“GOVERNOR Lilia Pineda has no Facebook account.” This was reiterated by Pampanga’s provincial information officer Joel Mapiles as he cautioned the public that Pampanga Governor Lilia Pineda has no account in the said social networking site.
A bogus Facebook account has been dragged into the limelight recently when a supposed Governor Lilia Pineda is adding and inviting some friends to accept the “add” to accounts of other government officials and known media personalities.
The fake account has some more than 500 friends with the assumption that all of those are thinking that it is a real account of the governor. In other words, someone has “usurped” the person of Governor Pineda after creating a Facebook account and “socialized” with other Facebook users.
The world-famous social networking site is in fact a useful tool in information dissemination aside from socializing with friends.
Undoubtedly, it gained uncontrollable popularity as it became a favorite avenue to meet online not only by netizens but also those simple Facebook users who are not actually computer geeks.
The said Facebook account has the official government photograph of the governor with the Capitol building as the background. It has an announcement of Governor Pineda’s state of the province address by August.
We need not wonder why the “assumer” of the governor has the latter’s photo since it is easy to copy and paste soft copy photographs on the computer.
This is not the first time that someone had assumed the person of a Pampanga personality. Not long ago, Archbishop Emeritus Paciano “Apu Ceto” Aniceto’s person was assumed by an unknown Facebook user who unfortunately uses a supposed account of the archbishop to solicit some cash.
Archbishop Aniceto has vehemently denied that the said Facebook account is his and has stressed that he has used his name or the church to solicit some cash from other people.
With the wittiness and ill-motive of some, it is very easy to assume one’s personality by simply copying and saving a photograph of a person, filling up the information required by the said social networking site and by requesting other Facebook users to add him or her as a “friend”.
The person assuming can also add other Facebook users after the latter are the ones who made the requests.
The persons of the two Pampanga prominent personalities have been hacked and it’s quite not good as the owners of the fake accounts can use social networking for some gain, financial or otherwise. Further, it taints the character of the person being assumed as anything can be posted in the said social networking site.
I am not a personality but some years ago when Facebook was still on the brink of being popular, someone has made me an account using my photograph posted in my column on this paper. Fortunately, there are some wrong information posted on it, making my friends cast doubt on my supposed account.
Since the start of the Facebook craze and until now, I am not a Facebook user. I would rather read the news on the internet rather than spend my time socializing online.
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