Collectors, senior police officers fall prey to online identity theft
BHUBANESWAR: The state has recorded a significant rise in incidents of fake social media accounts being set up of high-profile persons, especially politicians and bureaucrats.
Deputy inspector general (intelligence) Anup Kumar Sahoo has become the latest victim of this form of identity theft online. Sahoo, who came across his fake profile on Facebook on Sunday, said he was taken aback to find his doppelgänger online.
“I immediately shared a post from my original Facebook account and cautioned people about the fake account,” Sahoo told TOI. The senior IPS officer did not lodge a complaint with police.
The fake account was blocked after one of his friends reported the matter to Facebook.
At least a dozen ministers and IAS and IPS officers have seen their fake profiles crop up on social media in the past one and a half years. These include additional director general of police (railways and coastal security) Pranabindu Acharya, who too had fallen prey to cyber criminals. On July 9, he had lodged a complaint with the cyber cell of the state Crime Branch, seeking action against an unidentified miscreant for creating a fake Facebook profile in his name.
On June 16, Uditnagar police arrested a youth for allegedly creating a fake Facebook profile using Rourkela SP’s name — K Siva Subramani.
On May 26, Bargarh collector Jyoti Ranjan Pradhan and superintendent of police Padmini Sahoo lodged complaints after coming across their fake Facebook profiles. Sambalpur district collector Subham Saxena has twice been a victim of cybercrime. In June 2019, police had arrested two persons for creating a fake Facebook profile in his name. In October 2019, Saxena had again come across another fake profile in his name.
Sundergarh collector Nikhil Pavan Kalyan and Sambalpur collector Samarth Verma had both reported to police about fake Facebook profiles using their names around October and November last year.
In all these cases, the cyber criminals impersonated the high-profile persons on a social media site and sought financial help and other favours from their ‘friends’.