Though she is far from the first, Reese Witherspoon is among the latest celebrities verified with a blue checkmark on TikTok, with dozens, if not hundreds, of impersonator accounts scamming fans.
Witherspoon became aware of fake accounts imitating her identity and stealing her videos on Instagram and TikTok. These accounts would then reach out to Witherspoon's followers on the two platforms and message them, asking them for personal and financial information, and ask them for money.
These accounts also did something especially sinister: they tried to arrange meeting times with Witherspoon's followers. There's a possibility that these attempts were to prank people, waste their time, and foster engagement, but there's no telling what might have been waiting for these followers if they went to the meeting location.
Witherspoon warned in a TikTok video:
"I want to just tell you what I’ve been dealing with for the past 24 hours. There are multiple people on TikTok and Instagram impersonating me."
"And they go into people's DMs, and they try to build a relationship, they try to extract personal information, plan meet-up times."
"I want you to know this is not me. And it’s so upsetting that people would use my name to manipulate people, but I want you to know that I would never, ever manipulate you."
"I would never reach out to you for money, for private information, to create a meet-up time."
"So please look at these accounts that are doing this and make sure they're verified if somebody's talking to you."
"This is not just me. This is happening across the board. But it's really upsetting to me that this is happening on such a large scale."
"So please be careful out there, and please know I would never, never reach out to you to manipulate you or take anything from you. Okay?"
You can watch her video here:
A few fans joked about the promises the scammers had made to them while posing as Witherspoon.
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But most took Witherspoon's warning seriously and appreciated her informing them of the problem.
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Witherspoon is far from the first celebrity to be impersonated by scammers, and she surely won't be the last, but it's still frustrating how many people get hurt by these scams, whether they're excited fans or don't have the digital literacy to discern the fake accounts from the real ones.
Always make sure to do your research, and if a connection seems too good to be true, there's a great likelihood that it is.
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