Nearly 200 fake Twitter handles of Army officers detected since August 5

Nearly 50 handles for which Indian agencies have written to Twitter were fake accounts impersonating senior Army officers, including Army chief Gen Bipin Rawat, it is learnt.

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Sources said nearly two-thirds of these accounts have been brought down after they were reported.

The Army, along with the Ministries of Defence and Home Affairs, has detected nearly 200 Twitter accounts that were either impersonating senior Army officers or spreading misinformation and propaganda since August 5, when the government scrapped special status for J&K, it is learnt.

Sources said nearly two-thirds of these accounts have been brought down after they were reported. Sources in the defence establishments said although such accounts keep emerging on Twitter and Facebook from time to time, there has been a spike of 60 to 70 per cent since August 5.

Nearly 50 handles for which Indian agencies have written to Twitter were fake accounts impersonating senior Army officers, including Army chief Gen Bipin Rawat, it is learnt. Similar accounts of colonels, brigadiers, lieutenant generals and major generals were also spotted and reported.

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One clear giveaway of these fake handles, a senior Army officer said, is that they put up pictures of the serving officers in uniform. As per “precautions” to be taken by officers while using social media, according to the Army’s 2017 cybersecurity policy, serving members are only allowed to have private social media accounts.

They are also not allowed to “reveal personal identity by way of rank, appointment, official address”, and cannot “post photographs in uniform” on social media platforms.

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Jammu and Kashmir