Early on Sunday, Facebook timeline has been flooded with pleas to help users report cloned accounts. The incident spread like wildfire and friends helped each other in trying to block or report account pages.
Because there was no official word from Facebook or any governing entity, users speculated based on a hunch or previous incidents linked to the political stability in the Philippines. The sudden surge of cloned accounts sowed fear and anger among the community.
In light of this, the data privacy watchdog National Privacy Commission (NPC) released a statement saying “it is monitoring reports about the proliferation of alleged impostor FB accounts that have victimized Filipino data subjects.”
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The commission also said it is yet to fully determine the extent of harm of the incidents as it received “reports from different sectors, mostly coming from academic institutions.”
NPC said it immediately brought this to the attention of Facebook and it quotes Clare Amador, Facebook representative in the Philippines, saying that the social media platform is already investigating this particular matter as well as other information on unauthorized FB accounts.
Meanwhile, Privacy Commissioner Raymund Liboro has instructed Facebook to report its significant findings as soon as it becomes available.
“In addition, we urge everyone to report alleged impostor accounts to Facebook through https://www.facebook.com/help/report,” Liboro said in the statement.