Do you know, by blindly following trends and using hashtags you can be the victim of cyber crime? : #couplechallenge

Awareness is necessity

"Nohashtag challenges"

Nowadays, #couplechallenge, #smilechallenge, #chirichchallenge trending on social media platforms. But do you know the history of hashtags?

Lets see, how hashtag was invented.

Chris Messina a product designer who has been working in Silicon Valley created the idea of hashtag. He and his small group of colleagues were thinking that twitter needs some kind of frame work. He got the idea of hashtag from internet chat room that had pound symbol in front of them.

His main idea to create hashtag was for the internet and wanted that anybody writing text on internet be able to participate in global conversation. In 2007, he asked one of his friends to use #sandiego for his tweets and this way the use of hashtag started.

In 2009, Twitter added the option of hashtag to its search bar. And this way hashtag became a trend. This trend then being followed by other apps like tumbler, Facebook, instagram and other social media platform.

Initially hashtags were used for global conversations, trending topics and other important conversations. But in recent scenarios, hashtags are widely used for challenges like #couplechallenge, #smilechallenge, #chirichchallange and many more. Most people are blindly following the trend and posting their photos on social media platform.

But do you know by blindly following such trends and using hashtags you can be the victim of cyber crime?

In a recent case in Delhi, a man morphed a women’s photo to malign/deteriorate her image likely because of her political connections.

Morphing is basically smooth changes made in images using computer animation techniques.

Becareful about your social media posting !!

If you are using hashtags and posting your pictures on social media platform then you are more prone to crime related to morphing. For example, we post a picture with #couplechallange and social media privacy setting is set to private or just friends. We feel that it is shared just with our friends. But when we use hashtag it is not private anymore. Whenever anyone writes #couplechallange in the search box he/she can easily get access to your photos even if they are not in your friend list.

So what we conclude from this is that don’t ever blindly follow such trends. And even if you want to post your pictures keep your account private and don’t use hashtags.