Fake Sonia, PM tweet from cyberspace

Even as the political turbulence caused by allegations of corruption ranging from 2G to S-Band to Adarsh to Swiss Bank accounts has rocked the power corridors, pranksters are making the hay by putting up fake profiles of the Indian leaders including Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

“JPC might include ISRO and Adarsh Scams. Congress has nothing to hide because what's hidden will never be found,” says one tweet in the name of Sonia Gandhi. Obviously, this and many such postings are fake.

There are several such postings one can find from sham accounts of politicians and top celebrities on popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, says a PTI report. 

Since many political leaders have social media, which has become the order of the days, it is difficult to distinguish between which is original or which is fake. And naturally this has become a headache for some top leaders.

Similarly, a tweet from an account named after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says, "Madam ji, left can never be right ji. Purulia can never be Rae Barreily ji."

Other fake accounts include that of Rahul Gandhi too, in whose name there are several Twitter accounts, which have his picture and tweets about his past programmes and visits. A hyper-active youth icon, Rahul is a sensation for the youth and the fraudsters are making use of that celebrity status.

A few months back, there was a rumour about Wipro chairman Azim Premji joining the Twitter bandwagon. However, soon it was found out that it was a fake one, following which Wipro even issued a clarification and said that it was planning to take corrective actions to rectify it. 

And, quite recently, Facebook had suspended the account of a woman who shares her name with Prince William's future bride, Kate Middleton, accusing her of being an impostor. Facebook had locked out healthcare assistant Kate Middleton's social network website claiming that she had registered under a fake name.

So, when originals are ousted for being namesakes, fakes are going scot-free it seems. Maybe this is the order of the cyber space.