‘It is scary ’: Spike in impersonation scams hitting Kiwis over holidays

The holiday season has spelt a rise in Kiwis reporting having their social media pages cloned by scammers hoping to deceive unsuspecting victims.

Finance and investing platform, The Curve, is just one of the many Instagram profiles that have been copied in recent days, as New Zealand’s internet safety agency revealed it receives an increase in this type of scam reports over holiday periods.

The Curve Co-founder Victoria Harris said she had a “long night” on Tuesday evening after being informed of the spam account at 9.30pm.

“We put a lot of hard work into building our brand, our Instagram, our followers, and for that to be at risk of being taken away instantly is really concerning and scary.”

Given the nature of The Curve, Harris said they were nervous the scammers may ask their audience for money or request their bank numbers.

“When you’re dealing with money it is scary because people could be very trusting and therefore give their details to an untrustworthy hacker.”

Several other online impersonations seen by the Herald in recent days used a similar tactic, and the false account explicitly asking followers to report the user’s real page as being “hacked”.

Those behind schemes like this create a new profile using the exact same images and following the same people as their victim, making…