Fear psychosis due to text and emails

19 August, 2012

India is gripped with fear as people are not able to trust their own countrymen, especially after the Assam incidents. While people are freaking out, it is normal for people to take a prank seriously.

I STILL remember the night when I was in my first year of College and a friend sent me a SMS saying not to pick up any phone with a certain number as terrorists were sending some virus through the phones and that as soon as anyone picked up the phone it would blow up. I dismissed the matter as a joke but after a few days a new sms was making the rounds that Nokia battery with the number BL was faulty and is causing brain damage. Soon people started thronging the Nokia service centres to get their batteries changed.

The recent Bangalore Northeastern incident showed us the extent of panic a simple short message or email can cause. The government's constant insistence that everything was a hoax could not keep the Northeastern community from boarding a train to their native place from Bangalore. So much so that the government have banned sending bulk messages for 15 days. While in India this is the biggest incident pulled off by a prankster, these kinds of pranks and panic are caused all over the world. We must acknowledge the fact that with phones and computers we have also invented another kind of faceless problem.

Very similar to India's own mobile panic, Kenya, too, was gripped in the clutches of fear when a text message became viral in 2010 that claimed that calls from some numbers were causing brain hemorrage. Inspite of the fact that the whole matter was dismissed as a hoax by Kenya's telecommunications regulator the prankster had a filed day as many people believed in the text message. The fear psychosis is easy to spread among people and everyone listens when a loved one sends them such kind of text.

Not far back in January 2012, in Agra a SMS was able to spread fear among mobile users about an impending earthquake. The SMS read, “Before Earthquake - Identify safe place indoor and outdoor, keep essential medicines, ID, Food & Water, Emergency Telephone Nos. - NDMA.” The subtle hint of an impending earthquake was enough to cause panic and fear.

Very different from the above examples is that of Israeli government's use of Short message Service where the government propose to send text to people who could be hit by missiles. This is just in nascent stages and they are testing things out. However, given the careless manner in which text messages are used these days a lot of pranksters can use this situation and cause havoc in Israel.

Many a times Facebook is also hit by Spam message wherein the user is asked to spread a particular message to 15 other people in order to keep their accounts safe. While most of the people can differentiate between a Spam and a genuine mail, the picture is very different where text message is concerned. At a time when people are reckless and killing over religion, any prank can be blown out of proportion because at the end of the day no one wants to die.