Toni Tenaglia on dealing with scam fakes

When Toni Tenaglia found out somebody was pretending to be her on social media, it was unsettling to say the least.

The top rating afternoon announcer on Melbourne’s Gold 104.3 tells Radio Today the first she knew of it was when a listener sent her a message via Instagram.

They told Toni they’d received a message from her on the station’s Facebook page telling them they’d won a prize, and to head to her Facebook page to claim it.

“They weren’t sure if it was me or someone pretending to be me.”

To say Facebook was unhelpful would be an understatement, according to Toni.

“I reported the account as ‘someone pretending to be me’ and – believe it or not – I never got a response from Facebook. I did receive emails saying friends had reported the page, because I had put up a post on MY Facebook page asking my friends to report it (yes I see the irony in this … hahaha).”

Toni says Facebook notified her that it had conducted a review and concluded that the ‘other Toni’ didn’t go against community standards.

We reviewed the profile your friend reported and found that it isn’t pretending to be you and doesn’t go against our Community Standards. Note: If you see something on someone’s profile that shouldn’t be on Facebook, be sure to report the content (ex: a photo or video), not the entire profile.

“I just laughed. I thought, how is this person not pretending to be me when they are using my photos?”

Toni says she later began getting the following notification from Facebook saying it was reviewing the situation:

One of your Facebook friends reported Toni Tenaglia for pretending to be you. We take these requests seriously, so we’ll review the profile and remove it if it goes against our Community Standards. We’ll let you know when a decision has been made.

“Obviously, they were all automated emails and my guess is in their system they have a way of flagging the amount of complaint emails they get to then change the response email that is sent through.”

“If you ask me, for a company who bases what you see in your feed on algorithms, their algorithms suck when it comes to reporting scam Facebook accounts, hahaha.”

The issue now appears to have been resolved.

“I believe our Digital team has contacted someone directly at Facebook and the account has been removed. It would probably still be sitting there hassling the crap out of our listeners if our team hadn’t contacted them. Facebook clearly does not have the manpower to deal with scam accounts.”

Toni says it’s difficult to offer advice for people who find themselves in similar situations, because the system put in place to deal with these types of accounts is not working.

“I’m at a loss as to what to suggest, to be honest. I just hope you have a great digital team who has the contacts within Facebook to deal with the matter for you.”

Related article:

Warning: Facebook scams targeting radio station listeners