Twitter, Facebook, Instagram scam superfans, reports report

If you notice that Oprah Winfrey is raising money for a charity overseas on Facebook, or if you're getting romantic Twitter messages from country singer Kip Moore, you'd better pump the brakes . Do not send money – or worse, sign divorce papers – on the sole basis of the promises of social media.

That's because fans are being scammed by crooks who exploit fake Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, according to a New York Times report. This is part of a larger problem on the internet, where celebrity impersonators have the tools to entice people to send money in all sorts of forms.

Social media has brought fans closer to their favorite celebrities, as fans of singer Taylor Swift, who sometimes have the chance to meet her in person based on their online comments . But the track of deceived people left behind by the scammers shows that there is a dark side to the power of social media to connect ordinary people to superstars.

On the Venmo payment application, the problem is even more complicated because the platform does not check any of its users CNET found. This means that an account for the musician John Legend seems just as legitimate as an account for someone you have never heard of.

Some people started pushing social media companies to do more to solve the problem. After the hustlers continually claimed in advertisements that the British consumer advocate Marin Lewis approved financial products, he sued Facebook in April . In his lawsuit, Lewis argued that Facebook could use its facial recognition technology to immediately suppress commercials showing its image because it never endorses products.

According to the Times, Moore says fans call him at his concerts. to be in a romantic relationship with him. Their proof is screen captures of chats with social media accounts that do not belong to him. Some even said that they left their husbands to be with him after saying that he loved them. "They give me a letter, you know," Here are the divorce papers, I left this or that, "Moore told the Times.

Celebrities told The Times that the problem is too big for them to handle every scammer in the Facebook system, and that accounts that are deleted are a drop of water in the bucket.

In an email, Facebook and Instagram spokesman Pete Voss said that it was contrary to the terms of use of the company to impersonate the company. 39, another person on his platforms. "People use Facebook and Instagram to communicate with real people, which is why we are so focused on authentic connections and activity on our service," Voss said. The company uses facial recognition and machine learning to detect scams.

Representatives of Oprah and Moore, as well as Twitter, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Moore, who tweets Twitter's verified Twitter account @kipmooremusic, tweeted the Times' story Monday. "Here is a warning for those of you who are still fooled by the impostors," he wrote.

The report traces scams to groups in West African countries of the United States. Nigeria and Ghana. For Oprah, the problem became so serious that she posted a video in December to warn fans not to disclose their banking information to fraudsters who personify it.

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