‘Instagram making it harder to report fakes’ says Welsh former glamour model

A Welsh former glamour model has complained that Instagram has “made it difficult to report fakes” who steal her topless photos.

Jess Davies, from Aberystwyth, has opened up in the past about her struggles preventing criminals and pranksters stealing her images to catfish people online, and now says that the task is even harder.

She said that there is now an ID and form submission process, which makes it time-consuming to report fakes because she is impersonated to often.

Con artists are continuing to steal photos from the time when she posed topless for magazines such as Zoo and using them to create fake profiles in what is known as catfishing.

According to the Welsh-speaking former model, who has 149k followers on the photo-sharing app and has built a new career as a blogger and online influencer, criminals use her pictures to target vulnerable people – particularly older men who are looking for relationships.

‘Difficult’ 

She said: “Instagram’s new rules make reporting an account that is impersonating you increasingly difficult which is so frustrating.

“You now have to submit I.D & fill out a form each time it happens instead of reporting through the app which is time-consuming when you’re repeatedly a victim.

“All of these small changes across socials and hosting websites that make it difficult to report fakes or take down content shared without consent feels like victim-blaming to someone who has to deal with it on the regular. Aka me.”

She has previously told Wales Online: “It’s sad because its vulnerable people that they approach and they try and have an online relationship with them.

“I only find out because people have done their research and they find my Instagram and they contact me on there.

“There’s so many platforms and because I am not on them I can’t really do anything about it as I can’t report them because I haven’t got an account.

“A gentleman from America sent thousands of pounds to a person thinking he was sending the money to me for flight tickets.

“Only yesterday a gentleman told me that the person was telling him that he wanted to have kids with him.

“He got on quite a personal level with it, I think they think they have built this relationship with me.

“It’s been happening for years to be honest, I get messages from people on Facebook and Instagram to say that they have found people using my pictures.

“The last few days I have had six different people message me to say that they have found my pictures online.

“People use different platforms such as Instagram, Tinder, Hangouts, Plenty of Fish, Kik – they are trying to get money out of people by using my pictures.”