MANILA, Philippines – The National Privacy Commission (NPC) has invited representatives of Facebook Philippines to discuss the prevalence of impostor accounts that have popped up on the platform, on Tuesday, January 19.

The NPC said in a statement on Saturday that Privacy Commissioner Raymund Liboro invited the social media giant’s representatives to a meeting “to seek information regarding the numerous reports of impostor Facebook accounts.”

The NPC said it is coordinating with other government agencies and conducting a separate investigation on the issue, with the focus being on “probing the cause of the ‘privacy panic'” triggered by the dummy accounts. 

The NPC also wants to institute remedial measures to protect Philippine Facebook users. 

There are an estimated 45.4 million Facebook users in the country. 

Many dummy or impostor accounts were made or at least went live on Facebook on June 6. These include impostor accounts for hundreds of students from Cebu schools including University of the Philippines Cebu, University of San Carlos, and San Jose Recoletos, as well as non-students and people outside Cebu.

Both the Cybercrime Office of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Facebook said on June 7 they were looking into the dummy accounts. (READ: ‘I don’t feel safe, Facebook’: After discovery of ghost accounts, users demand better account protection)

Facebook on June 11 released a statement saying the company had “not seen evidence of the reported accounts engaging in coordinated or malicious activity focused on creating fake accounts.” The majority of the reported accounts have not been active – not posting content, sending messages or making friend requests – during Facebook’s monitoring since the reports began, the company said. – Rappler.com