Catfishing for Compliments
Why Facebook and the rest need to get their act together
When I was in Third Year secondary school (in the year it was changed to Year 9 — I am old), a boy in my form group approached me. I was worried, as he was a bit of a bully, but he was in a much more inquisitive mood when he held out a magazine and said, “Is this you, Greeny?!”
I looked at the magazine and there was a picture of a young boy, about 7 or 8 years old, posing in a garden wearing a bright cap with his foot on a skateboard, two thumbs held aloft in front of him. He was a dead ringer for me. I convinced the boys in class that it wasn’t me, but I caveated that it was scary that he looked so much like me. It made me think I should look through the old family photo albums to make sure one wasn’t missing, as the thought of my image being unknowingly used in a public forum made me quite nervous.
Nowadays, I’m much more at ease with my image being seen hither and thither (now there’s a phrase I didn’t think I’d be writing!). But that does come with a kind of deal with the universe — I’d like to know about it first. A few months ago, my fiancée Nina found some headshots of me that were on a stock image website. I knew who had taken the photos. They were done as a kind of testing ground they wanted to do for outdoor pictures and, as I was in need of some new shots, I was happy to help. I wasn’t, however, aware that they would be put on this site where someone could purchase a picture of me and use it in whatever way they wanted. The thought of me being used in a campaign for the Conservatives or a photo commercial for Haemorrhoid cream is quite sickening — especially as I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. But I’d like to think that it couldn’t get much worse than that.
Well, last week, my fiancée Nina was involved in a catfish situation.
For those not in the know, this is the name for a scam where the perpetrator, known as the “catfish”, uses another person’s picture and identity to fool someone else. Their reasons for doing this can be scamming them of money, effecting their career or even making them fall in love. We’ve become quite familiar with the MTV show Catfish UK over the last few months and seen how people can easily create dating profiles with other people’s pictures to hook in the lonely and needy. When the reveal takes place, it’s usually someone known to the victim, a jilted lover or a friend who can’t accept they won’t escape the friend zone.
One of the most shocking was the tale of a man who had been messaging another man for around a year, never having met up but feeling utterly in love. When the team finally got the catfish to reveal themselves, it was someone the victim thought they’d never met. The revelation came that this individual, who was in fact female, had concocted their false identity and fooled the victim for a year of their life was due to an offhand comment made about her at a party by the victim. Apparently to him, she seemed boring.
Now, I’m not going to comment on the mental state of someone becoming so incensed by something like that that they create this identity to mess with another. But it did seem quite galling that, in the follow up scene shot months after the final revelation, they all seemed to have mended fences, and all was forgiven. This person had practically taken away a year of the victim’s life. Surely there should have been some kind of punishment.
Listening to the podcast series “Sweet Bobby” (highly recommended), it appears this kind of thing is not that rare. The practice of taking photos from another person’s social media account, creating an entirely new identity, and trying to fool someone is quite horrifying. But apparently, unless it is for monetary gain, it’s not illegal! Doesn’t matter if someone has become obsessed with another that turned out to be entirely made up, or the mental torture came with it — nothing the law can do about it.
A photo of my fiancée was used on someone’s Facebook profile this week. We know this as a very savvy individual, after being messaged by the catfish regarding an ad they had placed selling something and thinking something was off about it, reverse-image searched the profile picture and found it to be linked my lady’s genuine profile (using reverse-image search made me wonder if this person, too, had been watching Catfish UK). Alerting both of us to the situation, we both set about reporting the profile to Facebook. We wrote statuses asking friends to do the same. Someone is posing as my fiancée for monetary gain, and we weren’t going to stand for it!
Imagine our collective groan when we saw what Facebook was saying to everyone in response: “Our technology has reviewed your report…Ultimately, we have decided not to take the profile down.” What the actual f***? The method for which Facebook investigates these profiles is by using “technology”. Not employing humans to dip it, no no no — apparently COVID-19 has seen to it that they can’t employ more people (a good long while since it was at its worse and a piss poor excuse, but never mind!).
We were informed we could report the profile picture. The catfish is using a photo of my fiancée, taken directly from her Medium account. But the profile was of “Caroline Stevens”, so not naming themselves after Nina herself. A quick copy of the web link for the profile shows that it was created by a man, whose own profile is friends with “Caroline”, but who’s looking for logic here, eh? So we report the photo, as do our friends. But alas, nothing. Same response.
We both received another message from someone else the catfish tried to hoodwink for money a few days later and, quite understandably, Nina is leaving the platform.
I am sincerely hoping that this person is not “winning” in this situation. The fact that two individuals have informed us of their near misses with the scammer gives me hope that they are not actually doing this scam especially well. Despite her deleting her accounts, anyone reverse image searching the scammer’s image will be directed to Nina’s medium profile, on which she’s written a much more detailed blog about this same situation, so that will help those searching for answers.
There must be some kind of precedent set to help those effected by these catfish. Not only the victims that may be fooled into giving over parts of their lives, emotionally for monetarily, but it effects those whose identities have been taken. I have no doubt that Nina’s picture was a totally random one the catfish stumbled upon. It’s almost — almost! — a compliment, suggesting she has the most genuine and innocent face for a scumbag imposter to hide behind. But what about those people whose entire identity has used? What if they’ve been used for dating profiles? How do you think that effects their home life if they have wives, husbands, children etc?
All social media platforms really need to enforce these situations with a lot more care and attention. I have no doubt that these technology-driven methods of fending off racists, predators and threatening behaviour does work, but even that has its drawbacks. A friend of mine was kicked off Twitter for saying something to a friend of theirs that appeared to be violent, but was a quote from a popular movie. Nina informed me on the day I write this that someone was removed from Facebook because they announced they were going to be shooting someone…they’re a photographer!
Facebook, sort it out. Twitter, sort it out. Instagram, sort it out (same company associated with Facebook, so guilty by proxy).
Any human eye would be able to tell whose account is the fake one. Maybe employ a few more humans for this task?
