Holidaymakers have been warned of fake social media accounts being used by fraudsters to impersonate airlines and gain personal information.
A study by Which? has found that imposters have changed tactics to infiltrate genuine customer queries and complaints on Twitter and are impersonating airlines “with ease”.
The warning comes a year after the consumer watchdog noticed that fake easyJet accounts had popped up to “help” customers after a number of flights were cancelled.
Fraudsters can pose as customer service agents to ask to be followed under the premise of sorting out the problem.
After chatting over a direct message, the customer might be lured into sharing a phone number and then personal details - giving crooks access to bank accounts.
Which? has said the problem has now moved beyond easyJet and there are now fake accounts impersonating all major airlines.
Often, these will look genuine and the design will be copied from the official page but with key detail differences - such as an unofficial-sounding name (eg. @easyJet10011 and not @easyjet). They can also pose as a fake staffer (eg. ‘Mike from WizzAir’).
And Which? has said that Twitter has been too slow to take down fake accounts.
Twitter/X no longer has a functioning press office for the Standard to approach.
What are scammers doing?
It is often now policy for airlines to reply to customer inquiries via social media and frauds are looking to take advantage of this.
Scammers “crawl social media” by using bots (a type of automated software) to quickly find customers contacting an airline, according to Which?
This frequently occurs during a time of a weather event or strike that has led to an airline cancelling lots of flights.
A fraud will then respond to your query or complaint hoping you won't notice you're being contacted by a fake account.
Which? says it put a question to @wizzair on Twitter and was contacted by two false accounts, both saying they were looking into it, while requesting further information.
“Both used near-identical language, apologising for the inconvenience, stating that they had ‘already escalated this matter to the relevant department’ and requesting a ‘reachable WhatsApp number for assistance’ via DM (direct message),” Which? said.
Further investigations found bogus accounts posing as British Airways, easyJet, Jet2, Ryanair, Tui, and Virgin Atlantic.
“We also discovered that fake accounts are often quicker to respond than the genuine airlines, but they also interrupt existing conversations between you and airlines, which can be harder to spot,” Which? added.
The scammer will try and trick you into visiting dodgy websites away from Twitter and handing over card details, or inputting financial information to claim “compensation”.
How can I keep myself safe?
Which? says if you’ve sent your card details to a scammer, or lost money to a scam, call your bank immediately and report the scam to Acton Fraud.
To take precautions, consumers are advised to:
Check if the official account matches the one that is engaging with you,
Do not give any bank or card details, ever, as airlines do not ask for this on socials,
Check the number of followers an account has. Some of the scam accounts can have fewer than 1,000, which is an immediate red flag,
Call customer services if you are concerned.
A blue tick is not the mark of authentication it once was with scams now sometimes taking the Elon Musk-introduced offer up of paying for the status. It means that having a blue tick no longer means an account is legit. However, the major airlines often have an advanced gold verification tick verification.
Which? said that it was not always able to get fake accounts taken down, even after reporting them. The body said that X replied only to say that the accounts flagged did not comply with the site’s regulations.
What have airlines said?
Jet 2, easyJet, Wizz, and TUI all replied to Which? to say they were aware of the issue and monitored to see if there were fake accounts, reporting those they saw. None of the airlines that responded to Which? shared how many fake accounts they had seen.
British Airways, Ryanair and Virgin Atlantic didn’t respond.
