Spammers use Newmarket Facebook town hall meeting on Mulock Farm to ask residents for credit card information

'Spam posts were being sent on three different Facebook accounts at a very fast rate,' mayor says

Yorkregion.com
March 11, 2021
Lisa Queen

Spammers disrupted an online community town hall meeting held the evening of March 9 for Newmarket residents to learn about ambitious plans for Mulock Farm.

The issue surfaced on the Newmarket Community: What’s Happening Facebook page when a concern was raised about a login provided through a link from Rony Sarkur asking people to enter their credit card information.

When asked the next day, Mayor John Taylor said the town is aware of the spam posts.

"Prior to our live Facebook event last night, staff noticed that some Facebook users were spamming our Mulock Property Facebook post and other posts on our account with the live link shown in the screenshot," he said.

"We immediately deleted the post and began to report the posts to Facebook as spam so that the users posting would be banned from reposting. However, as the Facebook Live event began, we noticed that the spam posts were being sent on three different Facebook accounts at a very fast rate. Again, we deleted the post as soon as we could, and reported it to Facebook as soon as we could to prevent it from occurring throughout the night."

Staff continuously monitors the town’s social media accounts for spikes in these types of messages and reports them to Facebook as soon as possible so that further action can be taken from their end, Taylor said.

"Since Facebook is a private entity, as of now, our only course of action is to report it to Facebook as spam and banning the users from reposting," he said.

"We would like to remind residents to stay vigilant and avoid clicking on links and providing personal information to users/senders they are unfamiliar with and will remind users of this, if this does occur again."

The town held the meeting to unveil plans for an iconic community park/outdoor green space for the property on the northwest corner of Yonge Street and Mulock Drive.

The proposal includes a skating trail, artist residency, historic and Indigenous gardens and more. For more information, visit newmarket.ca/mymulock.