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So why do you think the MMS clip titled 'Delhi Girl having Fun' could
sneak pass the content filter at Baazee? Technology has its limitations and
everyone realizes it now.
Word filters, which some portals employ at their backend processes to filter
out objectionable material, essentially look at dictionary words. Taken
separately, Delhi, Girl or Fun would imply little. Together, they do connote
something illicit, but then you would need human intelligence to detect that.
There is a Grammy winning album by Cyndi Lauper titled 'Girls Just Want To
Have Fun'. "Will you be able to upload this album to the portal if you
had words like fun, or girls included in the tool? More than half the titles of
books, CDs and movies would be thrown out of the site if such a 'word search'
technology was to be used," information security expert and CEO of Mahindra
Special Services Group Captain Raghu Raman quips.
Some words have dual meanings. "How will one sell the children's model
for Archimedean screw-a model to demonstrate the flow of water against gravity
and purported to have been invented by Archimedes-if the word 'screw'
having explicit connotations were to be included in the word filter?
 Some portals have now started using web browser tools that look for excessive
skin tone in jpegs. If the skin tone is more, it is thought to be bordering on
nudity. "But then this leads to another set of problems," say Raman
citing an example where he was unable to upload a singer's album to a site
because it had just the singer's face and a bare hand.
Adds Subodh Sarangi, infrastructure security practice head with Wipro:
"While the technology is costly, the upkeep of the tool is also
difficult." According to him, such systems need to be made more and more
intelligent-it should be able to differentiate, for example, between a human
and animal body color.
All filters work on a set of patterns-key words are set and you can
associate a context with it-and hence it is dependent on the imagination of
the creator to define what matches should be included. According to Sarangi,
"While one can keep on increasing the number of key words and the context,
but the more number of words you add to the filter, the more time it will take
to search. The hardware gets bigger and consumes more disc and memory space.
Managing all this is not easy."
CEO
of Fabmall.com K Vaithees–waran agrees. Technological solutions, he says, isn't
feasible from the business point of view. "We follow a B2C retail model and
have 2.5 million stock keeping units (SKU) in our on-line catalogue. We have to
employ 10,000 people if I were to scan all of it. What financial viability will
my business structure have then?" he questions. Baazee follows a C2C model
where sellers can interact directly with buyers. Captain Raman agrees.
"E-commerce sites add value to the entire transaction chain by allowing the
sellers to interact directly with potential buyers. That is the principle of
this reduced cost transaction model. If the company was to set up processes to
examine each
and every item being sold on their site, there would be no financial
viability," he says.
So, to make e-commerce security viable, you need processes that require both
human intelligence intervention and technology. "A framework where you
connect various players like in the credit card business could help. Over a
period of time, a reliable trader can be given the tag of a 'verified'
trader," Raman suggests. Hope IT companies take notice. Doing the rounds of
the court surely is no 'fun'.
Team DQ
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