Indian defence personnel alerted against Pakistani spy on Facebook
NEW DELHI: Pakistani intelligence agencies are using fake Facebook profiles with names of Indian women in an attempt to honey trap Indian defence forces' personnel, prompting authorities here to send out an alert.
The alert was sent out after one such Facebook profile was detected, from which friend requests are being sent.
"After inputs were received from our personnel about a Facebook profile (Facebook ID name deliberately withheld) using the name of an Indian woman and sending friend requests to military personnel, a thorough check was carried out and found that it was confirmed Pakistani Intelligence Operative and the profile was also created there only," defence intelligence sources told ANI.
"After this, a warning has been issued to defence forces' personnel to be alert about this profile to avoid falling in their trap," they said.
In the recent past, there have several cases where intelligence operatives using fake social media profiles honey-trapped Army personnel and passed on sensitive secret information to them.
Recently, an Army jawan was arrested after he was found to be in touch with a suspected ISI spy using the profile name of 'Anika Chopra' on Facebook and were chatting regularly on the social media and exchanging details and information about the jawan's armoured unit and its movement.
The Army is now tracking multiple accounts of officers and jawans to probe if the Pakistani spy account was in touch with other personnel also to get information from them, the sources said.
A Group Captain of the Indian Air Force was apprehended by the counter-intelligence units of the Army, Air Force and the Intelligence Bureau for sharing information about transport aircraft operations as he was posted in the Air Headquarters here.
A BrahMos employee was also caught where the Pakistani spy had used the same modus operandi to trap the official.
Sources in the defence intelligence agencies say that there are several Facebook profiles which have been identified and have been deactivated by the operators but a large number of new profiles are created by the enemy intelligence operatives to extract information from Indian personnel. The three services also keep issuing advisories to their personnel against posting any military-related pictures on their social media profiles to avoid attracting the attention of such spies and those found violating the norms also get punished.
Recently, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat had also warned his personnel against falling in the social media trap of the enemy.
"Soldiers have been told not to accept social media friend requests with names of film stars. These could be honey traps. We are taking this very seriously and cannot allow security to be compromised through social media. For those (soldiers) who are not reporting the matter, the punishment is heavy," he had stated.