Tony Craig did not DM me on Facebook, of course (Fannish Fifty #32)

[verushka70]

So the other day I got a notification that Tony Craig (to whom I'm subscribed on FB - he doesn't post very much though) DMed me on Facebook. Strange, because I don't know him and have never met him that I recall (maybe at the 25th anniversary RCW 139 several years ago? honestly can't recall, that is mostly a blur).

Luckily, I do not use FB Messenger because I have a friend who has recently been DMed by "Madonna" and "Billy Idol" (except of course, it was neither Madonna or Billy Idol DMing him; it was scammers. Luckily my friend is way too smart to fall for that crap). I myself got so much stupid unsolicited spammy crap in Messenger - tho not 'celebrity' DMs - I stopped using it at all a few years ago.

Knowing the above I thought I should let Mr. Craig know he allegedly DMed me, which I strongly suspected was not actually him. So I posted to his Facebook page (which I was kind of shocked I could even do, but then I am subscribed to his FB) yesterday, to inform him.

He replied - and it's what he doesn't say (like, "Oh, yeah, that was me, I did DM you!") that proves I was not, in fact, DMed by Tony Craig - as I suspected. :-)

I realize now that I misspoke - I should not have said he was hacked; there's a scammer pretending to be him on FB, which is not the same as hacking his account. So maybe I will correct myself later. But at least I let him know that, hey, someone pretending to be you is out there trying to potentially scam folks.

I guess I'll post on the Due South! and Due South Duet Facebook pages to let people know about this. Really I'm not an active participant on these FB groups... more a passive consumer of the odd post here and there. But I should let others know, I suppose.

So be on the lookout for scammers pretending to be celebrities DMing you on social media, people. You probably already knew this, but... 99.99999% of the time, it is not going to be that celebrity... sorry.

Comments

[ride_4ever]

Good of you to have let Tony Craig know -- as Fraser has said "it only takes a moment to be courteous". And also -- bonus! -- you did THEN get an actual communication from the actual Tony Craig.

[verushka70]

That's true! 🙂 I hadn't thought of it that way until you pointed it out💜 But I did get a REAL message from him after warning him about the fake one from the scammer!