PNP-AGC warns of 12 year jail term for online identity theft

MANILA, Philippines – Online identity theft that causes damages to a party is punishable by imprisonment of up to 12 years, the Philippine National Police-Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG) reminded the public following reports of a surge of duplicate or dummy Facebook accounts over the weekend.

In an advisory Monday, PNP-AGC explained that identity theft even without causing any damage to the affected user would still merit jail time of six months and one day to six years, according to Republic Act No. 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.

“When the victim of computer-related identity theft suffered damage, the applicable penalty is prison mayor, which has a duration of six years and one day up to 12 years of imprisonment. However, when the victim has not suffered damage, the imposable penalty is prison correccional, or an imprisonment of six months and one day to six years,” PNP-ACG said.

“Victims of these criminal acts are encouraged to report to the PNP ACG main office located at Camp BGen Rafael T Crame, Quezon City, or to the nearest Regional Anti-Cybercrime Unit,” the group said.

PNP-ACG said that under Section 4(b) of R.A. 10175, computer-related identity theft occurs when as a person intentionally “acquires, uses, misuses, transfers, possesses, or deletes such identifying information” belonging to another person.

Just recently, students from the University of the Philippines whose Facebook profiles were duplicated have expressed fears that that it may be used to implicate them by posting subversive and allegedly terroristic content, in the wake of the Anti-Terrorism Bill’s impending enactment into law.

Then on Saturday and Sunday, several local journalists from various news outlets discovered that their profiles were also duplicated into varying degrees: some profiles were empty while some contained photos that were not theirs.

However, the universal resource locator (URL) addresses had a specific format — the name and the surname of the original account separated by a dot, followed by a series of numbers.

PNP-ACG clarified that they are also joining calls to denounce the spike in fake accounts, urging affected Facebook users to immediately take screenshots of the profile and the URL, to preserve evidence before Facebook deactivates the account or before the account owner deletes it on his own.

Authorities also urged account holders to check their security and privacy settings, to ensure that no information may be accessible to the public, while scrutinizing people on their friends list.

Earlier, PNP chief Gen. Archie Gamboa vowed to investigate this incident.  On the other hand, the National Bureau of Investigation said that are looking at the possibility of the account clones being a “glitch,” as the social media giant has made it extremely hard to create a myriad accounts in a short time.

People all over Facebook have expressed concern over the fake accounts, noting that most, if not all of the users who discovered duplicate accounts, had voiced dissent against the Anti-Terror Bill.

Recently, social media was rife with posts calling on Congress to repeal House Bill No. 6875, which would amend the Human Security Act of 2007.  Recent developments showed several lawmakers mulling the withdrawal of their affirmative votes to the pending legislation.

However, bill supporter Senator Panfilo Lacson claimed that the fake account issue may only be part of a wider operation to scare people about the terror bill.

EDV