UP cops warned against honey-trap on social media

Lucknow, July 2 The UP Police intelligence wing has issued an alert to its police officers and personnel across the state about 14 fake social profiles of women created to honey trap them and officials and personnel of Indian Army, paramilitary forces and scientists.The state intelligence issued this alert after inputs from a central intelligence agency.

According to a senior police official, these fake profiles were created by Pakistan Intelligence Operative (PIO), a wing of Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence), to target officers and personnel of central as well as state agencies involved in internal and external security.

He said the state intelligence had issued an alert last week, including the list of 14 fake profile details, their photographs and names used in creating these profiles, contact numbers, URL and suggested to the officials and personnel to ensure that these profiles are not on their friend list.

He said the alert also suggested to the officers and personnel to make their family members and close friends aware of this trap and remove such suspicious profiles from their friend list.

These 14 purported women have around 1,000 friends on Facebook, many of whom are serving non-commissioned officers of the Indian Army, jawans, police personnel and even army aspirants.

The official said these fake profiles are created using Hindu names of women. Mostly officials and personnel of state police, Indian Army, paramilitary forces and scientists are on their friends list.

He said the profiles mostly have photographs related to activities and movements of the security and police forces.

He explained that different spyware is being secretly installed in mobile handsets and laptops after gaining access to the friend list and scanning instruments to steal personal data for blackmail and procure secret information.

The UP Police have been scanning several hundred social media accounts since the arrest of BrahMos Aerospace engineer Nishant Agarwal and BSF jawan Achuytanand Mishra.

Both were trapped by a Pakistani agency via Facebook in September 2018.

Agarwal, arrested for sharing crucial details of the weapons project with Pakistani agents, even confessed to having copied data related to the supersonic missile from his senior colleague's computer while still under training in the organisation.

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