What do Kenny Dalglish, Chris Packham, Andy Murray, Susanna Reid have in common?

21 September 2023 , 08:53

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Scammers tweeted lies about Kenny Dalglish (Image: Twitter)

The Online Safety Bill finished its passage through Parliament this week and not a moment too soon.

I’ve been among those campaigning for the Bill to include measures to fight social-media platforms which profit from fraud by carrying ads placed by crooks.

These measures were only included after an outcry and mean that the biggest players will face fines of up to 10% of global turnover for facilitating frauds, and executives could be prosecuted for non-compliance.

This is vital because the industry is incapable of voluntarily acting decently.

In the past few days I’ve come across numerous scam adverts on Twitter, or X, that use clickbait featuring celebrities without their permission. The ads are placed on accounts for hair salon or nail clinics with just six or seven followers, so I'm guessing that these are dormant accounts that have been hacked.

Twitter down as thousands of frustrated social media users unable to use website

The tweets on these accounts link to bogus news stories mimicking the BBC website that claim the celebs made a fortune with cryptocurrency trading.

The latest famous names I’ve spotted having their faces hijacked on X by this scam are Chris Packham, Andy Murray, Susanna Reid and Kenny Dalglish - at the time I saw the latter it had been viewed more than 300,000 times, which is a lot of potential victims.

“English soccer legend Kenny Dalglish shocked everyone in the studio by revealing how he earns an extra £90,000 every month,” reads the headline on the fictitious BBC story.

Never mind that Dalglish is Scottish, if you click on links in the article you get through to something called Quantum AI that says you can make £6,288 in five hours.

Scam tweets featuring Susanna Reid, Chris Packham and Andy Murray

There’s no knowing where in the world this lot are based because they don’t give any contact details or corporate information, so you invest at your peril.

This week, Elon Musk suggested that he may start charging people to use X – I guess he’ll want a new income stream to replace the money lost when the platform stops profiting from scam ads.

A Government spokesperson said: "From romance fraud to scam ads, our Online Safety Bill will stamp out online scams by forcing all social platforms in scope to tackle fraud that only serves to cheat users from their earnings – the Bill is set to become law in weeks."

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Andrew Penman