Fake profiles purporting to be major equestrian events have been sending out friend requests
EQUESTRIANS have been urged to be on the alert for another potential Facebook scam, after a flurry of fake event profiles have been set up.
Common scams on social media include profiles purporting to offer live streams of major events, in an attempt to secure customers’ card details, but in these more recent cases, people are sent friend requests from profiles calling themselves the Hickstead Derby Meeting, for example, or Royal Windsor Horse Show. These should be reported and blocked.
A spokesperson for Hickstead told H&H: “We wish the social media platforms would all try to do more to decrease the amount of spammers and scammers that are flooding the equestrian pages. No matter how many we block and report, we keep seeing more and more fake pages and profiles purporting to be Hickstead.”
The spokesperson said that the pages will often steal Hickstead’s content and text in an attempt to make themselves look legitimate.
“Our concern is that people might be duped into scams such as clicking on fake ticketing or live-stream links,” they said. “We recommend blocking all these fake pages, and reporting them to Facebook – hopefully if enough people do this, they might actually take action.
“Hickstead does not have any profiles except our main page, the Hickstead competitors’ group and our official event pages; these are linked from our main Facebook page. If in doubt, always search for ticketing or live-stream links using the official event website, and before you join an event page on Facebook, look at who is hosting – if it sounds a bit suspicious, it’s very likely to be fake.”
A spokesperson for Royal Windsor and the London International Horse Show (LIHS) told H&H social media scammers are a “constant problem” for both events.
“While we do everything we can to keep on top of fake pages and profiles stealing our images and lo
