Financial journalist Frances Cook says she's frustrated that it took more than a week for her evil doppelganger to be removed from Instagram.
Cook dishes out financial tips to her 22,000 followers on Instagram (and 88,000 on TikTok) under the handle @francescooknz.
Trouble began earlier this month when a fraudster made an almost exact clone of her account under the user name @francescooknzz, copying her bio, photos and posts.
The only difference, over more than a week, was that the fake Frances direct-messaged the real Frances' followers with a crypto scam.
Fake Frances managed 10,300 followers before finally being taken down (which happened to be the same day the Herald asked for comment, although it was not clear what finally prompted Facebook to take action; various of Cook's followers laid complaints after being messaged by the fraudster).
"The people who follow my Instagram trust me to tell them about the money world, so when there's a scammer imitating me and to take advantage of that trust it's really frustrating that Facebook doesn't move faster," Cook says.
"It was clearly impersonating me and trying to scam people ... I would've thought they could have easily identified it and taken it down faster. I'm glad it's down now though, and hopefully next time they move a bit quicker."
Cook added, "This account was smart. They blocked me before harassing my followers, so I couldn't actually report them myself, but several of my followers reported them."
Those who follow the journalist on TikTok will know that Cook has been targeted by impersonators on that platform too.
"TikTok is even worse, but it's harder to DM accounts on TikTok if they don't follow you back, so they do less damage - whereas several of my followers seemed genuinely confused by the Instagram scammer, so there was more potential for actual damage, which was frustrating."
Cook says the problem has been exacerbated by the fact she has not been able to get her Instagram account verified, despite her media presence (which includes articles published by BusinessDesk, her Cooking the Books podcast on BusinessDesk, the Herald and various audio platforms, and multiple TV appearances).
Fake accounts on social media - and the related phenomenon of fake accounts being used in social media ads to push scams - have been a problem for years, but have continued unabated into 2022 as CertNZ reported that Kiwis lost a record $6.6 million to scams in the first quarter (the Crown agency says crypto is one of the fastest growing scam categories; it also acknowledges that the reports it fields are likely just the "tip of the iceberg" given most don't want to admit to being taken in.
In May, the Financial Markets Authority issued a fresh warning about the YuanPay Group, which has used fake news articles - including one purported to be written by a member of the Herald Business team, Jamie Gray - to push a cryptocurrency scam on Facebook and other platforms. The FMA said it was working with CertNZ and its counterparts overseas to have the ads taken down.
And in March, Newstalk Early Edition host Kate Hawkesby complained that an impersonator was telling commenters on Early Edition's Facebook page that they had won a share of $20,000 - with a link to fill in their credit card details to claim their "prize".
To add insult to injury, Hawkesby says after she complained, via NZME's head of security, Meta's initial response was negative. It did not accept that the scam account was fake.
An email from the Facebook owner read, "We reviewed the profile your friend reported and found that it isn't pretending to be you and doesn't go against our Community Standards."
After Hawkesby took to the airwaves to tell her story, the fake account was finally taken offline.
Others who've been impersonated on Facebook over the past couple of years include Hawkesby's husband and fellow ZB host Mike Hosking, ex-All Black captain Richie McCaw, broadcaster Duncan Garner and Sonny Bill Williams.
But it's not only celebs who are targeted. I've had two friends who've had to warn all their Facebook followers about an impersonator (including one this month). The fake accounts are used for fraud and phishing (attempts to harvest personal details for real-life identity theft).
There have been a number of similar cases across the Tasman where, in March the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it had instituted Federal Court proceedings against Facebook owner Meta, alleging it had engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct by publishing scam advertisements featuring prominent Australian public figures, including former NSW premier Mike Baird, businessman Dick Smith, TV presenter David Koch and mining magnate Andrew Forrest.
It also alleged that "Meta aided and abetted or was knowingly concerned in false or misleading conduct and representations by the advertisers."
"The essence of our case is that Meta is responsible for these ads that it publishes on its platform," ACCC chairman Rod Sims said.
"It is a key part of Meta's business to enable advertisers to target users who are most likely to click on the link in an ad to visit the ad's landing page, using Facebook algorithms. Those visits to landing pages from ads generate substantial revenue for Facebook."
A Meta spokesman told the AFR at the time, "Technology to detect and block scam ads and work to get ahead of scammers' attempts to evade our detection systems" as such ads "violate our policies and are not good for our community".
But Sims maintained that Facebook did not utilise such protections in practice, saying that although it promised consumers "it will prevent bad behaviour on its platform, again that is not happening".
"Meta should have been doing more to detect and then remove false or misleading ads on Facebook, to prevent consumers from falling victim to ruthless scammers," Sims said.
"Apart from resulting in untold losses to consumers, these ads also damage the reputation of the public figures falsely associated with the ads. Meta failed to take sufficient steps to stop fake ads featuring public figures, even after those public figures reported to Meta that their name and image were being featured in celebrity endorsement cryptocurrency scam ads," Sims said.
"Facebook failed to prevent the publication of fake ads even after the celebrities reported similar false, misleading or deceptive ads to Meta," the ACCC chair added.
Facebook would not comment on the ACCC case while it was before the courts.
An ACCC spokeswoman told the Herald today that a hearing date had yet to be set.
There's no immediate prospect of similar action on this side of the Tasman. A Commerce Commission spokesperson said, "We have received two complaints regarding this [cryto ad scams featuring fake endorsements], one related to YouTube, the other to Facebook. From the information received, there was no action taken by the Commission in either instance as there were no clear breaches."
In March, at the time of the Hawkesby scam, Meta's head of public policy, New Zealand and Pacific Islands, Nick McDonnell said it was against Facebook's rules to scam people out of money.
"Impersonating others on our platforms is a clear violation of our policies, and we've removed this account for breaching our inauthentic behaviour policy. We have a dedicated team that's tasked with detecting and blocking these kinds of scams," he said.
"While no enforcement is perfect, we continue to investigate new technologies and methods of stopping these scams and the people behind them."
This week, the Herald asked what steps Facebook takes to verify the identity of a person who opens a new account.
A spokeswoman said the users are allowed multiple accounts. For each one, they are asked for an email address and phone number. She could not immediately say if any steps were taken to verify the email and phone number.
Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that new family protection measures being piloted by Instagram, and other platforms, could be skirted by children simply setting up a new account under a new name, and giving a fake age, given the lack of verification procedures.
The Facebook spokeswoman told the Herald that the firm uses artificial intelligence (AI) analysis of posts, which can flag when someone is posting content usual for a person claiming to be their age.
The social network could not immediately say how many human staff it had dedicated to reviewing complaints about NZ accounts.
Facebook said in a statement, attributed to a spokesperson:
"We use a combination of automated systems and people to help review content flagged by our community. We are committed to continuing to invest in AI to improve accuracy and strengthen our review and appeal systems."
"Meta invests substantial resources in detecting and preventing these scams on the platform, and in taking action against the scammers that post the scam ads and try to evade our detection systems.
"We transparently report on our ad review process and our efforts to remove scams and fake accounts. From January to March 2022 we:
• Removed 1.6 billion fake accounts, 99.7 per cent of these were actioned before they could be reported
• Removed 1.8 billion pieces of spam content from Facebook, 99.7 per cent of this was actioned before it could be reported.
"You can read these data points in more detail in the Community Standard Enforcement Report."
The spokesperson said in December of 2019, "We filed suit against ILikeAd Media and two individuals who deceived people into installing malware available on the internet. The malware then enabled the defendants to compromise people's Facebook accounts and run deceptive ads - sometimes using celebrities to entice people to click on the ads."
And that, "In April 2020, we brought legal action against LeadCloak, an organisation that provided cloaking software and services specifically to get around Facebook's ad systems."
The outcome of either legal action was not immediately clear.
In April 2019, Facebook sued Lower Hutt company Social Media Series for US$9.4m ($14.1m) in a California Court in case over fake Instagram likes.
In October 2019, the two sides reached a settlement that required the NZ company to pay Facebook US$500,000.
Users are encouraged to report scam ads here.
The New Zealand sharemarket reached its highest level in a month.