The Commission on Elections on Thursday warned the public against fake social media accounts impersonating its officials, which it said could be part of a larger scheme to undermine the May 9 elections.
Earlier in the day, a Twitter account bearing the name of Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo posted supposed details about the upcoming election debates.
The account with three tweets and created only in January had been suspended as of Thursday.
"These blatant attempts to steal the online identity of Comelec officials are potentially part of a broader attempt to undermine the integrity of the elections," the poll body's spokesperson James Jimenez said.
"Apart from closely coordinating with social media platforms to take down these profiles and accounts, the Comelec stands ready to take legal action against the perpetrators," he added.
The Comelec advised the public to reject any Facebook friend request supposedly coming from a Comelec commissioner or other key officials of the poll body and immediately report them for community standard violations.
Twitter profiles impersonating these officials must also be immediately reported for violation of the platform's impersonation policy, it added.
Earlier this month, Manila Bulletin reported that Comelec's servers had allegedly been hacked, which supposedly resulted in the downloading of data that could potentially affect the upcoming elections.
While investigation on the alleged incident is still ongoing, Comelec said it found no evidence that its systems had been compromised.
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