Consumer Watchdog under threat from Facebook

FOR RELEASE

Consumer Watchdog under threat from Facebook

Consumer Watchdog Botswana, who operate a Facebook group with over 230,000 members is currently under threat from Facebook itself. Richard Harriman, one of the administrators of the group, has twice recently had his Facebook profile suspended after publishing a public warning about a scam. Facebook has also warned that the Consumer Watchdog group itself is "at risk of being disabled".

In what is a major failing of the measures designed to protect Facebook users against scams, the post was seen as promoting the scam, despite being a warning entitled "Scam Alert".

Harriman said:

"I think Facebook need to look very carefully at how they protect their users against abuse. We work very hard to warn consumers in Botswana about scams and have been threatened many times by the crooks running them for exposing their crimes. Scams like Ecoplexus were successfully stopped following these warnings and I worry that more scammers will be able to steal from their victims without these alerts. Instead of stopping us protecting consumers, Facebook should help us."

Consumer Watchdog is a fiercely independent consumer support, education and advocacy group and everything it does for consumers is entirely free.