Amartya attacks FB over impersonation
New Delhi, Aug. 15: After falling victim to identity theft on Facebook, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has said he got no help from the managers of the social networking site in closing the “fraudulent” page of someone impersonating him.
Sen said he never intends to open any account at a site where it is difficult to check the “genuineness” of a participant.
An ‘impostor’ pretending to be Dr Sen had created a page on Facebook, which showed him as having 490 fans, and was liberally posting views that radically contradicted the political and economic views held by the professor.
“I do not have any Facebook site of my own, and do not intend to open one. The story... is indeed correct, and the site referred to there, where someone pretending to be me answered questions — in first person — as Amartya Sen, had nothing whatsoever to do with me,” Sen said.
“The fraudulent Facebook page has been in operation, I understand, for some months now, but I came to know of it only two days ago when a young Italian enthusiast told me about this site, having been deceived himself in thinking it to be genuine,” he added.
Disappointed that he never got any help from the Facebook managers in solving the issue, Dr Sen said, “The managers of the Facebook system are not helpful in monitoring the veracity of the sites and communications. I got no help from them, and if the fraudulent site pretending to be from me has now been closed -- as I am told it has been....”
Efforts to get a specific response from the Facebook did not materialise.He, however, does not completely disapprove of social networking sites.
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