NightQuarter Sunshine Coast: Major venue targeted by scammers
As if the pandemic effects hadn’t taken enough of a toll, now online scammers have hit popular Sunshine Coast venue NightQuarter. Read how they were targeted here:
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A live music venue already buffeted by the devastating effects of the pandemic on the industry has been targeted by a sophisticated email scam.
NightQuarter co-owner Michelle Christoe said the venue lost control of its Instagram account for five days a fortnight ago after an overseas email scammer managed to install a software program which hijacked their account.
“It was really scary,” Ms Christoe said.
Instagram had become a major marketing tool for the venue which Ms Christoe and her partner Ian Van der Woude opened in November, 2020.
Ms Christoe said the scam involved an email which appeared to be legitimate claiming a copyright breach issue that could result in their account being removed if they didn’t object.
After clicking on the email she said a keystroke program was installed on her phone and it was able to bypass their second authentication security measures.
The venue’s account boasts about 30,000 followers on Instagram and almost 100,000 on Facebook and Ms Christoe said their Instagram posts could reach over a million people.
After spending the past seven years building their followings on the accounts Ms Christoe said the prospect of losing their account was devastating.
“It’s (Instagram) irreplaceable,” she said.
“That’s a completely different audience to Facebook and that’s just invaluable.”
Local IT and cybersecurity firm ID Care was able to assist and five days later the pair were back in control of their valuable social media account.
Already suffering the financial blows of several cancelled shows as a result of the pandemic Ms Christoe said the prospect of having to start again and build their online following from scratch was daunting.
“Just when you think you’ve had it all happen to you this happens,” she said.
“It was definitely a wake-up call. They (scammers) wanted money for it (account).
“I’m just so thankful for the company that gave us help.”
She said one of the key lessons she’d learnt was not to engage with the scammers at all when faced with the situation especially if they were seeking money.
Facebook’s parent company Meta removed 1.8 billion fake accounts from its platforms in the third quarter of 2021 alone as scammers ramp up their attacks on social media accounts.
More than 216,000 reports were made to Scamwatch in 2020
In 2020 Australians made more than 216,000 reports to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch site and reported losses of around $178m.
That had grown to more than 226,000 reports and losses of more than $222m by the end of September, 2021.
Ms Christoe said she was now looking forward to what she hoped would be a change in state government messaging once 90 per cent of the population was fully vaccinated and a concerted effort would ramp up to encourage people back out to hospitality and live music venues.
“It’s been a tough couple of years,” she said.
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