Getting impersonator accounts taken down: Elon Musk’s Twitter 1, Meta: 0

OPINION

On being targetted by an imposter, and Budget 2023′s disappointing cuts to two of our watchdogs.

I feared the worst when an ex-colleague alerted me that I’d been targeted by an imposter account on
Twitter.

Someone (or some bot) had set up a “Chris Keall” account, that looked like me, bar a typo in my first name. (Handily for scammers, Twitter lets you type whatever you like for your name, which features most prominently, so the faker could call themselves “Chris Keall’ in full. It’s only your “@” handle, which features below in smaller type, that must be unique). More than 200 people had followed the bad Chris Keall.

Social media platforms have historically had a lousy reputation for responding to complaints. And since they started gutting staff, it’s got worse. Still, I filed a complaint with Twitter late on Friday.

On Saturday, I learned @CrisKeall had been busy. The account had started messaging my followers, asking “How’s your trading experience been so far?” – presumably the opening line for some kind of investment scam. It was neutral enough that a number of people presumed it was me.

It was time to get my A into G and mobilise the troops. I put a shoutout on Twitter, asking my followers to block and report the evil version of me. I also labouriously went through @criskeall’s followers – and people the account had followed – messaging each to alert them to the situation and ask them if they could file a report. Lots of people came to the party (thanks all).

I also finally bothered to look at the email Twitter had sent me late Friday. I’d presumed it would be a simple auto-receipt of my complaint, with a vague, open-ended promise to look into it. It was, but it also said I had to verify my own identity first, and asked that I upload the first page of a Government ID document. I had a bit of trepidation, given there was no obvious policy about how it would be stored, in what jurisdiction, or for how long – but, still, I uploaded the photo page of my passport.

The measures worked: Around 8pm, the account was suspended.

A number of people noted that Twitter now has a multi-step Q&A when you report an account. It takes longer to work through, but presumably gives the firm’s systems (and maybe a few of its remaining humans) a much better picture to work with.

New owner Elon Musk has done a lot wrong with Twitter, including turning the process of gaining a blue tick from actual verification to whoever will pay US$8 per month, and offering a limited and often dysfunctional set of other features for others who (like me) stump up for Twitter Blue (see my review here).

But it seems he might be on to something with the new reporting system, at least for imitator accounts.

The same can’t be said for Meta, where financial journalist and podcaster Frances Cook is again being targeted by an impersonator account.

Midway through last year, I wrote about how a clone of her actual Instagram account (@francescooknz) was preying on her followers. It copied her image and all her posts. The only difference was an extra “z” being added at the end of her Instagram handle and … and a propensity for messaging people with a crypto scam.

The fake Frances gained 10,300 before finally being taken down – on the same day that the Herald approached Meta for comment (Instagram is part of Facebook, now called Meta).

“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 said at the time.

Now it’s happening again, with a scam imitator account called @FrancesCooknz_, also pushing crypto (Instagram helpfully lists it at number two when you search for Cook).

I alerted Cook on May 22. She said she had reported it “weeks ago” I reported it took (Cook has also asked her followers to report scam accounts on a number of occasions, but given the number of times she’s been targeted by impersonators on Instagram and TikTok, it risks becoming like wallpaper).

Here, Herald writers and NewstalkZB hosts have regularly had their identities ripped off for social media scams.

A key problem is that none of the social media firms make any serious attempt to verify identity when a new account is created (or verify age, which undermines various child protections).

It’s not just high-profile accounts being imitated by scammers. We’ve all had people in our Facebook friend groups pleading to their friends not to follow a knockoff account.

I’ve asked Meta for comment, but lately, the social network’s Sydney office has been ghosting me, with its PR acknowledging my emails but its staff simply not responding to questions about various small businesses that have not been able to regain control over their business accounts after identity hijackings as Facebook has not responded to their complaints beyond template auto-replies (and I have more of these cases coming next week).

Across the Tasman, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has taken legal action against Meta, claiming that it has not been assertive enough in enforcing its own policies against scammers and that Facebook has generated “substantial revenue” from scam ads.

An ACCC spokesperson told the Herald the first Federal Court hearing for the case was scheduled for June. Meta earlier said it would not comment while the case was before the courts (Meta’s head of public policy, New Zealand and Pacific Islands, Nick McDonnell, earlier said: “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. While no enforcement is perfect, we continue to investigate new technologies and methods of stopping these scams and the people behind them.”)

NZ’s Commerce Commission says it is keeping a watching brief.

The ACCC has taken multiple actions against Big Tech.

Here, with Budget 2023, the Commerce Commission returned $8 million in litigation funding ($2m per year for the next four years). The reduction was pinned on “historic underspending”. (Another watchdog, the Financial Markets Authority, returned $3m).

Budget 2023 moves: Australia 1 – NZ 0

There’s a general pattern of NZ being less front-foot than our cousins across the ditch.

Australia’s Budget 2023 saw the e-Safety Commissioner’s annual funding quadruple with a A$131m injection. The equivalent agency here, Netsafe, has a budget of around $4m.

There was A$86.5m to establish a new National Anti-Scam Centre, which will include establishing Australia’s first SMS Sender ID Registry to help prevent scammers from imitating trusted brand names.

And the Aussie budget also saw A$46.5m earmarked to establish a Co-ordinator For Cyber Security to coordinate multi-agency efforts in the event of a cyber incident.

And A$102m was allocated to address AI.

Those moves were not matched on this side of the Tasman with our Budget 2023.