Mohanlal to clear up fake profiles on his name
Malayalam superstar Mohanlal has been working on getting extra tech savvy. While his online blog entries have a huge fan following, he recently set up his official page on a social networking site. We hear that the fact that the page got as many as 2 lakh hits in 24 hours had the online team notice the unusual activity, and they set about trying to contact the star himself. Sources inform us that the team offered to not only organise the official page, but also to get rid of the 30 odd fake profiles that were functioning in the name of the star.
"Websites do this occasionally. They have done so in the case of celebrities in the west, helped close down fake profiles and maintain their own official pages. But this is probably the first time it has happened to an Indian celebrity," points out Sajeev Soman, a close associate of the actor. It took a while before Mohanlal responded to the online team. "The star created the page only because there were around 30 fake profiles created in his name by fans, many of whom were posing to be the actor himself and therefore misusing the site," Sajeev says.
When Mohanlal put up a picture of an artwork he had acquired recently, some friends informed him that they were not able to locate his page because of the number of fake profiles that pop up. "He immediately contacted the authorities and worked out a deal with them. A lot of his fans associations also were merged as one that leads to his official page, managed by Mohanlal himself," explains Sajeev.
What the law says? It is against the rules of social networking sites to create a profile in the name of a celebrity, with his or her picture. The fact that it has been created by a fan has to be mentioned in the profile name, not in the description. The doers can be penalised for breaking the rules.