Rochelle Humes looked startled and full of concern on Thursday's This Morning as it was revealed that a colleague on the show had been the victim of a sinister Instagram scam, which saw her lose control of her account and be bombarded with texts.
As she continues to fill in for Holly Willoughby, who is missing This Morning all this week to host new ITV show The Games, former star of The Saturdays, Rochelle once again joined Phillip Schofield in the studio as the award-winning daytime programme aired its fourth episode of the week. After an hour of camera rolling, Rochelle and Phillip welcomed regular contributor Alice Beer to the show to talk about the importance of having up to date security settings on social media platforms.
And, as the strap line 'How To Protect Your Social Media Accounts,' appeared on screen, Alice revealed that the issue of online security breaches hit very close to home for the This Morning team as green room co-ordinator Fleur had been targeted after someone posing as her friend tricked her into being part of a scam. A trail of messages from Fleur's Instagram inbox flashed up on screen, with the scammer, using her friend's name, appealing for Fleur's support to win a 'referral.'
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The message instructed Fleur to add, what she didn't realise was a scam email address, to her Insta bio for two minutes, with the seemingly innocent message signing off 'I appreciate your voting,' along with smiley face and love heart emojis. Unfortunately for Fleur, the message wasn't innocent at all or from her friend, as after complying with the request, she lost all control of her Instagram account, with Alice explaining: "Fleur did it and that was the last she saw of her Instagram account," as a horrified Rochelle reacted: "Oh gosh!"
Fleur then appeared on camera from the green room and explained: "As soon as I clicked that link they took over my account completely; it wasn't me. They changed everything to the email address so I couldn't recover it. They just took over." After being asked by Phillip what she thought when she first saw the message that ultimately caused her to lose control of her account, Fleur said she assumed he was helping her friend to win an 'ambassadorship for influencers."
The online nightmare didn't end there for Fleur as the scammers got access to her mobile number and started bombarding her with texts, asking her to make videos to promote Bitcoin business and make a false claim that she'd invested £1,000 and had made a profit of £15,000, telling her if she did that she's get her account back.
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