More than 100 AFL players have had their identities hijacked by imposters in an internet scam that has duped legions of unsuspecting fans.

Identity thieves posing as famous players, including Hawthorn premiership captain Sam Mitchell, have set up profiles and uploaded pictures on popular internet networking sites, Facebook and MySpace.

In some cases, the impersonators have even answered fans' questions, joined inappropriate groups and forums and posted fictitious details about players' off-field lives.

"In some of these sort of forums they're being misrepresented, defamed, the subject of malicious type information and generally having their identities stolen," AFL Players Association chief executive Brendon Gale said.

"So that's a real concern and it's something we have a fairly strong interest in."

The players' association said it had been repeatedly forced to approach the website providers to demand the fake pages be pulled down because the service providers refused to police themselves properly.

"We've had well over 100 instances where MySpace and Facebook posters have purported to be AFL players when in fact they are not - it's an issue we've been dealing with now for three years," AFLPA operations manager Matt Finnis told AAP.

"The frustrating thing is ... these website operators don't police themselves. We'd like to think these sites would play a greater role in policing the content rather than relying on us to identify cases of fraud and misrepresentation."

Finnis refused to reveal which other players had their identities hijacked but said it wasn't difficult to guess some of the more obvious candidates.

"Fittingly, many popular players are the ones who enjoy having many fans and ... are more susceptible to inappropriate exploitation," he said.

"There's a demographic of AFL players under the age of 23. As such many of them have their own Facebook profiles which they use to relate with their friends."

The AFLPA has sought legal advice but hadn't yet identified any cases that warranted legal action.

"If there was an instance thought to be particularly severe, we'd certainly look to how to refer it to the relevant authorities but at this stage we've been able to prevail on the main companies to withdraw the content," Finnis added.

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