Identity theft and once again Facebook is dumb as ever and it’s not its fault, unless it gets an Eagle Eye to know who exactly is joining it. Reports of Osama Bin Laden having a profile on the social network circled the Web. I am not buying crap that Bin Laden actually had time to join the most wasteful of sites online, and it was definitely one of the many anonymous groups who wanted to promote him.
The profile was created on March 25th, and had amassed over thousand fans and while the initial posts were in Arabic, more comments in English were beginning to appear. The profile now has been removed by Facebook upon request from security officials. The social network itself has no specific terms and conditions on terrorism but it does prohibit its users from posting anything that violates law, in any manner. I guess that was sufficient enough to pull the profile off.
The problem is there are many people out there who signup with fake names, identities on the social network and with no way to actually verify the identity, it is impossible to prevent this from happening. Other than that, Facebook or any other network for the matter can link a particular profile or individual to any network. But if reported and it is found to be instigating hate or anything of the sort, the social network disables it.
I personally think that there should be more solid methods for verification, especially when someone registers with names that are in the top list of any security agency. While you can’t really register or ask every person to proof their identity you can have stricter means of verification for certain things. I am going to contradict myself here but does it guarantee the prevention of such things happening? Perhaps the most wanted criminal is on Facebook signed up by a name of Sweet Lady, with an equally innocent picture. So are we really sure who is on the social network?
[The Sun]
