Social media scam commodifies women's sexuality to swindle followers
CBC
In the middle of a yoga class last March, Alina Leasenco said she noticed her phone was being inundated with notifications.
She hadn't made any recent posts.
Curious, she unlocked it and found several messages from friends telling her to check Instagram.
Her photos and name had been used to create a second profile, stealing her likeness to advertise faked adult content in the hopes of scoring credit card information from duped subscribers.
Leasenco is one of many targets of the scam that not only appropriates a person's identity, but commodifies their body as bait to swindle their followers.
She said her first duplicated profile was quickly taken down after being reported, but that she sees other people targeted in the same way.
"It happens all the time, it happens every day, I see somebody saying, 'Hey, can you please report this account? It's not me,'" Leasenco said.
One year later, and just days after her interview with CBC News to discuss that original incident, she was targeted again.
"I was like, oh the irony," said Leasenco over text message. "Like almost right on the same date."
Despite asking her friends and followers to report it, it took Mariah Bouvier nearly four weeks to get Instagram to remove a fake profile that was using her photos and name to advertise adult content.
"I reported it multiple times from my business account because my personal account had been banned from them, obviously," Bouvier recalled.
"And they actually got back to me saying that they didn't see a problem with it."
Bouvier received an automated message from Instagram telling her their review team hadn't been able to view the report, but that they found the account "likely doesn't go against our Community Guidelines."
"The fact that someone is impersonating me when I had no say in it, it's harmful." Bouvier said.
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