My friend alerted me on a Friday afternoon after he curiously saw one post in a ‘Buy and Sell’ Facebook Group by someone with my profile photo, but not my name. The post is indirectly trying to lure people to get into whatever investing he may be offering. A quick look at his profile suggests that he is into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The name is “Patrick Songcuan.”
On his wall, there were 4 more posts using my photos with captions about bitcoin and ForEx investments. It was alarming.
The fake profile was created in April 2020. Based on his timeline, he started using my photos only on February 10 this year.
This guy is foolishly smart to handpick photos to use in an attempt to add “credibility” to his posts. He used my photos in which I am with people who are influential in the community and in the field of financial literacy. He also used our family pictures for his cover photo.
Reporting to Facebook
I immediately reported his profile to Facebook under “someone pretending to be me.” I also reported the photos individually.
I shared the incident on my wall and called on my friends to help me in reporting the account.
After about a hundred reports, the profile was still up. Some of my friends stepped up in helping me trace the fraudster. Some of them were able to chat with ‘friends’ of Patrick through comments on his old posts. They were able to find some connections that lead to eventually finding the “real” Patrick Songcuan.
Sad to say, one of my friends who tried to contact Patrick became the next victim of this identity theft. The next day, he found his photos being used by another similar profile.
My wife was able to reach Patrick. Apparently, his account was “hacked” and he has no access to it anymore. Apparently…
After 2 days, the number of reports reaches about 200, still no actions from Facebook. Instead, a few of my friends who reported it shared to me the response they got from Facebook.
“We reviewed the profile you reported and found that it doesn’t go agains any of our Community Standards.”
Six days now after we first reported it, the fake profile is still active, and in fact he just changed his profile photo to – you guess right – my photo.
What’s next?
It can happen to anyone really.
I don’t think I would stop using Facebook as a platform to share stories of encouragement. But probably I would think twice before sharing any photos or videos anymore. Because even if you have the highest privacy settings, fraudsters will always find ways.
I would also not accept random friend requests from now on. In fact, I have started cleaning up my list since January. From having 5,000 to 2,600 now, and I’m still going to remove more.
Stressed?
Though I was alarmed in the beginning, I’m not quite stressed anymore. I’ve seen many other people used my photos or my content without my knowledge in the past and it barely bothered me.
It’s one thing to imitate. It’s another to use it to take advantage of people – and that’s what I’m more concerned about.
And it’s a mystery why Facebook deemed this as not against any of their community standard where it is clearly a case of identity theft.
