Facebook fraud: TDB’s official page on Sabarimala vanishes

Kochi: In yet another online fraud, the official Facebook page of the Sabarmala Temple opened by the Travancore Devaswom Board to update information regarding the Lord Ayyappa temple, vanished all of a sudden after fraudsters “merged” the page with a fake one.

“The page, ‘Sabarimala Devaswom’ started by the TDB in November , 2013, was found merged with another fake page managed by an individual a week ago.

We’d updated the page till November 5 and there were more than 5,000 followers. However, on the same day it was found hacked and the fraudsters had merged it with another page ‘Sabarimala Temple’.

All those who were following our page were re-directed to follow another page,” said an official with the Electronic Data Processing (TDB).

The Facebook attack comes even as the official website of the temple ‘www.sabarimala.kerala.gov.in’ maintained by the Information and Public Relations wing of the State Government had won the e-governance award for the best website (2011-13).

However, the TDB acted fast and created another page ‘Sabarimala Devaswom’ on Facebook. “We’re taking legal action against the fraud,” the official said.

The TDB has requested pilgrims to be careful while checking information regarding Sabarimala Temple via social mediums. “They should be careful of such hackers and fake Ids and hand over information regarding such people, if any, via e-mail to sptdbvig@gmail.com”, he said.