Pictures on Orkut

I wondered how long would it take to come. When I got hooked on to Orkut and surfed around it, I saw people proudly putting up nice pictures of themselves, their friends and loved ones on Orkut. Having known and experience the notoriety of Internet criminals who would misuse such pictures and personal information, I wondered...

Last night my cousin emailed to all his contacts about this. Especially to the girls as their photographs are the ones that are most likely to be abused. This may well be a rumour, but this is a rumour no sane person would ignore. Here is what he wrote:

"Improtant note for girls
Hi How are u All
GIRLS BEWARE PLEASE..IT IS SERIOUS! HELP URSELF
It has recently been found out that there are some spammers present on Orkut who download the Photographs of Girls from their Profile and they get 5 cent per photograph. This photographs are later sent into Image Editors like Photoshop where they are morphed and superimposed on the images of Porn Stars.

These people are so expert in this field that the photographs looks completely real and anyone can get decieved by generated images.

These photographs are then used for multiple purposes like Printing in International Magzines, Uploading on paid Porn Sites and sometimes even blakmailing. And the post consequences are a known fact. So after knowing about this fact my advice to all sisters of my brothers here to please remove their photo's from Orkut and don't give the culprits a chance to do play around with You. Afterall Prevention is better than Cure"

I have not edited the message other than some small punctuation changes and adding italics. Does every good thing has to have a darker side? I thought Orkut was cool and people were able to get in touch with each other so easily, look at each other progress through the years through pictures and even plan to meet. Is there a way to stop this menace before it gets out of hand? I think together we can. I have seen some websites, where you cannot download images. We should all talk to Orkut management about it and have them disable the photo download ability and then they can track who downloads the pictures. Well, I as a legitimate user do not require to copy the pictures. I can simply ask my friends to send me the copies of the pictures over email.

I plan to write to Orkut about it. Join me if you are interested.