If the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and the looting of victims' belongings at the crash site didn't depress you enough, here's more news. Several fake Facebook pages were set up in the names of Australian victims of the crash.

Among the accounts were three pages created in the names of children who died in the crash. When clicked, video images open external pop-up ads for gambling, sex, and counterfeit drug sites.

Although early reports said Facebook wasn't taking action and couldn't until the sites were proven illegal, the company has since taken them down. A Facebook spokesperson said, "We are disabling these profiles as soon as we are made aware of them. We encourage people to block those responsible and report suspicious behaviour to our team of experts via our reporting buttons so that we can quickly take the appropriate action."

Image source.

Discussion Starters:

• What are the potential consequences of Facebook's decision to remove these pages? Why would the company not act immediately?
• If the creators of these pages were caught, what would be appropriate action against them?