Two female Facebook users have had their photos stolen and used to create fake accounts in what they suspect is a ploy to lure Turkish men looking for cyber romance.
“When I saw it, I felt so exposed and the comments under the pictures made me cringe,” said avid social media user Christina Vella.
If I upload a photo on to an open content platform, I have relinquished a certain degree of privacy over it
About 20 photos were lifted from her personal profile and uploaded under a false account registered in Turkey earlier this summer.
The fake name, Sinem Gursel, was very likely an amalgamation of the name of two Turkish supermodels – Sinem Kobal and Ece Gursel – and had attracted more than 300 followers before it was shut down by the site’s administrators last month.
Ms Vella said she never thought she would have her personal content ‘stolen’, particularly not to attract male admirers.
“I reported it to Facebook over two months ago and sent several e-mails but I never heard anything until, one day, it just wasn’t there anymore,” Ms Vella said, adding that, for all she knew, the photos were still being used under another name.
The followers, mostly men, had posted several comments on the fake account in an attempt to set up romantic rendezvous with the fictitious Sinem Gursel.
Michael Zammit Maempel, a lawyer specialised in online data protection, described the matter as “a legal grey area”.
“Unfortunately, there are a number of factors at play here,” he said.
“First of all, the user appears to be in Turkey and not under local or EU jurisdiction. Even if they were Maltese, there would be little that could be done.”
Dr Zammit Maempel explained that the issue boiled down to degrees of privacy.
“If I send an e-mail and attach a photo, then that is directed to a specific address and it would be a crime to misuse it.
“But if I upload a photo on to an open content platform then I have relinquished a certain degree of privacy over it,” he said.
Another local social media user is still grappling with the Facebook complaint system in the hope of stopping an imposter using her photos.
The user, who preferred to remain unnamed, had also been alerted to the account by a friend who stumbled across a familiar photo in the ‘people you may know’ section of the site.
“I just want to try and get this thing removed as soon as possible,” she said.
University lecturer and social media expert Alex Grech described the situation as “chronic online behaviour”.
“This has been going on since online forums first developed. If a certain amount of people are deviants in civil society then the same amount will behave the same way when online, probably more so,” he said.
Dr Grech explained that the duty to supervise what is uploaded on social media is the ultimate responsibility of the user, not the site administrators.
“Facebook is a business model based on volumes of users. This is a legal issue no one has yet managed to crack,” Dr Grech said.