Scammers who steal followers from social media to make bogus business pages more believable hit Hong Kong travel agency
- Hijacked social media pages with real followers cloned to look like legitimate businesses by fraudsters, EGL Tours warns
- Company alerted when Myanmar Buddhist centre complained to firm after EGL Tours appeared to ‘take over’ it Facebook account
Scammers have hijacked social media pages with legitimate followers and cloned them to look like Hong Kong travel agency EGL Tours in a bid to fool the public into handing over cash for cheap deals, the firm has said.
The firm on Tuesday said it was alerted to the tactic after an overseas religious centre contacted the company to complain that EGL Tours had hijacked its Facebook page.
“Last week, a Buddhist education centre in Myanmar actually reached out to us, and was very angry that we had taken over its account,” James Lam Ming-miu, the general manager of foreign independent travel and wholesale at EGL said.
“That’s when we realised these scammers were no longer just buying followers to make their pages more believable.
“They have started hacking existing profiles for their followers. We had to explain to them we were victims of these scammers too.”
Lam was speaking after a surge in bogus social media accounts that posed as Hong Kong travel agencies with fake travel offers to tempt the unwary sparked a complaint from the Travel Industry Council to police – and an industry warning to the public to take care.