Riders warned as social media scammers pose as horse events

Fake profiles purporting to be major equestrian events have been sending out friend requests

- ELEANOR JONES

EQUESTRIANS have been urged to be on the alert for another potential Facebook scam, after a flurry of fake event profiles have been set up.

Common scams on social media include profiles purporting to offer live streams of major events, in an attempt to secure customers’ card details, but in these more recent cases, people are sent friend requests from profiles calling themselves the Hickstead Derby Meeting, for example, or Royal Windsor Horse Show. These should be reported and blocked.

A spokesperson for Hickstead told H&H: “We wish the social media platforms would all try to do more to decrease the amount of spammers and scammers that are flooding the equestrian pages. No matter how many we block and report, we keep seeing more and more fake pages and profiles purporting to be Hickstead."

The spokesperson said that the pages will often steal Hickstead's content and text in an attempt to make themselves look legitimate.