EOW asks FB to crack down on shady posts

Bhubaneswar: The economic offences wing (EOW) of the state Crime Branch has asked Facebook to prevent publication of dubious advertisements related to fake loan offers and job rackets among others on their widely used platform.
A meeting was convened in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday between the EOW officials and a senior Facebook functionary from Mumbai where they discussed measures to prevent cyber crimes via Facebook. Different types of online scams, defamation, cyberstalking, cyberbullying, harassment and identity theft are often reported on Facebook.
“We advised the Facebook functionary to properly verify the credentials of the persons, who post advertisements. Facebook should form a dedicated team to verify the KYC details of the advertisers. This will help law enforcement agencies across the country to get clues about criminals, who post advertisements with the purpose of cheating,” a senior EOW official said.
While the Facebook authority was unavailable for comment, EOW said the company assured them to look into their advice and would support the police during investigation of different cyber cases, involving Facebook. Facebook also assured the police to launch awareness campaigns about cyber safety and cyber crime prevention measures on their popular site.
In the recent past, some cases surfaced where people came across advertisements on Facebook and were duped of lakhs of rupees while trying to get franchises of different companies. Besides, there were instances of people getting enticed towards advertisements and losing their money while buying various products.
Friendship with a stranger on Facebook recently cost a 43-year-old woman from Khandagiri area here dear. After befriending her on the popular social media platform, the man allegedly took Rs 15 lakh from her, assuring to double her money in a year. She lodged a complaint at Khandagiri police station in January this year.
Nayapalli police here in December last year arrested a man, identified as Rajendra Mallick for creating at least 200 fake Facebook accounts and websites of different companies with the purpose of cheating unemployed youths on the pretext of giving them jobs.
Significantly, the state police had arrested Basanta Behera, Hemanta Mistri, Tapas Ranjan Nayak, Sheikh Musafir and Sachin Kumar, all former contractual employees of the defence research and development organisation (DRDO) in Balasore on September 14, 2021 for sharing classified defence information with a Pakistani woman, who used Facebook to honeytrap the accused.