The singer Sara Dufour is a victim of scammers who use her name and picture to create fake accounts on social networks and implores her thousands of admirers to beware of this fraudulent scheme.
“It frustrates me that people are fooled into believing they are chatting with me. I find it offensive because it’s not me,” ignited the real Sara Dufour in the flesh, who met Le Journal in Quebec on Tuesday.
She’s far from the only one attacking her scammers who pose as stars to scam their admirers. A few days ago, in an interview with Sud Radio, Patrick Bruel promised to file a police report against the “bastards who hide behind fake accounts to try to extort money [son] Surname “.
“What’s your problem, man, find yourself a life”, Sara Dufour started for these web pirates, whose origin and identity are obviously unknown.
blue tick
Fighting this scourge takes time and looks like an impossible mission. When a fake account is exposed and closed, others grow with it.
During our meeting, Sara Dufour’s manager, Karl-Emmanuel Picard, found seven fake accounts in the singer’s name in a matter of seconds by conducting a search on Instagram. For her part, the singer has identified several dubious pages and profiles by entering her name in the Facebook search engine.
“I started talking about it in stories and taking screenshots to explain that it needs the blue tick. I then found out that scammers put the blue tick in the profile picture. People who aren’t familiar with computers might think it’s okay,” says the artist from Lac-Saint-Jean.
“Recently, she adds, this is the first time I’ve canceled shows because I’ve been ill. The next day, an “All for Sara Dufour” group was formed. People followed this group thinking I was the one doing it to seek support. It’s terrible. »
be careful
Luckily, no Sara Dufour fan you know has lost money after subscribing to fake account.
In 2019, Radio-Canada’s Les décrypteurs program reported the case of a woman who had been scammed out of $800 because she thought she had won an iPhone in a fake contest on a fake Marie Mai site.
The singer therefore calls for vigilance. The blue tick must be visible and in the right place, she reminds us, and “I don’t have a personal account, I never text anyone. »
To the personal pages
Scammers are no longer content with creating fake celebrity accounts, they are now trying to make victims directly on artists’ personal pages.
Among Marie-Mai’s recent posts on her Facebook page, her manager saw comments signed by fake profiles of the singer.
“You have nerves. We are forced to write in Marie-Mai’s account below that it is a fake site. They used to try to catch people with fake accounts outside of Marie-Mai’s pages but now they are on her personal pages. It’s starting to get intense,” says Shannie Ladouceur, who says “knock on wood” lest anyone be fooled.
In their opinion, artists have little power against these scammers. “We’re reporting them, but we can’t turn them off. Facebook has the big end of the stick. »
Simply
Why use artists’ image to phish netizens? “Because it’s easy. Many images are available online,” replies Hakim Laniel-Lanani, Operations Manager at the Cybercrime Clinic at the University of Montreal.
“The moment they create an account and deposit a little money, they know there will be interest from a large base of people. You can advertise activities or exclusive offers there. They will use manipulation schemes to try to offer their targets something to trick them. »