Retailers have again been warned about the importance of keeping a close eye on their social media presence after someone masquerading as an official Just Jeans spokesperson confused and offended customers on the store’s Facebook page.
Visitors who posted comments to the store’s official page received responses from an account registered as ‘Just Jeans’ and containing the store’s logo as its profile image.
Over 12 hours the hoax account played havoc on users. A number got involved in back-and-forth conversations with the Just Jeans account without realising it was a hoax.
One customer was told their comment was “so last year”, while others directed to an online “voucher” that showed an offensive picture of footballer Ben Cousins.
“How rude!!,” one female user wrote. “No one seems to be able to do there (sic) job properly! Just jeans, appalling!”
Just Jeans acted on Tuesday morning, deleting the comments from the hoax account and assuring their online community that they were “investigating the posts as a matter of priority”.
“We’re sorry for any upset that has been caused, we are doing everything we can to address the matter as soon as possible,” the online spokesperson wrote. However, it appears the page, which has over 18,600 “likes”, had not been visibly active since early December.
Security advisor for the internet company AVG, Michael McKinnon said businesses who cannot monitor their social media on a daily basis should look at “locking down” their page by disabling the comment ability. “There is no feature on Facebook to approve the comments before they are published,” he said. “You are always managing by exception.”
A spokeswoman for the Just Group, Georgia Chewing, said their page was “on average” monitored on a daily basis and that they had never encountered a hoax user before. “We have blocked the individual from using our site,” Ms Chewing said.
In November, airline Jetstar’s Facebook page was also hijacked. The prankster used the airline’s logo as their user name to convince some customers that their flights had been cancelled.