A Liberal Democrat MP suffered the online humiliation of having his Facebook account suspended after the social networking site decided he "wasn't real".

Steve Webb, 42, member of parliament for Northavon, Gloucestershire, tried to log on on Monday but was told "his account had been disabled following complaints he didn't really exist", as Reuters explains.

A traumatised Webb, who's had a Facebook presence for a year and boasts 2,500 "friends", told the news agency: "I sent them an email asking what the problem was and got a response a day later saying they had concluded that my profile was a fake, that I wasn't really Steve Webb. I was essentially accused of impersonating a member of parliament."

Chums quickly established a "Steve Webb is real!" Facebook group, while "he and others then contacted anyone they knew who worked at the site to see if they could get the ban overturned".

Sure enough, after 36 hours, Webb was reactivated in cyberspace. When Reuters quizzed him as to whether he "might have been suspended because he had a suspiciously high number of friends, particularly for an MP", he reportedly laughed and admitted: "The thought did cross my mind." ®

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