The Arbeca City Council detected a fraudulent Instagram account this Wednesday that impersonated its official profile and invited users to participate in a raffle. The council notified the Mossos d'Esquadra and alerted residents via Facebook to avoid confusion.
The incident lasted only a few hours, but it affected an institutional account with over 3,200 followers. The fake profile barely changed one detail of the username, replacing a hyphen with a period, a minimal variation that could go unnoticed by some users.
The fake profile changed a hyphen for a period to impersonate the official account
The city council detected the impersonation during Wednesday and issued a public notice shortly after. In that message, they asked residents not to interact with the fraudulent account or follow its instructions regarding the supposed raffle.
Hours later, the account had already disappeared. The mayor of Arbeca, Sergi Roset, explained that the incident ended without further repercussions and that "it was just a scare."
The case forced the council to react on two fronts simultaneously, by communicating with the Mossos d'Esquadra and by directly notifying the public. The maneuver aimed to stop any attempt at deception before the profile captured user data or interaction.
Roset warns that the deception is usually aimed at older people
The mayor pointed out that the city council will maintain vigilance in case any resident fell for the trap before the profile was removed. Roset specified that "we will be attentive in case someone has fallen for the deception and there may be consequences to take the relevant measures."
He also pointed to the group that is usually most exposed to these types of practices on social media. In the mayor's words, "those who create these types of pages usually target older people, and although it was a scare, we will attend to any complaints."
The episode has a recent precedent in the region. Months ago, the Facebook domain of the Juneda City Council was also usurped.