Families of people injured or killed on the north’s roads are facing further trauma through fake social media links “hijacking” posts related to serious collisions.
Posts by individuals or news organisations about crashes that appear on Facebook are often targeted by malicious accounts posting what appear to be links claiming to show footage from the scene.
The clickbait scam posts can lead unsuspecting users to phishing sites where their personal details can be harvested.
Their appearance under real Facebook posts about traffic collisions is designed to trick people seeking information about incidents, and even those concerned they might know someone involved in a crash.
A charity supporting those bereaved in road accidents has urged Facebook to do more to prevent the links from appearing.
Deborah Mullan is one of the founders of Life After, which was set up in 2016 by a group with personal experience of grief caused by losing loved ones on the roads.
The Co Derry woman lost her son, Keelan Mullan, in March 2013 when the 17-year-old was fatally injured in a crash near Limavady.
“These scam comments are being posted in order to fool people who are genuinely concerned about a crash in their area, or who are worried about people they may know,” she told The Irish News.
“It’s not just on crash posts - we are also seeing them under funeral notification posts, and they are very upsetting for the families of those who have died.
“This is causing extra pain for grieving families, and it is exploiting their loss in a deeply insensitive manner. Other people may not believe they know anyone involved, but are perhaps just curious, and can also fall pray to these links.”
Ms Mullan said several families have highlighted the pain caused by scam links, and called on Facebook to ban accounts behind them and to prevent them appearing in the first place.
“When people are dealing with the trauma of losing a loved one, it is beyond belief that there are accounts hijacking that grief in order to trick others. It might be hard to police this, but Facebook must do more to deal with this problem.”
When contacted by The Irish News, Facebook parent company Meta said said it removes misinformation on its platforms, including “certain highly deceptive manipulated media”.
“We also remove misinformation that violates any of our other community standards - including our policies on fraud and deception,” it said.
“We’ve also built the largest independent fact-checking network of any platform, with nearly 100 partners around the world to review and rate viral misinformation in more than 60 languages, and reject ads that include content debunked by third-party fact checkers.”
A PSNI spokesperson said: “We would urge the public to avoid clicking on unverified links in the comments sections under social media posts.
“These links may spread false information, or lead to harmful or upsetting websites. For accurate updates from the Police Service of Northern Ireland, please rely on information shared by our official channels.”
