A tribute to Orkut FAKEs...

Jayabala! Beautiful name. The picture in her Orkut profile was much better than any of the girls studied with me in my engineering batch. She had a nice smile, and a Barbie girl figure. But why me? Why is this beauty contest girl sending me a friend’s request in Orkut? The question mark in my mind faded away as soon as I checked out Common Friends. There were three of my folks from my engineering classes. OK, must be one of the faces I missed in the college.

Hey, that could not be, I am pretty sure I could not have missed such a face even in the Mumbai CST crowd. Well, one of those who kept low during studies and got bored with an early marriage, trying to get back in touch with those she wanted to hang around with, when she was in college. I could not spend a couple of beats from my born-friendly heart in the direction of saving her universe. Jayabala got in to my friends list on Mar ##, 2009.

Nothing much happened between our Orkut avatars for a month, other than my “Hi, how are you” once or twice a week, wishing to get in close to her and may be get her phone number, all of which were promptly ignored apart from her wishing for my long living self to be in earth for another century on my birthday, which ended up in just an exhausted “Thanks dear” from me. (Long gasps-somehow I gathered that people who can write long sentences and still manage to not get any red underlines in word are considered to be pretty talented in various activities such as mountain climbing and horse riding.) She reciprocated asking if I knew where one of my classmates (Our Batch mate?) was, which made me jealous. I reluctantly gave his whereabouts hoping that he has moved from that place before BC 230 and that place do not have Phone connection, railway station, adequate food supply or even Orkut/Gmail services. Believe me; we do have Orkutters even in those areas where they have not sold Nirma washing powder yet. Well, when I went in her profile to wish her “Happy Birthday” on Aug ##, 2009; I noticed most of my Engineering classmates were in her friend’s list. Surprisingly, one of my friend from my Pre-Degree class was also in her profile, I wondered how they knew each other.

It was in Oct 2009 that I remembered her id, because it was my pre degree friend’s Birthday, who was added in her profile. He was still as popular a person in the world as what I was during my pre degree years and must have been happy with the huge and noticeable Orkut friends-count of 27. I scanned through his friends and noticed that Jayabala was not there in his list anymore. Another interesting update was that there was a new Kishuak in our ‘Mutual Friend’s’ List. I wondered where I have seen him before. But you know how it feels like to indulge in forensics when you are watching Friends -the serial, I left it there.

I checked Kishuak’s Orkut id next week and was quite impressed. He had 438 friends compared with my 146. We had 87 mutual friends and most of his friends were good looking girls. There wasn’t any community he was not interested in and his testimonials ran down 5 pages. Interestingly, his scrap book was almost empty. Rather, it looked like a regularly cleaned up one. Most of them were “Hi”-s and “Thanks”-s for his Birthday wishes. Many of my friends have sent him their “Thanks”-s and “Love”-s and stuff, but no one seemed to have left a close personal note. One of the scraps captured my attention, of course, the tag picture was cute. It said “Please pick the phone or scrap me back…. I am really scared…”. It was from a very pretty girl and naturally interested, I went in to her profile. She had most of her pages hidden, but it was easy to figure out that she worked in UAE working as a nurse there and was from a village in Kerala.

Interested, I went back to Ikshuak’s profile and checked a few of his scrap book pages for any other scrap from her. Nothing!. I came back to check the scrap I noticed again. It was gone. Kishuak must have done it in the past couple of minutes. He was not online. Either he logged in and out in these 3 minutes or was hiding himself….What the heck? Who is he? What did he do to that girl?

I called my roommate, who has been with me ever since engineering, also added in Ikshuak’s friends list. I asked him if he knew Ikshuak. He did not. Bloody idiot has even written a testimonial to Ikshauk (with a Best Friend Ever!! Made with dolls…) and did not have a clue where this chap popped up from. I asked him if he had a friend by name Jayabala. He had. And now she was out of his friends list too…voila!!.

I called up a couple of other friends who were in Ikshouk’s and my Mutual Friends list. None knew him. All of them were close friends of jayabala their respective diverse backgrounds and none had any clue who she really was. All of them have Ikshouk in their friend’s list now and they did not know how he got in there. Again Voila!!.

This Engineering college friend of ours who just underwent a sex-transformation operation, entirely in Orkut, arrested my whole interested for the rest of the day, last week of Oct 2009. The scrap I saw in his (now she is a he for the rest of the movie) scrapbook disturbed me to the core. I somehow felt that I helped this rascal in gaining a false engineering degree which he definitely did not put to use to help earthquake victims of Haiti. I did not know what to do and how to track him down. Well, I tried…

Social engineering is the easiest one to pass in the era of social-network society. It took me 15 minutes to create a new ID, with a girl’s name and get a few of my engineering friends added as her friends. She-Me was looking for hanging around with techie brainy engineering folks around the globe. It took another 27 hours for me to get in to Ikshouk’s friends list and exchange a couple of ‘hi-how are you-who are you’-s. Me-She gave away my personal mail id with some reluctance and his photos poured in from his engineering times, all from railway stations and coffee shops. He wrote in detail about his (our!!) college hostel, how nice the canteen food was (I have had it buddy!!) the professors and so on. He even knew a couple of real names of our professors. She-Me struggled to explain to him what I did in my nursing days and stuff. Well, he was more interested in getting my phone number anyway. It is to be mentioned that Ikshouk was very careful about deleting my scraps in his scrapbook as well as mine in his. He told me a story about this habit of his which would have been rather ‘cute’ to a girl.

After pushing the emails to some confirmable limit; She-Me agreed to exchange phone numbers. One condition though. I (She) need to meet Ikshouk in person and have a coffee together. If I like the evening, I will be ready for the phone number exchange. Ikshouk was confident about the whole game and readily agreed. We were supposed to meet in coming Saturday at a CCD nearby. I arranged a few of my engineering friends to meet this guy there and one of my girl-friends to help us. One of these friends informed his uncle in police about all this, just in case. We were not exactly sure what we are up to, but we were pretty sure that we will force him to log in to his Orkut and confess to all the girls in his friends list about his false identity, change his Orkut profile for ever or something like that. We guessed that it will be easy to figure out with a guy when we see him in person.


Disaster came on Friday, proving that all engineers cannot pass social engineering.. One of the very few of my circle who helped me to get a girl’s identity was not properly updated about the story so far. He scrapped I-She something like this. “Hey dude! Did you find him?”

Well, he never came on Saturday. Next day his profile was gone. Clean. One engineer left the Orkut-Earth so quietly that there is now no way anyone can ever reach him. I tried to talk to a couple of girls from his friends’ list that I have noticed but they did not cooperate. Where is he now? We all knew what he was up to. We could not accept the fact that he so easily escaped our trap we built in a month. It was more horrifying to believe that it will not take more than a couple of days for him to create another id in another name and get in to another educated circle. More girls will be cheated. He will dissolve in to thin air again, only to procure another identity in another week.

So is this Blog, my friends – if you have passed mechanics in your third semester at least in the 20th attempt, you will understand how severe this issue can be. Let me declare this, we do have a problem here. We could cause pain and suffering to gullible girls out there by simply being UNAWARE. Please don’t be. Social networking sites are good, but not in the absolute sense. They have their dark side too. You are acting as a Fake Passport maker when you click on that add as a friend request. When you do that, please make sure that you know what you are doing. Please watch those people in your Orkut profile about who you do not know much. If possible, don’t let them get in to their circle at all.

One of my friends shared some of the saddest things possible in these lines to me a month back, for the first time. I was shocked to see four of them in my profile itself. We declared war against FAKEs then. When we come across anyone who uses any kind of false identity we watch him/her. We notify others. We are not doing anything much, but who knows? If we don’t do even that, someone somewhere might suffer because of a single mouse click that I /You make. We have a few others also, who have understood the seriousness of the matter and do their bit like us.

Please note; whatever can happen in Orkut can happen in Facebook or any other social networking sites.

Please join us folks, just consider the case and believe me this IS happening. When you get a friend’s request try to see what the person is up to. If you doubt foul-play, remove him from your address book and notify others. Big deal!

All the characters in the above story are fictitious. For those who might have offended with the names I have used, those are three of my roommates, Jayakumar, Balachandra and Kaushik. All nice and neat folks. Any Jayabala or Ikshouk out there, please bear with me. Lot of thanks to all of you and Limnesh in particular, who opened my eyes in this direction.

BEWARE!!! and take care folks! With love, Praharsh.