Honey Trapping

An informal definition of Honey Trapping will be ‘retrieving information of any sort about a country or a person using any means’. Using the means of ‘Wine, Wealth and Women’ is prevalent in honey trapping. But recent addition to that is cyber space using social networking sites or any other means of online means of communication to gather confidential or secret information.

Honey Trapping has its existence even in the ancient periods even though the term ‘Honey Trapping’ was not prevalent. One can remember stories of using poisonous girl to retrieve information or kill anyone during Mauryan Empire. Now, the same old wine is in new bottle with added present day technology.

Honey Trapping is majorly used to get the information about defense of another country from the higher level officials. The main targets will be the officials working in the Embassy. Honey Trapping is done in such a way that one cannot make out that they are being trapped. There are no straight forward steps or procedure to get someone trapped, it can go to any level including romance or beyond! Recent suspensions of officials working at Indian Embassy abroad and few IAS officers are instances of officials being trapped.

Honey trapping recently being used to check the loyalty of a person in relationship. Even TV shows telecasted few shows how they trapped crooks. Honey Trapping is not like spying about a person, it is like making use of someone either man or woman to closely associate with the other to gather information. Giving lump sum money or taking advantage of weakness of a person is common thing.

In Cyber space, honey trapping will be done mainly using social networking sites or chat rooms. Hacking databases to access critical information about a country or its opinion about other countries is also a kind of honey trapping! In social networking sites all of a sudden a charming girl or a handsome guy will send chat or friend requests and starts to being close so that the confidence is gain. Interestingly a person of opposite gender is used in these purposes.

Tips to avoid being victim of Honey trapping:

1) Don’t entertain any calls or SMS conversations from unknown persons

2) Take enough care while conversing or connecting with people in social networks, especially when someone tries to gain personal information about you

3) Don’t believe people easily, showing over friendliness all of a sudden.

Many times it so happens that you are good and circumstances of making you victim will be high so be careful.