Filipinos who mistook a certain Facebook page as the official account of the Land Transportation Office (LTO) were surprised after it posted a calendar meme claiming how the rest of the months would look like.
The page “Land Transportation Office – LTO” on June 5 shared a meme credited to an online user @ThioJoe which claimed that the global community will face a “solar flare, Yellowstone eruption” and an “alien invasion,” among others.
“LEAKED! THE REST OF 2020 CALENDAR,” its post said.
It has since gained 3,000 likes and reactions, 2,000 shares and more than 300 comments on the social networking site.
Some Facebook users then speculated that the account could be “hacked” and experienced “security breach.”
There were others who openly condemned the page and called it out for supposedly wasting people’s taxes.
“Dami niyong time. Ayusin niyo na lang walang mga plaka,” a Facebook user said.
“Ano pong kinain niyo? Sayang tax ng taong bayan sa inyo,” another online user wrote.
“This is bad and cheap. Don’t use your page to show off your bad judgment and lack of class. Use your page to inform people. You don’t need to spread jokes – or spread this useless info. Umayos kayo,” a critical Facebook user said.
Meanwhile, some Filipinos informed their fellow online users that the page is not the official account of LTO.
“This is NOT the official page. This is the legit one: Land Transportation Office-Philippines,” an online user said.
“Whoever that LOWLIFE admin of this FAKE PAGE should be jailed! This is NOT even a real LTO FB page! For fudge’s sake!!” another Facebook user wrote.
The official Facebook page of LTO is under the name “Land Transportation Office-Philippines” which has the “lto.cdmpao” username, otherwise known as its Facebook profile URL.
It is the page of the agency’s central office based in Quezon City.
On June 18, the agency released a post informing the public of its official social media accounts, e-mail addresses and legitimate websites after the same fake page live-streamed a mobile game of “Call of Duty.”
Some online users thought that LTO was “hacked” but the Department of Transportation, its mother agency, said that the account was fake.
someone hacked the facebook page of the land transportation office here in the ph and played cod from CallOfDutyMobile
The official page of LTO informed Filipinos that the page is “not managed, affiliated, or recognized” by the agency. It also said that the account was proven to be “fake” after an investigation.
It then released a list of its official social media accounts including the official pages of its regional offices across the country.
Some concerned Filipino online users asked the agency to acquire a verified badge on the social networking site but one of the page’s handlers said that they are still on the process of fixing the official page.
“Sa ngayon po ay mayroon pa pong mga inaayos at ina-update dito sa Official Page ng LTO. Amin po itong inaayos para sa verification at iba pa. Maraming salamat po,” it replied to a Facebook user on Monday.
As of this writing, the fake page “Land Transportation Office (LTO)” has around 24,000 likes and 25,127 followers on Facebook despite its limited posts.
A cursory search on the social networking site reveals pages using the name of LTO but its only official account under the central office is the one under the name “Land Transportation Office-Philippines.”