An account impersonating the Bishop was seen on Facebook. Photo: AFP / Jaque Silva
The Catholic Bishop of Auckland is warning those online not to fall for an account impersonating him.
Bishop Steve Lowe told RNZ he saw a Facebook account posing as him, asking for money from followers online.
"One of our media people discovered it," he said.
"I sent a message to Facebook saying that somebody was impersonating me, and, as usual, Facebook, they don't think I'm being impersonated."
He said that was something he would never do.
"That's not the sort of thing I'd ever do on social media," said Lowe.
"If we did have a collection for, like the cyclones that we had in Auckland and Hawke's Bay, the only thing there I'd say is 'this is how you donate,' and direct them to official websites."
Lowe said he had experience in the past with people impersonating him online.
"Every now and then, myself or some of my brother bishops that are on social media, there will be someone that starts scamming people, and appears with their photos," he said.
He said scammers would go so far as to copy their victims' Facebook pages.
"It becomes really problematic."
Lowe wanted to warn those online to check their Diocesan websites for links to official social media pages.
"Social media has lots of great things, that can be great for the wider community," he said.
"But, it also has a lot of nasty people that want to rip people off."
Lowe said those online should be careful about what they're seeing, especially those asking for money.
Social media users urged to verify messages
The National Cyber Security Centre is urging social media users to verify messages from official accounts.
Its team lead threat and incident response Tom Roberts said it was important to use multiple ways of verifying someone's who they say they are.
"Especially with Facebook, and all the social media sites, legitimacy is easy to get or impersonate," he said.
"That's why we highly recommend to people that they just go back, stop, go and check that it's actually the person they're being contacted by."
Roberts encouraged users to keep their online profiles locked down.
"A malicious person will go after any sort of avenue they can get," he said.
"If it's a public figure certainly, they're free, up for grabs, people will impersonate them, that's happening to celebrities all over the world at the moment."
Roberts said measures like verification could make social media accounts more difficult to impersonate.
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