Nailed on the NET

John Doe can run, but he can’t hide for long in the cyber jungle, says Roopinder Singh

You sit behind a computer and send a message to someone far away, feeling securely anonymous. You feel the urge to do a little mischief, believing that anonymity is assured. You browse, may be send a few nasty messages and, if you really have a criminal bent of mind, you may try your hand at some illegal activities.

Well, that’s what someone did recently. Integrix (India) Pvt Ltd, an IT networking solutions company, received e-mails from ashokintegrix@yahoo.co.in which were damaging and defamatory to the company and its directors.

Instead of just pressing the ‘delete’ button, the company took the matter to court and created a bit of legal history when the Delhi High Court admitted the petition. This is for the first time in India that the defendant is anonymous. In IT-related litigation in the US, an anonymous person is referred to as ‘John Doe’,

The expression John Doe is used for "an average, undistinguished man; also, the average citizen". This term goes back a few centuries, when it was used as an alias to protect a witness. By the 1800s, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, the expression acquired the sense of "ordinary person".

Currently, it is used as a name in legal proceedings to designate an unknown or unidentified man or boy. In this case, a John Doe or Jane Doe, the female equivalent that came up in the second half of the 1900s, is hiding behind the e-mail ID of ashokintegrix@yahoo.co.in. By accusing the perpetrator, as well as the e-mail service provider, Yahoo! India Web Services Ltd, and the Internet service provider Bharti Infotel, the aggrieved company has fired all guns for maximum impact.

The court has allowed the company to sue an IP address number as well as the "actual allottee/user of the same IP address, son of Unknown, c/o Bharti Infotel".

Legal experts say that they have never come across a case in which the defendant is unnamed. However, at another level, in this case, it is likely that the defendant will not remain unnamed for long. It often surprises those who feel anonymous on the Net that, actually, they are quite easily identifiable.

If a computer is connected to a network, it has to have an Internet Protocol (IP) address. This is a definite number, in this case, 61.246.153.106, which has been quoted in the complaint to the court. An IP address is just like an address in the real world. It is a cyber footprint, and as the mail goes from the user’s computer to another on a network, which forwards it to another, various IP numbers are recorded and thus the origin and the path that the mail took to reach its destination can be traced.

Normally, when we get an e-mail, the heading where all this information is stored, is hidden as a matter of convenience. You can always opt to see the full headings by selecting that option in Hotmail.

In Gmail, you would have to go to "more options" and then to "show original". In Yahoo! Mail, select ‘options", then "general preferences", which will take you to "messages", and where you can click on "show all headers on incoming messages".

Experienced cyber criminals use many devices to hide their original identity, but like in the real world, in the cyber world, too, they leave footprints and get caught, most of the time.

The business arm of the law is long and the recent decision of the Delhi High Court will empower the law-enforcement agencies to move against criminals who seek to hide behind cyber anonymity, since, till now, litigation had been handicapped by the absence of identity of the person being sued.

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