Hijacked Accounts

I've been noticing for several days now that some popular statements have an unusually high number of awards. Many of them have between 23 and 25 awards each, whereas in the international section of Parfumo, recent statements rarely exceed five.

After checking the accounts involved, it’s clear they’ve been compromised. They all have comments on their walls from the same members, all posted on the same day. These accounts are also awarding each other.

I even came across an account that, just five days ago, had a comment in German from a Portuguese friend of mine—who passed away years ago.

Someone is hijacking accounts, and these stolen profiles are being used to sell perfumes on the Souk. This is clearly a scam, and Parfumo needs to take action to prevent users from falling victim to it.

How awful to see a friend's identity stolen like that on top of it.   Very eerie

@DonVanVliet in the other locked thread you stated 

Can we have a more serious response please? What is Parfumos policy to prevent scams? Because this seems a fairly straightforward attempt to juice accounts' reputations for scamming purposes rather than "trolls"

Of course you can. 😉 Parfumo takes this very seriously – and yes, what’s going on here is obviously way beyond trolling. 
A lot of what we do happens behind the scenes, but we’re keeping a close eye on things, tracking suspicious activity and working to secure affected accounts. 

Thank you for the quick response. I understand there has to be a balance between discretion and open comms - but I really do think it would make a difference if you put up a sticky on the top of the page indicating your awareness of and actions towards the issue. 

Not least because there are at least two of these accounts that as of two hours ago have active listings in the souk.