A Shropshire councillor is urging people to be on their guard after her Facebook page was cloned and messages sent to her followers and friends.
Julia Buckley, who is also Labour's Parliamentary Candidate for Shrewsbury, fears that some maybe taken in by a scam advert that is dropping into social media boxes for her more than 1,000 followers.
And she is warning others, such as local businesses who have many more followers, to ensure their social media pages are secure to make sure they are not impersonated as she has been.
Councillor Buckley has now taken steps so that scammers don't have access to her list of followers.
Julia Buckley, who is also Labour's Parliamentary Candidate for Shrewsbury, fears that some maybe taken in by a scam advert that is dropping into social media boxes for her more than 1,000 followers.
And she is warning others, such as local businesses who have many more followers, to ensure their social media pages are secure to make sure they are not impersonated as she has been.
Councillor Buckley has now taken steps so that scammers don't have access to her list of followers.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Captain Adulia Buckley, how you doing?
00:03 Well, it's been quite a frustrating week because as you can see someone's tried to impersonate my Facebook account
00:09 and contacted all of my friends and followers asking them to join a programme that will generate lots of money
00:16 so this could happen to anybody. Luckily I haven't been hacked but they have tried to clone my account.
00:20 If you look carefully you can see there is a spelling mistake, it isn't really me.
00:24 So if this happens you absolutely have to report it straight away to Facebook and get them shut down.
00:29 But you can see how these scammers try to contact people, particularly people with lots of followers
00:34 or somebody who's involved in politics because they think that we have a wide reach.
00:37 So obviously I've reported it to the Cyber Security and the Labour Party
00:41 but this could actually happen to anyone out there.
00:44 And I guess you know it's a good target because if a councillor Julia contacts you, you tend to think
00:50 well she's a good honourable person that Jules, you know, we'll believe what she says.
00:54 But it was actually me wasn't it that somebody contacted me pretending to be you and said
00:59 "Have you heard about this companion scheme?" So I'm thinking "Oh she's a nice little story for the Shropshire Star"
01:04 and then the message comes "65 grand I've got out of it, just click this link"
01:09 and it was like "Hang on, something's not right here" but I mean that's the dodgy profile we've got there.
01:14 We'll show a couple of close-ups. So how does that leave you feeling Jules?
01:18 I mean that's the dodgy profile you've got there on the phone and that's your picture, that's your family.
01:24 It's been used by someone else. It doesn't feel dirty or you know...
01:29 Yeah, me with the rosette as a political public figure you get used to that.
01:32 But I don't want my family's pictures over a false profile that somebody's put out there to make money.
01:37 But I suppose the problem is that's really convincing them to people who do follow me.
01:41 As you say I'm a councillor, they follow my page so they think it's a message from me.
01:45 Luckily people have been contacting me asking "Is this your new line of work now?
01:49 You're now making money from a senior's programme?" Obviously they're all reporting it.
01:53 The more people report it, the sooner it'll be taken down.
01:55 And I've put much stricter protocols on my page.
01:59 We have support through a cyber security programme for political public figures and from the political parties.
02:04 But this could happen to anybody. If you have lots of followers on your page you would be a target for something like this.
02:10 Yeah, and I mean there's 99 friends so that's... I guess that means there's 99 people that person's currently been trying to scam under your name.
02:19 That's right, so I have 1,300 followers on my councillor Facebook page.
02:23 They're targeting quite a large portion of those.
02:25 So I put messages out to explain to people this isn't me.
02:28 Obviously once you look a bit closer you can see they're spelling mistakes.
02:31 You can see it's not English, it doesn't sound like me.
02:33 But this is happening more and more isn't it? Cyber crime is on the increase.
02:37 So we just will have to be vigilant, try and mark things private, not public and report things as soon as you find them.
02:42 So when you become a councillor then you get extra information on cyber crime and that.
02:48 I guess they say you are more likely to be scammed potentially.
02:51 That's right and actually Shropshire Council is subjected to millions of cyber attacks every day.
02:56 So we all have to do cyber security training and if we don't keep that up every year we lose access to our laptops and our emails.
03:02 And that's quite right to protect the council, to protect its finances.
03:06 And councils that don't do that sometimes have to pay out lots of money in ransom.
03:09 So it's become a really big problem now.
03:11 But as well as being a councillor I'm also a parliamentary candidate.
03:14 And so there's another level then of cyber security and another level of potential attack obviously.
03:19 Also for my family to make sure that we're safe.
03:21 It's ridiculous isn't it in politics that we have to think of this but we do.
03:25 Do you know if anyone who they've contacted under your name has like paid out anything at all?
03:31 Not as far as I know but some people have got further along.
03:33 Most people contact me straight away and it doesn't quite sound right.
03:36 And that's why I say if you are approached by somebody that you think is a friend but the language or the spelling or something isn't quite right.
03:42 I would say just to always double check.
03:44 And again because I'm a public figure I have more than one Facebook page.
03:48 So I have a personal one with pictures of my family.
03:50 And then I have one where I'm a parliamentary candidate in Shrewsbury.
03:53 And so that then means that people can be confused about which of the people you're contacting them from.
03:57 And that just opens up this window of possibility doesn't it.
04:00 So I mean it's a dodgy account.
04:02 We it's been rumbled.
04:04 You know it's there.
04:05 I know it's there.
04:06 It's not as easy as just getting that took down though is it?
04:09 Well we've reported it.
04:10 I've asked everybody who's been in touch with me to report it.
04:13 And we're waiting now.
04:14 It takes due diligence for them to check through.
04:16 Because of course you could also just make a complaint against somebody you don't like.
04:20 So you need to actually do that due diligence to check that this really is somebody impersonating me.
04:25 And I'm very confident it will be taken down.
04:27 It's just a matter of time.
04:28 But really my message is that this could happen to anybody.
04:31 Yes it's happened to me because I'm a public figure.
04:33 So there's a large number of contacts.
04:34 But for everyone just to really take care.
04:37 And to be vigilant when you're approached by something which just doesn't feel right.