A Facebook page was created in her name when model-cum-actor Thingal Bhal was in the television reality show 'Malayalee House', with no contact with the outside world. When she learnt about the page, she did not bother much about it. Whoever created the page was making intelligent posts on world affairs, and she believed the readers would know it is not the real Thingal Bhal, who ‘is not really into GK’. She tried to contact the admin twice to say thank you but that she would like to make her own updates.
There was no response. She was eventually blocked from making posts on that page. Her friends like Sherrin Varghese from 'Malayalee House' warned her it could lead to trouble, but she dropped her attempts to gain control of the page when she learnt of the formalities. Until a post negative on Sachin’s Bharat Ratna on the fake page turned her life upside down.
Fake Facebook profiles are not new, neither are fake profile photos but it continues to create trouble for the not-so-tech-savvy celebs. “I am not an Internet person. I did not have a Twitter account, or create a page before 'Malayalee House' because I didn’t think of myself as a celebrity,” explains Thingal. The post on Sachin invited a tirade of abuses from his fans. Thingal tried explaining a number of times on her own page (“since I was blocked in the other page”) but few listened to her. Finally, when she made a post about going to the cyber police the admin of the fake profile contacted her.
“He is an old friend of mine, a classmate. He said he wanted to give a positive image about me and begged me to not reveal his identity.” She got him to delete the page. But by then Sachin fans had formed another page ‘We Hate Thinkal Bhal - Bcoz We Are Sachin Fanz’. A helpless Thingal is planning to go to the cyber police to clear her name once and for all.
Actor Unni Mukundan too had to suffer when fake profiles of his attracted many young girls and led them to fall in love with him.
He says, “They (creators of fake profiles) would indulge with girls. Random people started telling me ‘we talked on Facebook the other day’. Issues cropped up when girls fell in love with the guys pretending to be me and then realised it isn’t me. That’s when I took it up seriously, contacted the company ‘Easysoft Technologies’. They removed all the fake accounts and got Facebook India to verify my original account,” adds Unni Mukundan.
Abdul Manaf of ‘Easysoft Technologies’ says, “What we do is create one page or profile and merge all the other authentic pages into it.”
Social media expert Renjith Ramachandran says that many people use celebrity pictures as their profile pictures, not knowing that it is illegal. “It is impersonation. They may do it to not reveal their identity. But then there are others who misuse this, and create multiple profiles. College students take revenge by putting numbers of college girls on these fake pages they create.”
