Madam Maud Adjeley Ashong Elliot, the Vice President of the Internet Society of Ghana, has advised women and girls to refrain from posting and storing their nude photographs online, particularly on social media platforms.
In a presentation delivered at the National Stakeholder’s Forum On Women’s Online Rights in Ghana held in Accra, she said, the act, often done with clear intentions often caused cyber-bullying, online harassment, blackmail, safety issues which compromised women’s reputation, affect their mental health and self-worth.
This, she explained, could lead to partial or total withdrawal from the online society thus defeating efforts to garner more female inclusion in the online space.
‘Let’s stop sharing our nude pictures online because, whenever you send a message on a platform such as Whatsapp, the original copy is kept in their servers. They only send a copy of it to the person you have sent the message to. Everything you post online is kept; whether you delete it on your phone or not. So, le
t’s not even share nudes at all,’ she said.
The University of Professional Studies also called for a more stringent legal framework, including education to safeguard the security of women and girls in Ghanaian cyberspace.
Madam Hilda Odua Sowah, the Head of Accreditation and Certification at the Data Protection Commission, in an interview on data protection safeguards for women, cautioned them to be mindful of what they share, particularly personal data or information.
She, however, advised women to take deliberate steps to use technologies available to protect such online information.
‘Once you are on social media and you have a password, I advise that you change it frequently,’ she said.
She also asked all to know their data protection rights as stipulated in the Data Protection Act of 2012 (Act 843) to channel grievances that involved data breaches.
Ghana, according to the Cyber Security Authority, was ranked eighth globally for the amount of time individuals spent online and ranked 21st for usage of
the internet for work purposes.
The above statistics made the country one of the most vulnerable countries prone to cyber-attacks such as Malware, Phishing, Business email compromises, mobile money scams, and data breaches.
On his part, Mr Kwaku Krobia Asante, a lead fact checker, in his presentation dubbed, ‘Gendered Disinformation in Ghana,’ called on the Government and Civil Society Organisations to build the capacities of journalists to produce, publish and promote online gender-sensitive content.
Source: Ghana News Agency
