UAE based company finds and takes down fake profiles for a leading Private Sector organizations – Highlighting the dangers of senior managers posting their pictures online

Fake Profiles of Senior Management being used in fraudulent activities taken down by UAE’s BrandHawk Alpha

Mobilk - The dangers of people posting their personal photos and information on social media have been highlighted in the press internationally. These dangers are just as common in UAE and their impact can be just as devastating; including, but not limited to, destroying careers, family relationships and public image

Managed BrandHawk Alpha social media and online threat assessment service was recently used by a leading private sector organization in the UAE to gauge the level of its online brand reputation after getting complaints from its staff about receiving fraudulent emails from social media profiles that looked very genuine.

The BrandHawk system was used to collect online information about the company and the data collected was thoroughly analyzed. The core of the investigation focused on publically available images of the senior management that were picked up from a major social media site and then cross referenced with other social media sites and image search engines – to create a full fake profile of the senior manager. Since these personal images were also geo-tagged, detailed location information was also extracted from the pictures and used in creating the fake profiles. Managed BrandHawk analysts worked with the client to pinpoint the source of the images, issued take downs and then helped the client create a strong social media compliance and privacy policy as well as a internal training program for its staff. These steps saved the company from further fraudulent incidents while protecting its strong brand reputation.

Cases like these highlight the dangers in posting personal images and information online. It is very easy to take these pictures and manipulate them with various photo editing programs to create embarrassing and indecent pictures and videos which appear very realistic. These personal images can also be used to create fake ID card scans which can result in bank fraud. To protect themselves  from these incidents, people should disable any GPS technologies or geo-tagging information in their cameras and smartphones if they intend to post these picture online. Also be sure to check the privacy settings on their accounts in social media and professional profile sites to ensure that only the right people are able to view the information.

 Finding fake social media profiles, unauthorized image associations and fake domains is just one of the aspects of the BrandHawk Alpha service from Managed. The assessment process generally takes 2-3 weeks and includes a complete audit and archive of all the relevant information about the organization, its management, its brand and its employees on social media, online blogs, Darknet and other online platforms. A detailed analysis of the findings and the threat level includes information about the risks and recommendation on risk mitigation.

BrandHawk Alpha can be repeated on a quarterly basis or clients can sign up for the full fledged BrandHawk service which offers continuous brand abuse monitoring and cyber threat mitigation and takedowns. The BrandHawk and BrandHawk Alpha are offered via proprietary systems developed by Managed and supported by a 24x7x365 monitoring center based in Dubai, UAE. In addition, organizations can also use the Managed Radius and Sonar services for integrated internal and external visibility into threats.