Graham Norton has become the latest Irish celebrity to be caught up in an online scam as fraudulent activity continues to rise.
Cybercriminals have been using famous people as a way to attract people to legitimate-looking sites, where they will click on links that can lead to malware being installed on their devices.
The purpose of the scam is to obtain personal data or passwords to people’s personal information stored on their phones or laptop.
Back in 2020, the cybersecurity team at McAfee released findings that showed Norton was named the ‘most dangerous celebrity to search for online’ - ahead of Ricky Gervais and Tom Hardy.
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They suggested at that time that his name was linked to many online scams as the Irish presenter's popularity proved key to their plans.
The scammers are currently using a Facebook account that has garnered over 80,000 followers, and are using the BBC host’s image alongside a fake headline in order to coax people into following the link to a fake website.
Facebook has already had to remove ads featuring RTE’s Ryan Tubridy, Miriam O’Callaghan, Bryan Dobson, and Pat Kenny.
The most recent posts claim that the celebrity’s career could be over becuase of a video recording they weren’t aware of.
According to reports, the caption written on Tubridy and Norton’s scams says: “He didn’t know the camera was still recording . . . is this the end of his career?”
The adverts are always sponsored to reach the biggest audience possible, and underneath there is another caption that claims: “The microphone was still on when he said that live.”
With the onslaught of scams rolling out on Facebook, a spokesperson from Meta said they are working hard to take down the misleading ads.
“We’re putting significant resources towards tackling these kinds of ads,” they said.
“It’s important to us that ads on Facebook are useful to people and not used to promote deceptive behaviour, like using images of public figures to mislead people.
“Our systems get better when people report this kind of behaviour in ads by tapping the three dots in the top right corner and selecting 'Report Ad'."
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