Identity Theft, Intellectual Property, Online Reputation Management, Social Media
3 Comments
What BP has done isn’t funny. The Wall Street Journal reports a Twitter user with an account dubbed BPGlobalPR is posting satirical entries about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — and already has more than twice as many followers as BP America’s actual account. I’m sure BP doesn’t think its “satirical” or funny. BP’s actions or lack thereof certainly deserve a lashing, and the public is responding in a number of ways. Social media identity theft appears to be one of them.
The tongue and cheek microblog authors are posting tweets such as “If we had a dollar for every complaint about this oil spill, it wouldn’t compare to our current fortune. Oil is a lucrative industry!” Which of course alarms any followers who don’t realize this is a spoofed account.
The fact that some people think its real speaks volumes about how vulnerable any company is from this type of impostor fraud. The fraudulent account demonstrates how difficult it is for companies to maintain a controlled online presence with the proliferation of social media. It’s the wild wild web out there and any company that sits idly waiting for someone to snap up their intellectual property or variations of their brand will face an oil spill of a time slopping up their damaged reputation.
Robert Siciliano, Identity Theft Expert and CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com, discusses social media scams on Fox Boston.
bp, Identity Theft, satirical account, Social Media, Twitter
I think it’s hilarious and spot on – BP deserves this treatment. While they may not “like” it, I think the creators of BPglobalPR are epic shortform geniuses…far better than that “dumb shit my dad says”. Hopefully someone in Hollywood picks up one these madhatter geniuses and translates shortform satire into a full length comedic expose of the oil industry (or, I’ll just settle for a couple months of BP humor on southpark, family guy…). But back to the point – I think this hyperbole about “fraud” & “impostors” goes too far. These FakeBP dudes are doing the right thing – satire has served history well in attacking kings, empires and now big oil. Yet, there is truth here – namely that businesses should actively monitor their brands online and be proactive in responding to these disasters.
Regardless of what BP did or the brilliance of the satire, this is a form of fraud that further damages a brand. Certainly they deserve it, but if they did nothing wrong and the humor was malicious and damaging, your opinions would be different.
To say this is fraud and it is harming a brand is ridiculous. BP did the harming of their brand. The twitter account is just commentary on the spill. I doubt there is one person that follows it that doesn’t know it is satire.