Hubballi: In the unlimited realm of social media, criminals are no longer limited to impersonating celebrities and notable officials like IPS officers.
Miscreants are using Facebook to create bogus profiles of people who have little or no claim to fame in order to defraud their friends and families.
Unless they are alerted by their friends, most Facebook users are ignorant of their cyber doppelgängers. Many of their friends and relatives have been fooled of money obtained under false pretences by the time they discover the presence of these fraudulent profiles.
These crooks have a simple method of operation: they build a false profile of an existing user.
They approach their friends for financial assistance, disguising their true identity beneath the cover of their projected identity.
Many Facebook users, unaware of the cries for help coming from fake pages, are quick to lend money, only to find out later that they have been scammed.
In order to raise awareness about this crime, Keshwapur police inspector Jagadish Hanchinal recently posted a video on a social media platform in which he discussed simple measures to secure their Facebook accounts and make it impossible for criminals to construct a fraudulent account of a genuine user.
