Actress Song Sun-mi's Plea: "Do Not Click the Link"

Meta Introduces Deletion Based on Profile Picture Comparison

Actress Song Sun-mi warned about being a victim of Instagram account hacking.

On the 2nd, actress Song Sun-mi posted on her Instagram, "If you receive a DM (direct message) with a link from me, please do not click on the link under any circumstances. I am very unsettled in the early morning. I hope no one suffers any damage."

Actress Song Seon-mi. [Photo by Song Seon-mi Instagram]

Recently, online phishing crimes impersonating celebrities have been occurring. In July, the Facebook account of Choi Min-hee, chairman of the National Assembly's Science, Technology, Information and Broadcasting Committee and a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, was hacked.

At that time, posts such as "I am lonely. Looking for someone to contact and meet for a long time" and "Let's communicate closely and get along" were uploaded to the account, but they were deleted immediately upon confirmation.

In the same month, actress Jung Ho-yeon also revealed that her portrait was illegally used in unauthorized advertisements. Jung Ho-yeon's agency, Saram Entertainment, announced through their official SNS account, "Please be especially cautious not to fall victim to illegal advertisements that use the actress's portrait without permission."

Meta Platforms, which operates Facebook and Instagram, announced that it will introduce facial recognition technology to block fraudulent advertisements that misuse celebrities' images.

Meta logo
Photo by Reuters Yonhap News

Starting this month, Meta will pilot facial recognition technology targeting 50,000 celebrities worldwide on its SNS platforms. If an advertisement using a celebrity posted on Facebook or Instagram is suspected to be fraudulent, the advertisement will be deleted. Such scam advertisements using celebrities are used to induce users to click and then steal personal information.

David Agranovich, Meta's head of security policy, stated, "Ad deletions will be carried out in real time," adding, "It will be much faster and more accurate than human review, so it will be able to protect against scams."

Meta explained that the data used for verification is not stored and is deleted immediately, and that in initial tests, the facial recognition technology showed significant results in terms of speed and efficiency in detecting scam advertisements.