In the 90s medical researchers began to clone animals. To date, everything from fish to mammals have been successfully cloned. And if you subscribe to some conspiracy theorists, humans have already been cloned. This scientific achievement has opened up a rat’s nest of worldwide controversy that scientific researchers, legal experts, medical professionals, and governments will be dealing with.
Cloning animals is one thing. Cloning social media accounts is something entirely different, and it does seem that platforms are not doing much to deal with it.
For those who are not particularly tech savvy, both individuals and businesses, here is a primer on cloning and the cost in both money and reputation that comes with it. And any account that has a large following is susceptible to this form of identity theft. The accounts are then used to post damaging information, to share links to fraudulent others, and to sell goods and services, getting financial and banking information from unsuspecting people.
Cloning is Not Hacking
It’s pretty easy to spot hacking on social media. All of a sudden, your followers are getting a friend request from you. Once someone reports that to you, you can then post that you have been hacked and that no one is to respond to your friend request. Then, immediately change your password, and you are probably “good to go.”
Cloning is far more malicious. A fully separate account is established in the name of an individual or business, and the perpetrator then impersonates the victim. It’s actually pretty easy to do, if the owner of an existing account has a publicly available name and profile photo. The scammer then proceeds through the process of cloning the account. Unfortunately, platforms are not especially diligent about catching any of this, because most require only an email address to open an account.
Once the Cloning is Complete…
When the cloning has been successful, here are all of the things the perpetrator can do:
- Reach out to your friends and family members, sending them malware via malicious links that they click on, believing they have come from you. Once they do access that link, all of their sensitive information is now available to steal – bank accounts and medical records, for example.
- Pretending to be you, the criminal may ask friends and family for money
- Damage your reputation by posting terrible or even illegal content to your friends and followers. Suppose, for example, you use an online dating service such as the Hily dating app. The cloner can access your account and begin to post horrible content, potentially getting you suspended or expelled, not to mention being blocked by people with whom you were beginning to have a relationship.
- Report your legitimate account as a clone and go through the process of having it shut down.
- If your account is a business one, serious damage can be done, both financially and reputational. One example of a British soap company says it all: The company was running a competition with a cash prize. The cloner sent private emails to customers telling them they had won and asking for the PayPal account details. In other instances, they can sell inferior products and services in the company name and get not just the money from those sales, but customer’s financial information too. A business will have a long and tough road to repair this damage, if ever.
How to Fight Cloning
There are some things you can do to try to protect yourself:
- Regularly search for your name on the platforms you use. There can be lots of others who share your name, but the details of their profiles are different from yours. If you find one that is you but not you, you’ve got a clone.
- Change your privacy settings so that your name, profile pic, and other information is private, to be seen only by your friends. This is impossible for a business, however.
- You can hide your friends/customer lists. Hackers won’t know your connections and will have a tough time finding them.
- Report a cloned account immediately. The road to getting it removed can be time-consuming, but how important are your reputation and your family/friends/customers?
In the End…
Cloning social media accounts are not stunts or escapades. It is serious business, and these hackers and scammers are becoming more expert on a regular basis. While the tips above will not completely wipe out your vulnerability, it will be important to remain vigilant.