A young woman who runs a shelter for stray dogs in the city has alleged that photographs and details of her centre have been stolen and used by others to raise funds online from abroad.

Titas Mukherjee, 29, a resident of Thakurpukur who has been running an NGO since 2016, has been raising funds through social media for sustaining multiple projects of feeding strays and sheltering them. Apart from running the city unit, she is setting up a shelter in Burdwan.

“A web portal provides a platform for raising donations for noble causes. Earlier, I had raised money through the platform. Recently, when I was browsing through the different fundraisers on the portal, I spotted someone had used my photographs to raise Rs 5 lakh,” Titas told The Telegraph on Sunday.

She lodged a complaint with the cyber cell of Calcutta police on Friday. “Identity theft by creating fake profiles... has become a big problem. We keep advising people to make their accounts visible only to those who are on their contact list,” said an officer.