Social media messages can be tracked: IIT-Madras professor to High Court

Countering the stand of social media firms, an IIT-Madras professor on Wednesday informed the Madras High Court it was technically possible to trace the original sender of messages shared on platforms such as Facebook and Whatsapp.

Professor V Kamakoti made the submissions before a bench of Justice S Manikumar and Justice Subramonium Prasad which is hearing a PIL seeking a direction to the authorities to link Aadhaar number with social media accounts of users for easy identification of accused in cyber crime cases.  
 
Countering the contentions of the social media companies, especially WhatsApp, that the original sender of a post can never be traced since all the messages sent through the application were encrypted, Kamakoti said it was technically possible to add an identification tag to messages.

 

The bench then directed the professor and his team to file their views as a report by July 31 to enable the social media companies to submit their reaction and adjourned the matter to that date.