Losers & fakers of social media
Chances are you’ve met them online, some with fake accounts, others with fake motives
By : vishav
Update: 2014-06-20 21:43 GMT
Chennai: If you have been regular on social media, you must have come across a friend request from someone pretending to be somebody else. But guys don’t get that, you say. Well, think again as the Internet is filled with all sorts of creeps. But if the answer is still no, never mind as chances are you must have come across some other kind of fake account. For instance, a recently opened Instagram account of Aamir Khan that got over 11,000 followers in less than 24 hours, turned out to be fake. Also, according to a recent report, Facebook alone has over 100 million fake accounts globally. When it comes to the social world, “fake people” are everywhere!
Eliran Shachar, CEO, founder of the FakeOff app that protects against fake profiles on Facebook says it’s an ever-growing pandemic that we wish would disappear.
Eliran adds, “They’re lurking Facebook groups, randomly befriending people, and then pitching their lottery scams to 14-year-old children. They’ll hit on your wife, beg you for illicit pictures then work their way into your hard drive. Fake profiles can risk user’s reputation (identity theft), children (pedophiles and sexual abuse), property (home break-ins) and personal safety.”
It’s a well-known fact about Internet dating that chances are you are not dating who you think you are. Anand Verma (name changed on request) learned it the hard way after a few months of e-dating who he thought was a girl. “I was shocked when I found out it was a dude. After I finally convinced her, actually him, to meet me, s/he confessed how s/he lied to me about the gender and that I shouldn’t let it get in the way of love. It’s funny now, but it was horrible at that time,” he shares.
But malicious is not the only kind of fake accounts that exist on the Internet. There are also some light-hearted ones that make fun of some big names and make everyone laugh, except those very names perhaps.
Faking News, a website that endorses “fake” in the most humorous fashion, has become a popular source of content that everybody knows is fake and is still sought after. Rahul Roushan, the editor of the website, opines, “If there is any fake account of a celebrity without clarifying that it’s a parody account, it’s impersonation, and hence wrong (in fact, illegal). But fake accounts, as means of parody, are fun. A person in public life has to deal with it.”
Author Deepak Rana says, “If you are an active user on Twitter, you would find hundreds of parody accounts, but the only common thread in all these parody accounts is the fact that only the controversial figures like — Digvijay Singh, Rahul Gandhi or even Chetan Bhagat, are the victims of online imitation, and if not controversial, then something about their work which draws altercations, such as; famous silence of Manmohan Singh, or history knowledge of Modi. The social media world is an open field, and nothing you say or do is a clandestine affair. So be alert!”