SCAMMERS AND HACKERS DO REAL DAMAGE

Social media account verification ain't gonna fix this

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Social media accounts are easy to make, which then makes it easy to impersonate official accounts and rip people off.

Big time jerks are pretending to work for Rolling Stone and taking money from artists in exchange for coverage.

We know this not just because someone from Rolling Stone Tweeted about it (could that be a fake account maybe?!?), but because it’s on the Rolling Stone website. And apparently it’s happening to Billboard reporters, too.

Metallica had to issue a statement back in December because scammers were streaming on, “fake YouTube channels posing to be ours and all pointing to websites that we do not run. Please remember — all of our official social media channels are verified.”

Then this weekend Avenged Sevenfold announced some festival appearance cancellations: