Facebook is an unrestricted social media site that allows anybody from anywhere to establish an account. This may be a virtue for the normal public, but the high profile personalities often have to suffer the consequences in the form of fake pages set up in there name now and then. Some of these pages are so genuine, that it becomes hard to ascertain their authenticity. A similar sort of situation is faced by the Chief of Army Staff Gen rRaheel Sharif and Director General ISI Lt-Gen Rizwan Akhtar and many others. Fake pages have been created with their names. The ISI and the military have formally complained to the Ministry of Information Technology (MOIT) and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) about these fake accounts.
PTA will address the matter with the relevant organization. An agreement with Facebook’s management and the Information ministry exists about the removal of content on the government’s request. PTA doesn’t have the authority to delete such pages on its own, as this website is operated from the United States. The government can however block the entire website, as it did with YouTube. About 37 fake accounts exist for Gen Sharif. Some were initially deleted by Facebook, but these pages were created again.
Senior journalists, politicians, businessmen, army personnel and students are added in the friends list of these fake accounts. Many are fooled by these accounts. These accounts update Facebook statuses, put up pictures, ISPR’s press releases, army medals and famous quotes to fool the public about their authenticity. However, the users of these accounts can be traced through the IP addresses. Wahaj Siraj, convener of ISP stated that it was the job of Federal Investigation Agency to trace these account holders.