Achi news desk-
A BC woman says fraudsters stole her Facebook account and are using her profile to sell fake Taylor Swift concert tickets to unsuspecting fans.
“There is no accountability for me. There is nowhere for me to go to solve this problem. So for three months, I’ve been living with knowing that people are being harmed on my behalf,” Susan Cowling told Consumer Matters.
The Kelowna resident says back in January her Facebook account was hacked and her profile was taken over by fraudsters.
Cowling says the scammers were able to change her password, blocking her from her account. She says she was hit by the scam when a contractor working on her home reached out to her online asking for Taylor Swift tickets.
“(He) asked if he could trade some labor for some Taylor Swift tickets I had for sale on Facebook,” Cowling said. “I never thought they could break into my account and pretend to be me.”
Cowling says the fraudsters are also selling concert tickets for other events using her Facebook profile.
The email you need for the day’s top news stories from Canada and around the world.
She says that although friends and family have reported the fraud several times to Meta – Facebook’s parent company, there has been no resolution.
“The despair I feel. The gut-wrenching feeling I get when someone calls me and says ‘Oh, I see you have Taylor Swift tickets for sale’. It is indescribable. I feel terrible,” said Cowling.
Cowling has since tried to be proactive by setting up a new Facebook account with a warning posted on her page stating that her old Facebook account is fake and not selling Taylor Swift tickets or anything else.
Consumer Matters reached out to Meta on behalf of Cowling asking if it would help Cowling shut down his old Facebook account, but did not receive a response from the social media giant.
Some tech experts say they’re not surprised by Meta’s lack of action.
“Meta has literally billions of users and there’s really no mechanism for people to get help when they really need it to get their accounts back,” said Handy Media’s Andy Baryer.
Baryer says the best defense is to enable two-factor authentication on all social media platforms.
“I think the moral of the story for everyone listening to these horror stories is frankly to make sure you take that five minutes to go into those settings, enable the a security check that will save you a lot of grief in the future,” says Baryer .
Cowling says she is helpless without access to her old Facebook account.
“I’ve lost sleep,” he said. “I can’t believe there’s no way to talk to a human being to fix it.”
& copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
