KARACHI: People visiting the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s Facebook page on Friday searched in vain after hackers took down more than 30 of their official pages from the social networking site.
President of the Insaf Students Federation in Karachi, Arsalan Ghumman, told The Express Tribune that the official Facebook pages of PTI leader Imran Khan, the student wing Insaf Students Federation, and several, more including that of Dr Alvi were hacked into and hidden from the public’s eye.
“The pages were hijacked at 3 pm on Friday. We are in touch with the Facebook authorities to recover them,” he said.
Ghumman added that the last post on the PTI page was of a story published in The Express Tribune about Lyari activists joining their party. “After posting the story on the wall, I couldn’t see the page. I refreshed it but it was there no more.”
The president said that they have an idea of who planned the attack, but said it was too early to make any accusations. “We are planning to hold a press conference soon, when we will tell you about the miscreants.” He said that they have a number of administrators on their Facebook pages, but do not suspect them. The party’s accounts on Twitter are safe.
Web manager of the social media team at PTI, Imran Ghazali, told The Express Tribune that they were investigating the matter, and would pursue it legally. “Our leader Imran Khan has also taken notice of the matter, and has condemned it.”
Ghazali said that the hackers wanted to disrupt their political activities on the social networking website, but were wrong to think that they would be successful. “We are the only political party in the country which is the most active and popular on social media. Our webpage, ‘We want Imran Khan to be the next Prime Minister’ is liked by 0.45 million Facebook users, while the official Imran Khan page is liked by 0.35 million users.”
He said that the hackers had first broken into his Gmail account to log on to the Facebook pages. “I have recovered my Gmail account. Now we are trying to get back our Facebook pages but it will take time.”
The Express Tribune
Posted in: News
