this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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Help! Someone is impersonating my little sister online. (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by SouthernCross@lemmy.world to c/newzealand
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My 15 year old sister informed me last night that someone is pretending to be her on Instagram. The impersonator uses her photo as their profile picture and uploaded insta stories and photos of her with penises drawn on her face. This is probably the work of an teenager who dislikes her.

This person also contacts her friends through messaging service and harrasses them.

Instagram had declined her request to shut the account down on multiple occasions. I have tried to contact several grey hats online to locate and identify the impersonator but we're finding out that such service isn't cheap at all.

What should we do in this case? Thanks in advance.

EDIT: 30/9/23 Thank you for all of your advice and recommendations. We took screenshots and made a report on Netsafe's website They scheduled a phone call with her where she was able to explain what happened.

The bully account was finally taken down and Netsafe had 100% to do with it. They sent my sister a text message with updates on the case.

We think we know who the culprit is. They're a group of boys from a school in South Auckland. All of them covers their faces when posting on Instagram, we think we know why.

Anyways, I've made sure that my sister is keeping herself safe when online especially when it comes to posting photos.

Thanks again everyone.

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[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago

This is probably the work of an teenager who dislikes her.

Or it's not. You simply don't know who is doing this.

I can only speak in context of laws here in the US, but impersonation with the intent to cause reputational harm is absolutely illegal. NZ seems like they would have similar laws in place.

Save screenshots of everything you find and record the time and exact URL of offending content.

Get an attorney and they may help you navigate the legal system where you are. I suspect this is outside the jurisdiction of local law enforcement and would need to be reported to the equivalent of the FBI that we have here. Maybe your local police have a way to escalate this? Regardless, this is sticky because you have someone, probably in your country, using a service from the USA.

This is a royal pain, but you need to unleash absolute hell on this person to set a very clear example. If your lawyer allows, contact the press and see if you can have a very public story ran about this problem. Instagram needs to catch a bit of shit over this as well.

Fuck people who do this kind of thing.