New Delhi: When academicians across the country are yet to start full-fledged online classes, complaints regarding the misuse of these platforms have already started trickling in.
According to reports, several teachers of Delhi University (DU) have complained about being harassed by some unidentified miscreants, who post obscene messages during the online classes.
An assistant professor at a South Campus college, Delhi stated that some miscreants started posting obscene messages while he was conducting an online class on Zoom last week. Speaking about the incident, he told Hindustan Times, “It took us a few minutes to realize what was happening. It was embarrassing for us all. We had to abruptly suspend the class. We later went through the recorded video of the lecture to identify the person and found that there is no student by that name in our class.”
Another teacher of a women college in West Delhi said, “Some outsiders are logging in to our classes using the links we send to our students on college WhatsApp groups. We are trying to find a way to address this issue.”
The distressed teachers have informed the university administration about these bizarre incidents.
DU executive council (EC) member Rajesh Jha said, “Several women teachers have informed us that they were abused and harassed during these live classes. The teachers send the invites for live sessions on Zoom or Google Meet to their students every day. The students can log in simply by entering their names and email IDs. These incidents clearly indicate that students are sharing these invites with outsiders. Many countries are facing similar issues while conducting online classes.”
DU Teacher Association secretary Rajinder Singh also received similar complaints from the teaching staff. A senior university official stated that they are looking into the matter and trying to solve it.
Meanwhile, Apar Gupta, executive director at Internet Freedom Foundation, stated that academicians should chose secure software tools for conducting online classes. “There is always a chance of cybercrime while using software tools for any purpose. Educational institutions can minimise that risk by choosing software tools that are more personal rather than using the popular ones. Also, there is a need to train teachers on how to handle such situations during a sessions,” he said.