Tesla boss Elon Musk does not have a profile on Facebook. In fact, he has been quite vocal about his dislike of the social media platform. Yet, Facebook verified a fan page of Elon Musk as his official page, mistaking it as that of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.

The page, which has 153,000 followers, says it is a fan page of the billionaire in its ‘About’ section. It is not pretending to be Elon Musk, The Verge reported. Also, the Page Transparency section of the fan page shows that the account is managed by people “based in Egypt.” Musk stays in Texas, USA.

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The page was created in 2019 and changed its name six times this year. It has been using Musk’s name since October 17.

The account had 10 posts on the page starting from October 21. They were mostly reposts of Musk’s recent tweets, with the latest one being a phoney Bitcoin giveaway, The Verge report said. Apart from this, the account also carried a photo of Musk.

Despite these signs, Facebook verified it as the official page of Elon Musk.

According to Facebook’s verification rules, account owners will have to fill out a form and submit official identification such as driver’s licence, passport, and national identification card to be verified by the platform.

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Yet scammers have found ways around the official process to create fake accounts.

After publication of the story on November 1, the page was made inaccessible. The Verge said it was unclear if the owner or the social media platform took it down.

Meanwhile, Musk had deleted his Facebook page in 2018 saying: “Just don’t like Facebook. Gives me the willies. Sorry.”

Last year, the Tesla CEO had tweeted, “Facebook sucks.”

Musk-owned electric car company Tesla and aerospace manufacturer SpaceX also do not have any official pages on Facebook.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)