Fake Police Notices: Delhi HC Ends Pleas After X Admits 'Impostor' Scam
Delhi High Court ends IFF and SFLC pleas after X reveals takedown notices were sent by an impostor, not the Delhi Police.
The Delhi High Court has disposed of petitions filed by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) and the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) after the social media platform X revealed that purported X impostor takedown notices were not issued by the authorities, but by a fraudster.
The Legal Battle Over Content Removal
The case reached the court when the IFF and SFLC, both prominent digital rights organizations, challenged communications they received from X. These messages informed the organizations that the Delhi Police had requested the blocking or removal of their accounts and specific pieces of content.
Alarmed by the potential for coercive action and questioning the authenticity of these requests, the two organizations sought judicial intervention to protect their digital presence and freedom of expression.
X Reveals the Truth: An Internal Investigation
During the proceedings before Justice Amit Mahajan, the legal counsel for X dropped a bombshell. The platform informed the court that it had conducted an internal investigation into the origins of the notices. The findings were clear: the requests did not originate from the Delhi Police.
X clarified that an unidentified impostor had impersonated police authorities to send these fake takedown requests, attempting to trick the platform into censoring the petitioners.
Action Against the Impostor
X has not taken the matter lightly. The platform informed the court that it has already filed an official complaint with the Delhi Police. The goal is to trace and identify the individual responsible for the impersonation and the misuse of the platform's legal request mechanisms.
Assurance of Safety for Digital Rights Groups
To put the petitioners' minds at ease, X provided a firm assurance to the court that no adverse action would be taken against the accounts of the IFF or the SFLC based on the fraudulent notices. The platform guaranteed that their accounts would not be taken down.
Given this admission and the guarantee of safety, the Delhi High Court decided to dispose of the petitions filed by the two organizations.
The incident has sparked significant concerns regarding the security of the mechanisms used by social media intermediaries to process legal and content takedown requests, highlighting a vulnerability that an impostor was able to exploit.