Information Integrity: manipulation, extortion and impersonation.

The association’s role

The National Cybersecurity Association of Ukraine is a collaboration platform and an ecosystem that brings together experts and market participants. In this area it supports research into information attacks and transparent methods of verification.

That means public-private collaboration at the level of method and terminology: a shared language for describing manipulative behaviour, and open, repeatable ways of checking. There is no formal public-private partnership contract.

The association does not investigate particular campaigns, monitor, attribute them, or name sites or people. This page is an educational explainer about protection, not the output of an investigation. An expert group for this area is only proposed.

Terms: misinformation, disinformation and behaviour

NIST separates two ideas. Misinformation is false content spread unintentionally. Disinformation is false content spread with the deliberate intent to deceive. “Information integrity” means information that can be linked to its sources, verified against evidence and backed by a chain of custody ¹.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) describes foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) as a pattern of behaviour that is mostly not illegal but is manipulative, intentional and coordinated, carried out by state or non-state actors, including proxies. The focus is on conduct, not only on content ².

The association’s convention: describe behaviours and defences, and do not label particular outlets, accounts or people.

Impersonation and identity abuse

Typical forms are fake profiles, lookalike domains, forged press releases and invented interviews. This list defines the scope of the page. It says nothing about how common any of them is.

What to do. Report to the platform: YouTube has separate routes for impersonated channels and for privacy ⁴, and a complaint about likeness or voice generally has to be filed by the person concerned ³. For scammers impersonating you, Telegram points to @NoToScam ⁵. Phishing sites and malware can be reported to the Cyber Police through its website form ⁶. Organisations can contact CERT-UA ⁷.

One simple habit helps: publish an “Our official channels” page on your website and link to it from every profile.

For scale: in June 2026 Mintsyfra (the Ministry of Digital Transformation) said that about 44% of adults had received messages from “friends” asking to borrow money through a hacked account. The study it relied on is not named, so treat this as context, not a precise figure ⁸.

Digital extortion

By extortion this text means a threat to publish, leak or fabricate material unless someone pays. It should be kept apart from lawful criticism and from journalism you find unwelcome. Criticism is not extortion.

1. 1Pause and do not answer at once: pressure and haste work for the person making the demand.
2. 2Preserve everything: messages, links, screenshots, times.
3. 3Report to the Cyber Police ⁶.
4. 4If intimate images are involved, use hashing: StopNCII for adults ⁹, Take It Down for images from before age 18 ¹⁰.
5. 5Talk to a lawyer before making any public statement.

The association does not monitor sites that offer paid removal of content.

Coordinated campaigns: what an organisation can do

These are defensive steps only. None of them involves touching anyone else’s channels.

• Know your normal. Track the usual level of mentions, followers and traffic so that anomalies stand out.
• Verify before you amplify. Correct once, on your own verified channels, without embedding the false item itself.
• Prepare a one-page response plan: who decides, who speaks, who verifies, where the official statement lives.

Crisis response and reputation

The lawful route is rebuttal and correction, not censorship. Removal rules weigh freedom of expression. GDPR Article 17(3)(a) exempts processing that is necessary for freedom of expression and information from the right to erasure ¹¹. YouTube weighs parody, satire, public-interest value and public-figure status when it assesses complaints ³.

What the association does not do on this topic

The association does not monitor, attribute or investigate, and does not name sites or people. Government sources are linked only for method and terminology.