Actor Ranaksh Rana has been in trouble recently after his identity was faked and used for a wrong reason. Sharing details of the incident, Rana says, “The thing about social media is that it’s all out in the open. A lot of times I come across fake profiles which use my name and picture which I keep reporting. And then there are other times when people write to me to verify if I was the one who reached out to them for some random project. The latest was where a group of people used my name to lure people across cities for casting them in modeling and acting projects.” The incident took place in the Agra circle as well as Chandigarh. Ranaksh Rana further adds, “Aspiring models have been contacted with numbers that used my picture and made to believe that they will be given acting/ modeling jobs. They even have got numbers with my name. Apparently, they charged a certain sum to provide opportunities. I got to know about this when an aspiring model from Agra wrote to me to verify this claim.”
How did you react when you came to know they are using your name to lure people? “I was obviously disappointed. I gathered all possible information to see what’s being claimed and if there’s any merit to it. A lot of times people would make such fake claims too to just connect with you. But I had come across this particular group of people in the past too and they used my name and pictures to do this scam. Unaware people fall prey to this and share their information.”
Rana adds, “This is not the first time it happened. It has happened so many times that I had to put up an alert on my social media handles about all sorts of frauds that happen falsely on my name. I will resort to the formal complaint with evidence the next time this comes around. I decided to deal with this on my own by clarifying to those who reached out to me. I also tried to contact the people who posted these fake messages, but they immediately blocked my contact.
I want to make it very clear that I stand by what’s right and do not tolerate what’s unethical. Strict action will be taken against those indulging in scams and preying on innocent people, that too at the expense of responsible public figures.”
Well, we can only expect that people should behave with responsibility when it comes to the right usage of social media.
