Kozhikode: The schools in the State are working on a war-footing to implement the recent guidelines of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to install effective firewalls, filtering and monitoring software mechanisms in all computers in its schools including those used by the faculty and other office employees. The guidelines that have also directed that filtering and blocking policies and procedures be regularly reviewed have been issued to all CBSE-affiliated schools around the country.
Speaking about the guidelines, Ilahiya School, Kozhikode faculty Priya Prabhakar said, “It was after the news report that Blue Whale, the deadly online game, took lives of several teenagers around the world, and claimed its first death in Kerala, that we realised to what extent it could affect the psychological and physical health of a teenager or any user".
A 16-year-old boy hailing from Thiruvananthapuram was the first one to die after completing all the tasks of the game. “We are not even aware how many of our children are using this game or any kind of similar games. CBSE has therefore come out with timely guidelines to keep a watch on all the online activity of a child,” she added.
The circular, ‘Guidelines for safe and effective use of internet technologies in schools and school buses” has been circulated among all CBSE affiliated schools and directed them to follow the guidelines at the earliest. According to CBSE, chances of children falling prey to illegal activities online was high leading to several kinds of issues like cyber bullying, fraud and other major and minor issues. CBSE has also directed its schools to conduct awareness programmes of internet safety norms.
“At the school level we will able to track the activities of a child and how they behave when they get access to the internet or the online world. But the same task becomes difficult when they reach home”, said Sebastian Paul, Faculty at St Jospeh’s Boys Higher Secondary School. He added that parents would not always be able to keep an eye on their wards and denying them the use of the internet in this fast moving world was also impossible. “So, the better way is to keep making children aware of the demerits of online media along with the merits. The CBSE’s decision to conduct awareness programmes will help students understand the fraudsters on online media,” he added.
CBSE officials have also said that the components related to internet usage were made available on the information security education and awareness website that could be used by the schools to conduct the awareness programme. The website will give an idea on the tips to stay safe on online media.
How the game works
Shyju Chathampalli, CEO, Wing20 Edulabs, an academic social networking platform, talks to DC readers on how the game Blue Whale works and how one can get rid of it.
‘In the Game of Thrones, either you win or you die, There is no middle ground’. In this fictional quote you can see the spirit of an intense challenge because it is positively framed. But in Blue Whale, death and victory are guaranteed simultaneously. And that is the simple reason why the spirit behind the game is extremely negative.
I am trying to breakdown the strategy behind the game here and attempt to answer the most important question everybody has in their mind regarding this challenge. How can someone convince a stranger to commit suicide with this game? Why can they successfully alter the mindset of an individual with a set of instructions?
The one reason is when you give someone the option to control information, they can control your emotion also. Nowadays the information spreading around us has a powerful impact on the cognitive process of our brain that generates emotion and sentiments. But with Blue Whale, it is the right time to understand something is getting corrupted. Either information or emotion. It is the right time to bring forward a genuine concern over this matter.
Blue Whale takes advantage of the psychology of challenge, risk and lists. But that is not what makes the thing dangerous! It is the combination of programmed strategy and psychology that makes it more dangerous. In other words, the creator systematically uses human emotions like a computer program to convince the victim and hence to follow his instructions.
Blue Whale is a strategically designed Neuro Linguistic Programming or Social Engineering tool built upon the emotion of Excitement. What if the last question comes in the first position? Someone urges you to end your life without having any reason. Nobody is going to obey him. Generally people never put trust in a stranger’s words. Because in our neutral mind we all are smart, rational and make profit/loss-based analysis. It is really a hard task to convince a neutral brain it has to be biased towards an emotion if someone wants to convince them. The person should either hate or love something if you want to get a scope for an encounter with him. Hence the major task of the programmer is to build the mindset before you ever want to go along with his command.
How to deal with the issue?
1. Let’s deviate interest to other positive challenging goals.
2. Manipulate the existing array of Blue Whale web cache/social media cache with unrelated information.
3. If the person is in the initial excitement stage, fake the information you are giving to the attacker. Give everything fake. Being super smart and fooling back gives you the same excitement. Simply don’t do the steps that hurt you physically, instead provide fake photos and decide you will stop everything in that very stage.
4. Don’t ever give them an option to blackmail you. Don’t open the links they are sharing through chat especially something that behaves like a facebook/gmail API Connection requiring your password.
5. And most importantly start reconditioning yourself. You need to have a positive use of your available time to emotionally recondition your brain by doing the opposite of everything he has suggested. Go out. use perfume you love, spend time with your best friend going for a pleasurable ride, listen to your favorite music, and do everything that creates positive excitement.
6. Counselling people also does the same thing. Don’t advice them with facts. Your mission is to provide maximum inputs that trigger positive emotion and bring them to the peak of excitement. Nothing else will work. Most importantly don't provide a task that lacks excitement for the sake of arranging a positive engagement. This is a game of excitement vs Excitement. Deal with it that way.
