ISLAMABAD: Fake Facebook accounts used to be a problem faced by teenage girls, but it appears that in Pakistan, they are also becoming a bother for the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The ISI and the military have formally complained to the Ministry of Information Technology (MOIT) and the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) about the existence of fake accounts of their chiefs on the social networking website.
There are a number of accounts on the website, supposedly belonging to the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Raheel Sharif and Director General ISI Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar and other senior officers such as Gen Haroon Aslam and Gen Asif Haroon.
The military spokesperson said that with the exception of one account belonging to Director General Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj Gen Asim Bajwa, the rest are all fake.
PTA spokesman Khurram Mehran said that the ISI has launched a formal complaint regarding these accounts.
“Whenever PTA receives any such complaint, it is taken up with the relevant organisation for appropriate action, as per procedure,” he said.
He said that the material is hosted by the website which is operated from the United States so the PTA cannot delete a specific link on its own and has to depend on cooperation from Facebook management. However, he said, the government can block an entire website as it did with Youtube.
A source in the military said that following the appointment of Gen Sharif on November 27, 2013, at least 37 accounts were created on Facebook posing to be the army chief.
He added that the matter was taken up by PTA and most of them were subsequently deleted by Facebook management, only to be recreated after a few weeks.
Friend lists of these fake accounts include senior journalists, politicians, businessmen, army personnel and even students.
Internews
