PANAJI: Creation of fake profiles on Facebook has become a cause of worry in the state; a fake account in the name of Education Minister, Mr Atanasio Monserrate had already created a flutter some time back, and now it was the turn of the Chief Minister, Mr Digambar Kamat, whose account was flashed on the social networking site by an imposter.

Speaking to ‘The Navhind Times’, director of Intelligent Quotient Security System, Pune, Dr Herald D’Costa, said such incidents of bogus Facebook accounts and e-mails have increased.

Dr D’Costa said that the Chief Minister, after learning about his fake account, had asked him to write a letter to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology asking it to block the social networking websites like Orkut, Facebook and others.

The draft stated that social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Hi 5 etc, have been adversely affecting the lives of people in Goa with unscrupulous elements using these sites to post defamatory, vulgar and obscene materials to blackmail, defame, cause mayhem among the people and destroy the social fabric of a peaceful society like Goa.

"Innocent people fall victim to emails or "add friend" requests when it seems those email IDs belong to their friends or people known to them. They then have a rude awakening when they find out that they are now part of ‘friend list’ of such obscene groups," the draft stated

The fallout of such sites and the misuse by unscrupulous elements is defamation to peoples’ characters, marital break ups, disharmony among families and even suicides, the letter stated urging authorities to block/ ban such sites.