Indian Army has issued an advisory to its officials and soldiers to be vigilant against fake social media profiles used by enemies to extracts sensitive information from them. The advisory comes amid reports that Pakistani agents are trying to target Indian soldiers on various social platforms.
The Army has warned that the adversaries may use such fake profiles for honey trapping the personnel. It has identified around 150 such profiles so far.
On Thursday, a Rajasthan court sent a soldier, who was honey-trapped by an agent of Pakistan's ISI into sharing confidential and strategic information about the Indian Army, to five-day police remand.
The soldier, Vichitra Behra, was produced before the district and sessions court here. Next hearing in the case is scheduled for November 11, an intelligence officer said.
Behra was under surveillance before he was detained. It was observed that he was in contact with the female Pakistani agent through Facebook and WhatsApp and was passing on confidential information about the Indian Army to her, a top intelligence officer had said on Wednesday.
In its advisory, the Army has asked its soldiers to be wary of those identifying themselves as spiritual leaders or women of foreign origin.
"The profiles are generally 2-3 years old. So, they do not raise suspicion and appear to be authentic. It is then that they started targeting," an official told PTI.
He said people using fake social media profiles have been trying to engage with the Army personnel for extracting information by pretending to be fellow Army officers, police personnel or even posing as women.
In July, the Army had issued a similar advisory asking its personnel to judiciously use social media to avoid the danger of getting honey trapped. That time, the Army had said that though there is no restriction on personnel to use social media, given the nature of job, the personnel should avoid joining large groups on sites like WhatsApp where the identity of many members is not known.