Film Industry: Marathi actors to take action against their fake profiles on social networking sites

Marathi actors to take action against their fake profiles on social networking sites

    Fake profiles of Bollywood celebrities on social networking sites may not be new, but now, even Marathi actors have fallen prey to this. Recently when actor Swwapnil Joshi found out about the fake profiles in his name, he appealed to his followers and friends on his real profile to report the fake one. He garnered support and those misleading profiles have now been removed by the site. Other actors affected by this are Mukta Barve and Adinath Kothare. Their main concern is that their fans are being misled by false news and communication. Tejaswini Pandit, too, has a fake profile but she says, “I know about it as the person is a fan and contacted me about it. He shares updates about my work on that profile.”
    The others haven’t been as lucky, though. Swwapnil says, “Whoever created that fake profile was communicating with people in my name. A couple of girls came up to me and told me that they had even had a telephonic conversation with that person thinking it to be me! This has to stop. I even considered going to the police, but fortunately, things are under control now. I have only one profile and one official fan page and to avoid such a thing from occurring in the future, I have updated the address of my original fan page on the cover of my profile.”
    What has irked him even more is that the person behind the fake profile gave out a mobile number. “Almost all people ask for a mobile number on fan pages or a social networking profile. But no celebrity will ever share his or her contact number on a public platform. This person was sharing a mobile number and speaking to people as Swwapnil Joshi,” he says.
    Actress Mukta Barve says that thankfully, no harm has been done yet. She prefers not giving any importance to “attention seekers” who handle such fake profiles and mislead people. It is ironic that her original profile has about 9000 followers while her fake profile has over 1 lakh followers. Well-wishers of the actress have tried their best to reach out to people through posts to make them aware about which is the original profile. “If things go out of hand, I will consider taking action against the fake profile and its handlers,” says Mukta.
    The actors are amazed at how genuine their fake profiles look. Adinath Kothare has consulted a few of his friends who work in the cyber cell. “I have been shooting outdoors for a while now. But once I have time, I am going to make sure that I look into the matter and sort it out,” he says.
    The fake profiles are cheating their fans, they say. “At times, fans send messages. They pour their heart out in those messages. They think they are talking to us but somebody else is reading them and responding to them which is wrong. This matter shouldn’t be taken lightly. I will be taking action against the fake fan pages as well,” adds Swwapnil.