Taking Online Safety Measures Is Just Like Carrying A Pepper Spray

She felt raped ... all her secrets spilt out in a second ..and in that second ..her world crashed down like a million times. Till now, she thought she was safe because she was home, and she was not wrong. She remembers that night when she was walking down the street and noticed a shadow. This is when she ran home, without looking back, and she was SAFE. For her home meant SAFE.

But not this time.

This time, the shadow had managed to enter the safe place and cause damage. This time she could not find an ESCAPE. But how? Because the last time she checked all the doors and windows were locked properly, her parents were in the next room and her pet dog was sleeping right next to her, but then why did they not get up? How was there no noise?

This time the shadow was an unknown identity, an invisible parasite travelling through optic fibre cables and feeding off the secrets of others..a hacker.. and this time she was his target.

And now all her secrets were at his mercy. One click and everything was revealed.

A few months passed and the court made a statement in her favour. She was saved by law, the hacker was caught, but she still felt restless inside, she still felt raped. The damage was done, the secrets were out and now she could see them all around her, in every face that passed by her, in all the eyes that stared at her from far away. Her fault? Nothing .. or maybe she trusted the technology too much to ever imagine it going against her favour.

I think hackers are just like rapists, and taking online safety measures is just like carrying a pepper spray, you never know when you might need it.

Shivya Sahani is a student of ARCH College of design, Jaipur and this blog is a part of the Digital Trust Dialogues being held across colleges in India.