TWO teenage girls had their identities stolen and their photographs bandied around the internet.
Leah Gardiner, 19, received more than 100 messages from strangers after fake Instagram and Snapchat accounts were set up in her name with her picture.
Meanwhile Abi Chapman, also 19, had a fake Facebook account set up with her photos and sexually explicit messages were sent to men.
The Haywards Heath teenager only became aware her identity had been stolen when one of the men who had been contacted tracked her down and alerted her.
The two are the latest to become the victims of so-called Catfish profiles.
The term was made popular by an MTV series of the same name. It means to lure someone into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona.
Miss Gardiner, from Crawley, said she was “freaked out” after someone set up Instagram and Snapchat accounts with her details.
Not only did they use her name and photographs but they also gave out personal information to a number of men.
As a result she received more than 100 messages in just one day from strangers who claimed to have spoken to her.
Miss Gardiner said: “I asked one of them what was said about me and they said that they know I drive, that I work at Gatwick Airport and whereabouts in Crawley where I live. Which freaked me out.”
She contacted the police and the accounts have since been removed.
However, she is continuing to receive messages from strangers.
It comes after we reported last February the case of then 25-year-old Ruth Palmer.
The Brighton woman also had her online identity stolen and for more than three years social networking sites such as Instagram and Twitter were operating with her photos under the name Leah Palmer.
A Student who had her online stolen is warning others after sexually explicit messages were sent to men.
Abi Chapman, 19, had photographs taken from her Facebook page which were used for a fake account under the name of Skyla-Rae Gardener.
Whoever was operating the account then contacted men with sexually explicit messages.
She said: "It's scary too think who is watching you.
"I still can't quite believe that somebody went through all that effort to make a profile, and several others so that it looked like they had friends, just to talk to boys.
"It is just all so weird and seedy. If somebody wants to send and receive explicit photos, then can they please do so without using my face."
The teenager from Haywards Heath had no idea her identity had been stolen until she received a message from a man who had been contacted by the person operating the Skyla-Rae Gardener profile.
In his message to Miss Chapman, he said: "Hi, this might seem a bit random. But I was speaking to a girl online for a few months and it turns out that it was an imposter pretending to be somebody else.
"They have a whole profile set up but they were using your photographs."
"I'm not sure how this people got all of my photographs, unless maybe it was somebody I am friends with online.
"I'll definitely be very careful with who I accept on to my page in the future.
The profile has now been deleted.
Background: Catfish is the name of an American reality- based docu-series that is on MTV.
It explores the truths and lies of online dating and has had four series so far.
Given the subject of the show, the title has come to mean a person who creates fake profiles on social media sites using someone else's pictures and false information to pretend to be someone other than themselves.
Post a Comment