A Newstalk radio host was the victim of a Facebook catfish scam after discovering that fakers had been using her photos and info to set up profiles to con her listeners.
Andrea Gilligan, the presenter of Lunchtime Live on Newstalk, explained that a fake account popped up with her photo, name, and occupation, and was offering listeners a €1,000 prize. And Gilligan hit out at Facebook’s process of getting the page removed and said it took her a number of days to have it sorted - with the number of victims, if any, yet to be confirmed.
It is understood that the culprits behind the account were sending messages to people telling them they had won €1,000 and could claim their prize by clicking on a link. The link would most likely have led to a website where victims would be prompted to fill in their personal information such as bank details to receive the prize - which is often the case with these styles of scam.
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The presenter warned people about the profile and said: "I just want to tell people, if you get a message from me on a Facebook page with €1,000, it is not from me. Please don’t click on any links; please don’t hand over personal information or bank account details.
"I wish I had €1,000 to give away but it is definitely not from me". She went on to discuss the issue of having the profile removed, and said it took days of back and forth with the social media giant.
"I believe it has now been taken down but my point is that it is extremely difficult to do this," she explained. “Only for I had the backing of the digital team in work and obviously [Newstalk Tech Correspondent] Jess [Kelly] who is well aware of this.
"Like it should not be this hard to get a fake account or an account purporting to be somebody that is clearly trying to dupe people out of money, it should not be this difficult to get this removed. I spent the whole weekend trying to get through to highlight that this actually trying to fraudulently get money out of people.
"It shouldn’t be that difficult". She is now calling on social media companies to update their security and compliance features to make it easier to get fraudulent accounts taken down.
"The response should not be that, ‘This account wasn’t harmful,’” she said. "Absolutely, it would have been extremely harmful if people filled out details or handed over account details on that.
"I was just so surprised at how complex this was and how long it took – from Friday evening at about 6:00 pm to only get this down now today at about lunchtime on Monday".
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