Falls Festival Has Warned Punters About A Bunch Of Fake Event Pages Attempting To Scam People
The pages are kitted out with fake ticket details, dates, and even descriptions of what food will be available.
Falls Festival has released a statement warning people about a number of fake Facebook events on the platform claiming to represent the official festival.
The eagle-eyed writers over at Pilerats were first to report on the fake festival event pages earlier this week. Aside from Falls Festival, there are also events listed for Beyond The Valley, Laneway, Origin Fields, and more.
As Pilerats notes, the pages are built out with information that would easily trick unsuspecting punters, including dates, ticket details, and even food vendor descriptions.
But on closer inspection, the events reveal their falseness: a page for Falls Festival 2020/2021 in Fremantle, for example, was fully kitted out in all the various details required for a festival — but that event was officially cancelled in August last year. And the event host for the page — Falls Festival 2021 — only has a couple of hundred likes, as opposed to the real Falls Festival social account, which has nearly 300,000. Some event pages also contain what appear to be phishing links.
Yesterday, as per NME, Falls Festival organisers released a statement saying they were aware of the pages and warning users against engaging with them.
“It has come to our attention that there are a large amount of Facebook pages who are pretending to be us and these pages have created fake events,” organisers wrote on their socials. “When there is Falls Festival news, rest assured, you guys will be hearing it first from us. Sign up to our newsletter at fallsfestival.com to get all the news straight into your inbox.”
It’s a good reminder to always keep your eyes peeled for scams — make sure you’re getting all information straight from the festival website, and only buy tickets through authorised sellers.
Music Junkee has reached out to other festival promoters for comment.