Faker, masquerader

What I can say at this point of time is that yesterday, a faker was trying to pass himself off as me on social media. This person had created a phony instagram account using my name and profile picture. Luckily, he couldn't take over my username and had to use another. Anyone who did not know better would have thought that this fake account belonged to me.

At about 11.30pm last night, I was alerted by my nephew to ask whether I had tried to contact him on instagram. He even sent me a screenshot. Though half asleep, I replied that no, I had not posted anything to him on this social media platform. 

By now, I was awake and my mind was whirring. My presence on social media was being compromised. Immediately, I sent a message to my friends and relatives on whatsapp and facebook to warn them against accepting any message from this spurious account. 

In the morning, I reported the incident to instagram, asking them to block and remove that fake account. This evening though, another of my facebook friends in the Philippines told me that she had also been contacted through this spurious instagram account, but having been warned by me, she had ignored the message. 

This is not the first time that either my wife or I have found ourselves in this situation. Many years ago, someone had tried to clone a facebook account with my wife's name. That fool, however, had chosen to use a war-time Germany-related picture as the profile picture. Once I had reported the incident, facebook immediately removed that fake account.