Impersonation & identity theft

Definition & description

Impersonation or identity theft is the act of stealing someone’s identity and data to impersonate them. In many cases, perpetrators create fake social media or email accounts pretending to be the victim. Impersonation or identity theft is usually interconnected to other forms of online gender-based violence. For instance, during ongoing online harassment against a woman journalist, fake accounts about her soliciting for sex work were created to harass and insult her. In some cases, impersonating email accounts are created to send abusive messages in the victim’s name.

Incident response: What do I do?

Impersonation can be done in many ways and the countering strategies will differ too. When the impersonation happens through social media accounts, you may want to consider the following:

Alert others. You may want to alert and warn your contacts that this profile is false and an impersonation of you or your organisation. Consider doing this via email, your social media account or a space that you have control of.

Report it. It is important to get the impersonated account taken down as soon as possible.

Social media platforms usually provide report mechanisms in cases like this. Find out more on reporting to social media here.

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Tik Tok

It can be trickier if the impersonation is done through a phone number or an email, as it may be close to impossible to push for the company to shut down the phone number or email address, and legal action may become necessary.

Document it. Reporting it is great because the content may get taken down. However, it is important to consider that the impersonation may not stop. Before reporting it (whether it is to the social media platforms, or the authorities), remember to document it. There are many ways to document it; screen capturing the profile, messages, and content, saving the relevant links, saving a screen capture of your reports, etc. Make sure the screen captures are inclusive of the dates. If you consider reporting to law enforcement, your documentation would be very useful. If it is too much to handle, ask someone you trust to assist.

Laws in Malaysia on impersonation & identity theft

Section 420 of the Penal Code Whoever cheats and thereby dishonestly induces the person deceived, whether or not the deception practiced was the sole or main inducement, to deliver any property to any person, or to make, alter, or destroy the whole or any part of a valuable security, or anything which is signed or sealed, and which is capable of being converted into a valuable security, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than one year and not more than ten years and with whipping, and shall also be liable to fine.