AFTER his big trade to Magnolia, which dominated sports news headlines this week, Calvin Abueva found that his official Instagram account had been hacked.
He is the latest athlete to be victimized by virtual scammers. Late last year, a few athletes like Alyssa Valdez, Kevin Ferrer, and Christiana Dimaunahan also bared their experiences about having their personal social media platforms hacked.
Over past few months, phishing scams increased up to 200% in the Philippines, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Techwire Asia defines phishing as a cybercrime 'where scammers hijack the identity of a trusted person or institution in order to gain access to personal or sensitive data.'
As for 'The Beast', his active Instagram account (formerly with the username 'calvinabuevathebeast') was changed to 'centerhelpsteam'. His default profile photo was also replaced with the Instagram logo.
All his posts have been deleted, but the account retained its 75,400 followers.
The "tagged" tab also still has all of Calvin's photo tags. This is how you can tell that the @centerhelpsteam IG account is still Calvin's. Plus, it is still being followed by accounts like Michele Gumabao's, Jared Dillinger's, June Mar Fajardo's, and more.
The account also left a message on SPIN.ph's official IG account at around 3:15 AM, forwarding a suspicious link. It warns an account shut down if not acknowledged.
While the message was patterned like a legit inquiry from the app developers, the message from Abueva's newly renamed account had numerous grammatical errors; a red flag in phishing schemes.
Sending fraudulent links through stolen identities is one of the most common kind of phishing scams that are rampant in the Philippines. It aims to gather information like account passwords, bank accounts, and other confidential details from its victims.
Hence, before clicking on any suspicious links or forms, it is important to verify the account. Another helpful tip that we got to use firsthand? Use your editing skills and check for fishy (or phish-y) grammar.