Identity Theft & Online Impersonation

Related provisions

Dignity-related transmissions may engage section 20. Spoofing is addressed in section 26. Always open the full section text on LawHub before drawing conclusions.

Applicable PECA provisions

Links open LawHub’s National corpus text for PECA 2016. Read the full section before relying on a short label.

• Section 16 — Unauthorized use of identity information
• Section 20 — Offences against dignity of a natural person
• Section 26 — Spoofing
• Section 14 — Electronic fraud

Evidence checklist

• URLs of impersonating profiles
• Side-by-side screenshots of real vs fake identity use
• Any messages sent from the fake account to your contacts

Practical next steps

1. Report the profile to the platform.
2. Warn contacts about the impersonation.
3. File an official complaint with profile URLs attached.

Related cybercrime topics

• Fake Social Media Profiles
• Cyber Harassment in Pakistan
• How to File an NCCIA Complaint

Sources & provenance

• The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 (Pakistan Code consolidation) — Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of Pakistan (Pakistan Code). National corpus consolidation_date 2025-02-07; source_id pakistancode-peca-2016.
• Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Act, 2025 (Act No. II of 2025) — Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament) / Senate Secretariat gazette publication. Presidential assent and Gazette Extra. publication 29 January 2025; [94(2025)/Ex. Gaz.].
• NCCIA online complaint portal — National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (complaint.nccia.gov.pk). Host complaint.nccia.gov.pk resolves on the public DNS (Cloudflare). Bot fetches may receive HTTP 403; users should open the official domain in a browser and follow current on-site instructions.