SIBU: Sarawak Deputy Public Health, Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Michael Tiang has urged the public not to join his Facebook page as his account has been hacked.

       Tiang said a group of hackers called “Susmita Kumari” had sent out notifications to social media users after gaining control of his account.

       "I urge the public not to accept the invitation to join the Facebook page. I don't know what type of scamming activity they would promote.

       "I’m also urging the people to lodge a complaint against Michael Tiang's FB page with Meta (owner of Facebook)," he said at a press conference on Sunday (Jan 28).

       The Pelawan assemblyman claimed that the hacking of his Facebook account was politically motivated and to prevent him from reaching out to the people via social media.

       "This group continued to hack my account when I managed to regain control of it four times earlier until I lost ownership over it," he said.

       He said when the hacking activity first started on Dec 16 last year, he had immediately lodged a complaint with Meta as well as the police and Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

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       "The hackers uploaded weird and obscene posts after gaining access to my FB account. I then contacted Meta in Singapore.

       "They offered me assistance and after that I could gain control of the page and started deleting the unnecessary posts,” he added.

       However, the hackers managed to gain control of Tiang’s page again. Following that he received a notification from Facebook to verify himself on his FB page.

       Despite doing that, the hackers could still take ownership of his FB page which has over 26,000 followers.