Beware, impersonators could be having a ball on social networking sites at your expense and without your knowledge. It happened with film stars Nayanthara and Shruthi Haasan.
Nayanthara had to release a statement that somebody had created her fake profile on a social networking site and that she had not said anything on Mullaiperiyar, "a reservoir of conflict between Tamil Nadu and Kerala".
Last week, Shruthi Haasan came out with a statement clarifying that she did not have an account on a particular social networking site and comments attributed to her on the movie 7 aum arivu and the song kolaveri… were not hers but that of a person who had created her fake profile.
The menace of fake profiling has arrived in a big way in Indian cyberspace too.
Managers of twitter, a popular networking site, have a system in place to verify genuine account-holders from fake. Celebrity accounts are verified by the site, so that you know if you really are following the person you want to.
"But not many other sites have that system. So, it is easy to create an account in somebody else's name and post messages without his/her knowledge," a senior police official said.
Some youngsters start creating fake profiles of friends just for fun.
"It is ok as long it is fun. But sometimes, the limit is crossed and people get hurt. So far, we have received only two-three complaints of fake profiling. Maybe because people don't 'want to hurt friends by lodging police complaints'," the official said.