Moroccan Prince's Identity Stolen on Facebook

Penalties for identity theft have been regulated and honed on in the past years, ever since the Internet fraud started rising exponentially. Despite the penalties applied and despite all the warnings being issued and widely presented by the media, some people still resort to it.

The latest in the row of such crimes is Fouad Mourtada's theft of the Moroccan Prince's identity and his using it on social networking site Facebook. News broke out about this on Wednesday and CNN reports that the culprit has been apprehended by the authorities, on charges of 'villainous practices.' Whether that is the category under which his actions could be filed with the court or just some means of covering up the real implications is still unclear, as further details were not disclosed.

Besides impersonating Prince Moulay Rachid, Mourtada also found himself guilty of breaching the protocol and talking in his alias' name. The Royal Family never talks to anybody about internal affairs except for the country's news agency, and neither the King nor any member maintains websites or blogs, according to the CNN.

Facebook is trying to rally the efforts to prevent such happenings, but there is really no means of knowing for sure whether somebody is who he claims he is or not. The few security measures in place may be pretty easily bypassed by somebody with a little experience, and let's not forget that Mourtada, 26, was an engineer, so he knew his way around with a computer and with code, for that matter.

Boasting with somewhere around 60 million active users, Facebook is the second largest social network in the world, just trailing MySpace. This case is the perfect example of how quickly the startup got accepted worldwide, where it almost gained on its rival in the past year.