This article is the latest part of the FT’s Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign
I have a question for you. How do you know it’s really me writing this article? It looks genuine. There’s a picture of my face and it’s published on a media platform you trust.
What if I told you, valued reader, that I had a crypto investment opportunity that could rapidly double your money?
I would hope FT readers would immediately conclude the article must have been written by an imposter. Sadly, it’s much easier for impersonation scams to proliferate on social media platforms. Lloyds Bank recently reported a 155 per cent annual increase in scams on Instagram in the past year, focused on the under-25s.
The latest twist? Some of the UK’s most popular personal finance content creators are being deliberately targeted by fraudsters who clone their accounts and attempt to scam their followers.
“If a beauty blogger messaged you asking if you were looking for a new way to make money, you would probably be suspicious,” says Charlotte Jessop, founder of Looking After Your Pennies website, Instagram account and YouTube channel.
“But if you got a message from a personal finance expert you followed saying ‘I’ll teach you how to make an extra £500 a month’, it’s not so much of a stretch to think it could be genuine — and that is a real risk for us.”
This week, Jessop and a…
