and Why It’s Controversial

Snap Map, built on technology from Snap's acquisition of social mapping startup Zenly, revolutionises real-time location sharing by letting users track friends, send messages, and explore the world through an interactive map. With over 350 million active users by Q4 2023, and India leading with 202.51 million Snapchat users, Snap Map has become a global phenomenon.

This opt-in feature allows users to customise their location-sharing settings, offering modes like "Ghost Mode" for privacy, sharing with all friends, or selectively with specific contacts. However, location updates occur only when the app is in use, adding a layer of complexity to privacy management.

While empowering users to connect and share, Snap Map’s location-sharing capabilities raise serious concerns. Unintentional sharing or misuse of this tool could expose users—especially teens—to risks like stalking or predatory behaviour. As Snap Map becomes increasingly popular, ensuring its safe use and addressing its potential for harm remains a critical challenge for users and regulators.

The Policy Vacuum: Protecting Children’s Data Privacy

Given the potential misuse of location-sharing features, evaluating the existing regulatory frameworks for protecting children's geolocation privacy is important. Geolocation features remain under-regulated in many jurisdictions, creating opportunities for misuse, such as stalking or unauthorised surveillance. Presently, multiple international and national jurisdictions are in the process of creating and implementing privacy laws. The most notable examples are the COPPA in the US, GDPR in the EU and the DPDP Act which have made considerable progress in privacy for children and their online safety. COPPA and GDPR prioritise children’s online safety through strict data protections, consent requirements, and limits on profiling. India’s DPDP Act, 2023, prohibits behavioral tracking and targeted ads for children, enhancing privacy. However, it lacks safeguards against geolocation tracking, leaving a critical gap in protecting children from risks posed by location-based features.

Balancing Innovation and Privacy: The Role of Social Media Platforms

Privacy is an essential element that needs to be safeguarded and this is specifically important for children as they are vulnerable to harm they cannot always foresee. Social media companies must uphold their responsibility to create platforms that do not become a breeding ground for offences against children. Some of the challenges that platforms face in implementing a safe online environment are robust parental control and consent mechanisms to ensure parents are informed about their children’s online presence and options to opt out of services that they feel are not safe for their children. Platforms need to maintain a level of privacy that allows users to know what data is collected by the platform, sharing and retention data policies. 

Policy Recommendations: Addressing the Gaps

Some of the recommendations for addressing the gaps in the safety of minors are as follows:

• Enhancing privacy and safety for minors by taking measures such as mandatory geolocation restrictions for underage users.
• Integrating clear consent guidelines for data protection for users. 
• Collaboration between stakeholders such as government, social media platforms, and civil society is necessary to create awareness about location-sharing risks among parents and children. 

Conclusion

Safeguarding privacy, especially of children, with the introduction of real-time geolocation tools like Snap Map, is critical. While these features offer safety benefits, they also present the danger of misuse, potentially harming vulnerable teens. Policymakers must urgently update data protection laws and incorporate child-specific safeguards, particularly around geolocation tracking. Strengthening regulations and enhancing parental controls are essential to protect young users. However, this must be done without stifling technological innovation. A balanced approach is needed, where safety is prioritised, but innovation can still thrive. Through collaboration between governments, social media platforms, and civil society, we can create a digital environment that ensures safety and progress.

References

• https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/snapchat-family-center-real-time-location-sharing-travel-notifications-9669270/
• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/snapchat-unveils-location-sharing-features-to-safeguard-teen-users/articleshow/115297065.cms?from=mdr
• https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/snapchat-adds-more-location-safety-features-for-teens/article68871301.ece 
• https://www.moneycontrol.com/technology/snapchat-expands-parental-control-with-location-tracking-to-make-it-easier-for-parents-to-track-their-kids-article-12868336.html ‍
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/

Introduction

DDoS – Distributed Denial of Service Attack is one of the cyber-attacks which has been evolving at the fastest pace,  the new technologies have created a blanket of vulnerability for the victim which allows the cyber criminals to stay under the radar and keep launching small scale high intensity cyber attacks. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic. DDoS attacks achieve effectiveness by utilizing multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic. Exploited machines can include computers and other networked resources such as IoT devices. From a high level, a DDoS attack is like an unexpected traffic jam clogging up the highway, preventing regular traffic from arriving at its destination.

Op Power Off

In a recent Operation by Law enforcement agencies known as Op Power Off, LEAs from United Kingdom, United States of America, Netherlands, Poland, and Germany joined hands to target the cybergroups committing such large-scale attacks which can paralyse the Internet become inaccessible for a large faction of netizens. The services collectively seized were by far the most popular DDoS booter services on the market, receiving top billing on search engines. One such service taken down had been used to carry out over 30 million attacks. As part of this action, seven administrators have been arrested so far in the United States and the United Kingdom, with further actions planned against the users of these illegal services.  International police cooperation was central to the success of this operation as the administrators, users, critical infrastructure, and victims were scattered across the world. Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre coordinated the activities in Europe through its Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT).

Participating Authorities

• United States: US Department of Justice (US DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• United Kingdom: National Crime Agency (NCA)
• The Netherlands: National High Tech Crime Unit Landelijke Eenheid, Cybercrime team Midden-Nederland, Cybercrime team Noord-Holland and Cybercrime team Den Haag
• Germany: Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), Hanover Police Department (Polizeidirektion Hannover), Public Prosecutor’s Office Verden (Staatsanwaltschaft Verden)
• Poland: National Police Cybercrime Bureau (Biuro do Walki z Cyber-przestępczością)

Issue related to DDoS Attacks

DDoS booter services have effectively lowered the entry barrier into cybercrime: for a fee as low as EUR 10, any low-skilled individual can launch DDoS attacks with the click of a button, knocking offline whole websites and networks by barraging them with traffic.  The damage they can do to victims can be considerable, crippling businesses financially and depriving people of essential services offered by banks, government institutions, and police forces. Emboldened by perceived anonymity, many young IT enthusiasts get involved in this seemingly low-level crime, unaware of the consequences that such online activities can carry. The influence of toolkits available on the dark net has made it easier for criminals to commit such crimes and at times even get away with it as well.

‍Recent examples of DDoS Attacks

• In February 2020, Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a DDoS attack sophisticated enough to keep its incident response teams occupied for several days also affecting customers worldwide.
• In February 2021, the EXMO Cryptocurrency exchange fell victim to a DDoS attack that rendered the organization inoperable for almost five hours.
• Recently, Australia experienced a significant, sustained, state-sponsored DDoS attack.
• Belgium also became a victim of a DDoS attack that targeted the country’s parliament, police services, and universities.

DDoS vs. DoS Attacks: What’s the Difference?

It’s important to avoid confusing a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack with a DoS (denial of service) attack. Although only one word separates the two, these attacks vary significantly in nature.

• Strictly defined, a typical DDoS attack manipulates many distributed network devices between the attacker and the victim into waging an unwitting attack, exploiting legitimate behavior.
• A traditional DoS attack doesn’t use multiple, distributed devices, nor does it focus on devices between the attacker and the organization. These attacks also tend not to use multiple internet devices.

Conclusion

In this era of cyberspace, it is of paramount importance to maintain digital safety and security equivalent to physical safety, the cybercriminals will not stop at anything and can stoop to any level to target netizens and critical infrastructures in order to commit ransomware and malware attacks. As we can see DDoS-ing is taken seriously by law enforcement, at all levels of users, and are on the radar of law enforcement, be it a gamer booting out the competition out of a video game, or a high-level hacker carrying out DDoS attacks against commercial targets for financial gain.

Introduction

The use of digital information and communication technologies for healthcare access has been on the rise in recent times. Mental health care is increasingly being provided through online platforms by remote practitioners, and even by AI-powered chatbots, which use natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) processes to simulate conversations between the platform and a user. Thus, AI chatbots can provide mental health support from the comfort of the home, at any time of the day, via a mobile phone.  While this has great potential to enhance the mental health care ecosystem, such chatbots can present technical and ethical challenges as well.

Background

According to the WHO’s World Mental Health Report of 2022, every 1 in 8 people globally is estimated to be suffering from some form of mental health disorder. The need for mental health services worldwide is high but the supply of a care ecosystem is inadequate both in terms of availability and quality. In India, it is estimated that there are only 0.75 psychiatrists per 100,000 patients and only 30% of the mental health patients get help. Considering the slow thawing of social stigma regarding mental health, especially among younger demographics and support services being confined to urban Indian centres, the demand for a telehealth market is only projected to grow. This paves the way for, among other tools, AI-powered chatbots to fill the gap in providing quick, relatively inexpensive, and easy access to mental health counseling services.

Challenges

Users who seek mental health support are already vulnerable, and AI-induced oversight can exacerbate distress due to some of the following reasons: 

1. Inaccuracy: Apart from AI’s tendency to hallucinate data, chatbots may simply provide incorrect or harmful advice since they may be trained on data that is not representative of the specific physiological and psychological propensities of various demographics. 
2. Non-Contextual Learning: The efficacy of mental health counseling often relies on rapport-building between the service provider and client, relying on circumstantial and contextual factors. Machine learning models may struggle with understanding interpersonal or social cues, making their responses over-generalised. 
3. Reinforcement of Unhelpful Behaviors: In some cases, AI chatbots, if poorly designed, have the potential to reinforce unhealthy thought patterns. This is especially true for complex conditions such as OCD, treatment for which requires highly specific therapeutic interventions. 
4. False Reassurance: Relying solely on chatbots for counseling may create a partial sense of safety, thereby discouraging users from approaching professional mental health support services. This could reinforce unhelpful behaviours and exacerbate the condition. 
5. Sensitive Data Vulnerabilities: Health data is sensitive personal information. Chatbot service providers will need to clarify how health data is stored, processed, shared, and used. Without strong data protection and transparency standards, users are exposed to further risks to their well-being. 

Way Forward

1. Addressing Therapeutic Misconception: A lack of understanding of the purpose and capabilities of such chatbots, in terms of care expectations and treatments they can offer, can jeopardize user health. Platforms providing such services should be mandated to lay disclaimers about the limitations of the therapeutic relationship between the platform and its users in a manner that is easy to understand. 
2. Improved Algorithm Design: Training data for these models must undertake regular updates and audits to enhance their accuracy, incorporate contextual socio-cultural factors for profile analysis, and use feedback loops from customers and mental health professionals. 
3. Human Oversight: Models of therapy where AI chatbots are used to supplement treatment instead of replacing human intervention can be explored. Such platforms must also provide escalation mechanisms in cases where human-intervention is sought or required. 

Conclusion

It is important to recognize that so far, there is no substitute for professional mental health services. Chatbots can help users gain awareness of their mental health condition and play an educational role in this regard, nudging them in the right direction, and provide assistance to both the practitioner and the client/patient. However, relying on this option to fill gaps in mental health services is not enough. Addressing this growing —and arguably already critical— global health crisis requires dedicated public funding to ensure comprehensive mental health support for all. 

Sources 

• https://www.who.int/news/item/17-06-2022-who-highlights-urgent-need-to-transform-mental-health-and-mental-health-care 
• https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/mental-healthcare-in-india-building-a-strong-ecosystem-for-a-sound-mind/105395767#:~:text=Indian%20mental%20health%20market%20is,access%20to%20better%20quality%20services. 
• https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/digital-health/articles/10.3389/fdgth.2023.1278186/full 

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