A recent spike in a scam operating on Facebook is targeting supporters of grassroots sporting clubs to gain credit card information and other person details.
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Rugby League clubs are being forced to notify their supporters due to the prolific number of links popping up all over their Facebook pages.
The scam involves the promotion of a livestream link to watch a match or event and once clicking on the link the user is taken to a page asking to sign up with personal information including credit card details.
It is believed the scam is run using web bots and some links can often appear legitimate by drawing out information from the clubs' Facebook page.
While it is unclear of the success of the scam, volunteer run clubs are largely powerless to eliminate it.
Bar TV Sports is a NSW Hunter region media production company that produces and streams grassroots sport across the country.
While they don't stream to Facebook, CEO Josh Mason said he has noticed the scam spiking in recent months.
"They're on everything, we cover a lot of stuff for Cricket Australia, we do a lot of A Leagues and national sport so it's certainly not isolated," he said.
"We saw in live comments a 'watch here', a couple of emojis, a new link and the naming of the competition is sometimes not correct, maybe it's not exactly how the competition would name it.
"Now it's there quite a bit and it's hard to moderate it because these are community run sports, they probably don't necessarily know how much is being posted
"The difficult part is if someone does get scammed it is almost impossible to get anything back, or have any recourse, there's no phone number, nothing.
Mason said in his experience older people are often the victims of the scam when they want to watch someone from their family play.
"They're the one's getting caught, they think their grandson is playing or granddaughter and they think here we go, " he said.
IN OTHER NEWS:
A spokesperson for the ACCC said there has been a significant increase in phishing scams on social media and it has received reports related to live sports subscription scams.
Victims report compromised credit card details, automatic re-subscriptions at high prices and inability to cancel the service.
The ACCC received over 74,500 reports of phishing scams in 2022 and $24.6 million in reported losses, an increase of over 469 per cent in total reported losses to phishing scams compared to 2021.
Anyone concerned about scammers on social media, should report it to the platform directly. Scamwatch has published a guide to reporting scams on Facebook here.