"Identity theft is not a joke, Jim", said Dwight famously in The Office. And while this line was meant to be humorous in the show, the dialogue holds true in real life as well.
Manu Pillai, an author and historian by profession, has been facing this situation for a while now. His pictures have been used by multiple companies to advertise their products and services without his consent.
Recently, Gaurav Munjal, the Co-Founder and CEO Unacademy, shared a post launching their new product 'NextLevel'. In this ad, however, a picture of Manu has been used for the promotion.
After the original tweet by Munjal, Manu retweeted his post and pointed out how his picture has been used without his consent. Funnily enough, this isn't the first time Manu noticed his picture being used to sell a product.
He wrote, "Apparently, I am 'Sagar Chauhan', senior frontend engineer. Not the first time this is happening. Somewhat miffed that I have such a generic face, it gets lifted for all kinds of random advertisements".
He then went on to quote examples of the companies that have used his picture and given him different identities. One of the company was 'Dhurina', who used his picture for a testimonial and made him Mohit K Gaur who was a loyal user of the company providing free pdfs. Another time he was Aman Shah, on a company's website called 'Trainman'.
This hilarious twitter thread has the netizens in split. While some users believed that it's his genuine looks that help the company sell their products, other suggested him to sue the company.
One user wrote, "It seems people find your face more convincing for their profile. It's an achievement."
Another user wrote, "This is so weird. Also, calls for a suit?"
Here are some other responses:
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