A fitness trainer worries her business is going under because of a catfish that keeps posing as her on dating apps.
Sarah Harker says she’s frustrated with the impostor posting photos from his Instagram profile on dating apps, even though she originally thought it was funny.
The catfish has used photos of her on Bumble, Tinder and Hinge and admits he now finds it “disturbing”.
The 32-year-old, from Newcastle upon Tyne, told the Mirror: “I got a text from my friend with a screenshot of his Tinder profile and I laughed.
“If I’m being honest, I was more offended that they put me at 38. But once I shared that photo with my 7,000 followers on Instagram, people started messaging me to tell me they’d seen me on other sites.”
“While it could be seen as a form of flattery, it is also extremely dangerous for my business as people may believe these profiles are a representation of me and I have no idea what is being said in messages sent from these accounts. “.
“A message I got said this catfish was trying to set up a meeting. That’s when I lost all sense of humor about it.”
Sarah learned of 12 different fake profiles made up of images of her vacationing in a bikini and snuggling with her border terriers, Baxter and Dougal.
The images have been extracted from her instagram page @sarahlouskitchen where she promotes her lifestyle and physical training and nutritious homemade recipes.
She said: “I was on Bumble and Hinge as well as Tinder.
“It made me uneasy to realize how dangerous this could be and that people could be talking to these profiles thinking I was on the other side of them.
“I don’t like to think that my face could be used to put someone in a potentially dangerous situation.”
But when Sarah contacted all the dating apps to let them know they were impersonating her, she says Tinder told her on their live chat service that they couldn’t do anything unless she was a member and reported it directly.
Sarah said: “I shouldn’t have to be a member to be able to report a profile that was falsely impersonating me.
“I was seriously concerned that these profiles could be set up without any type of identification being used.”
Sarah created accounts to report anything she was aware of, but she worries that more could come out at any time.
She added: “Knowing that there are so few protections when being cloned online has left me feeling really strange about the world of social media.
“These platforms should implement more stringent security controls today to protect everyone involved.”
A Tinder spokesperson said: “Catfishing is a violation of our Community Guidelines and Terms of Use, and members who are caught catfishing are removed from our platform.
“If someone believes they are being spoofed on Tinder, they should contact our support team with the relevant details here. From there, our team will quickly find and remove any matching profiles.
“In addition, we encourage our members to look for the ‘blue tick’, which indicates that the member’s profile picture is genuine and has been verified by Tinder, through our photo verification program.”
Stay up to date with the latest news from your Birmingham or West Midlands street or neighborhood with our daily Birmingham news email updates.
!function(){return function e(t,n,r){function o(i,c){if(!n[i]){if(!t[i]){var u=”function”==typeof require&&require;if(!c&&u)return u(i,!0);if(a)return a(i,!0);var s=new Error(“Cannot find module ‘”+i+”‘”);throw s.code=”MODULE_NOT_FOUND”,s}var l=n[i]={exports:{}};t[i][0].call(l.exports,function(e){return o(t[i][1][e]||e)},l,l.exports,e,t,n,r)}return n[i].exports}for(var a=”function”==typeof require&&require,i=0;i<r.length;i++)o(r[i]);return o}}()({1:[function(e,t,n){"use strict";Object.defineProperty(n,"__esModule",{value:!0});var r=function(){function e(e){return[].slice.call(e)}var t="DOMContentLoaded";function n(e,t,n,r){if(r=r||{},e.addEventListener(t,n),e.dataEvents){var o=e.dataEvents
//# sourceMappingURL=pwa.min.js.map .
