It is a matter of great concern that fictitious persons sometimes send threatening and alluring e-mails. Such type of incidents have come out to be a menace in internet world. We have seen one such example of such incident in the letters column of The Shillong Times recently. Is this the intention of some vested interested organization to terrorize people and disturb peace and tranquility in Shillong?
Shillong has set the best example of peace and communal harmony in the past few years. However, if the intention of the sender is to disturb communal harmony he has just opted the worst option as he does not know the unity of different communities here with the indigenous people. This fact can be testified by the Amit Paul phenomenon. Meghalaya has set a record of advanced civilization. People of the State have realized that development cannot come without peace and peace comes when people live unitedly. Now some anti-social elements may be jealous by seeing the harmony prevailing in the State.
It is my firm belief that Shillongites are not so foolish that they don't understand the intention of the anti-social elements. Now it is for the authorities concerned to bring the culprit to book and teach him such a lesson of a life time.
Again the cyber cafes have a great role to play in this connection. They can record the details of their customers in a separate register. So when the time demands, they can produce the register before the authorities.
One major issue I would like to highlight through this letter is that visitors to the cyber cafes are of two types -- experts and non-experts. Experts take care of everything from signing in to signing off. However, non-experts log in their e-mail accounts and sometimes forget to sign out. So what happens is that in the meantime any subsequent user could misuse his mail. I would request the owners of the cyber cafes to make sure that customers visiting their café should sign out properly before the next one uses that computer. I would also request the internet surfers and chatters to make sure that they don't leave the cyber café before signing off their mail account or any account on the net. It is for their own safety.
Yours etc.,
Subash Deb
This article was published on 26th January 2008
