[HumJanenge] News stories uploaded to website

Internet RTI impersonation allegations get murkier

The anonymous owners of the HumJanenge google group have publicly challenged Indian financial media guru Sucheta Dalal, and publisher of the Moneylife e-zine to retract news reports alleging that email IDs of deceased persons were being misused on internet RTI chat groups such as theirs.

In an article published on 24.November Moneylife had alleged that the HumJanenge RTI google group, now the largest RTI internet mailing list in India with 2,500 subscribers, was creating hatred and not even sparing deceased members by using their names and e-mail IDs. They reported that some RTI activists, including journalists, plan to file complaints with the cyber crime cell of the police, including for spreading spyware thorugh attachments sent from RTI groups to spy on activists.

In a reply published online the next day, the group's owner, identified only by the initials "PMK" (which he emphasised did not derive from Prakash M Kardaley - the deceased founder of HumJange) addressed many of the allegations made in great detail and described the Moneylife story as "irresponsible reporting". PMK said,

1. Not a single message / email has originated (and we stress "originated") from this group (HJ-GG) which uses a name or email ID not that of the original sender.

2. Not a single email / message has either (a) originated or (b) been forwarded from this group using the name or email ID of a deceased person.

3 No malware / virus has been sent or forwarded from this group.. One of the reasons we use the google platform is for better malware protection (compared to Yahoo).

4 There has been absolutely no IMPERSONATION of people (ie. human beings) on this group.

5.  It is a brazen lie to claim that HumJanenge@googlegroups has created a web of inter-connected groups. This is complete rubbish. The groups are not connected and won't be any time soon. The truth of the matter is that yahoo and google IDs collectively account for about 80% of members in any RTI group. By migrating to googlegroups we eventually intend to take advantage of OPENID, a system whereby both Yahoo or Google users can login / post to these RTI groups. In addition due to "collaboration" between moderators of these groups, troublesome members / spammers / scammers etc can be booted off all groups to protect our members.

6. Everyone who has asked to be unsubscribed has been. Almost always within 24 hours.  Our software team have tracked down and eliminated almost all the spammers and the fake blogs they were using to repost / forward posts from this group. In addition about 2 DMCA takedown notices / complaints to Google for copyright infringement and 12 for spam generation takedown concerning posts made from this group illegally reposted by a blogger.com reposting service operated by "Urvashi Sharma" have been filed on behalf of this group.

With the battlelines drawn, this online duel has only just begun.

http://www.mynews.in/News/internet_rti_impersonation_allegations_get_murkier_N114054.html