A DONEGAL mother has warned of the dangers posed by Facebook after her 13-year-old son had his identity stolen and was threatened with violence due to a bogus page which was set up in his name.
Days after Facebook announced new simplified privacy controls to enhance the protection of users’ information the mother of the teenager said that young people should be educated of the possible dangers of the networking site.
The teenager first became aware that a Facebook page had been set up in his name when the boyfriend of one of his school acquaintances texted him.
He came home from school one day and he had a text message saying ‘‘you’re stalking my girlfriend on Facebook, leave her alone or I’ll kick your head in’’. It emerged that whoever was behind the hoax page had been posting bogus messages on the girl’s Facebook page, making derogatory remarks about her boyfriend and encouraging her to leave him.
The 13-year-old was understandably upset by the threat. “He was really upset, [the girl’s boyfriend] must have gotten the number through one of the girls and was convinced that it was my son who was harassing this girl.” The concerned mother logged into Facebook and found the page which had been set up in her son’s name. The page did not carry his picture and an incorrect date of birth.
“But it was close enough,” his mother said, adding that some of his school friends had befriended him on Facebook believing that this was a genuine page. “They were totally duped.” The teenager’s mother attempted to report the incident on Facebook to get the site removed, but said this proved to be a “minefield”.
Instead she went on the bogus Facebook page, identified herself as the teenager’s mother and left a message saying she would be reporting the matter. She later found out that the page had been taken down.
The teenager’s mother said she had not allowed her son to set up a Facebook page previously because of the dangers she felt that the site posed but said that, ironically the incident had turned out to be a good lesson for her son. “He was freaked at the fact that someone was pretending to be him,” she said, but added that he had learned the hard way what identity theft meant.
She said that teenagers need to be educated about the dangers that Facebook can pose: “It’s about trying to educate them to keep their information private,” she said.
David Rane the director behind the Guth Gafa Film Festival, which opens on June 11th in Gortahork, Donegal, said that this was a reminder of the dangers that the internet can pose, even in a rural area in Donegal. One of the films screening at this year’s festival, Talhotblonde, a documentary, which depicts what can happen when identity theft is taken to extremes.
A spokeswoman for Facebook said that the networking site took people’s privacy seriously and that the site contained a link which leads a user to online safety advice and a form which people can fill out.
She said that, where the social networking site were made aware that somebody had falsely set up a site in someone else’s name that the page will be taken down.
However, she said that Facebook could not divulge information about the people behind these sites to the public although they do co-operate with the police if they become involved.