BBC Homepage
  • Skip to content
  • Accessibility Help
  • Your account
  • Notifications
  • Home
  • News
  • Sport
  • Weather
  • iPlayer
  • Sounds
  • Bitesize
  • CBBC
  • CBeebies
  • Food
  • More menu
More menu
Search BBC
  • Home
  • News
  • Sport
  • Weather
  • iPlayer
  • Sounds
  • Bitesize
  • CBBC
  • CBeebies
  • Food
Close menu
BBC News
Menu
  • Home
  • InDepth
  • Israel-Gaza war
  • War in Ukraine
  • Climate
  • UK
  • World
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Culture
More
  • Tech
  • Science
  • Health
  • Family & Education
  • In Pictures
  • Newsbeat
  • BBC Verify
  • Disability
  • BBC Trending

Fears over fake Bieber and Styles accounts

  • Published
    24 April 2017
Share page
About sharing
Child looking at computer screenImage source, Getty Images
ByBBC Trending
Going in-depth on social media

Law enforcement officers have been warning BBC Trending radio about a growing number of social media accounts wrongly purporting to be teen idols like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber, speaking inappropriately to young children.

The growing world of social media apps with big teenage audiences has made the situation even more difficult to police, they say.

"Identity assumption by child sex offenders is increasing quite steadily," Detective Inspector Jon Rouse, who runs task force Argos, a specialist branch responsible for tackling online child exploitation in Queensland, Australia, told us.

Detective Inspector Rouse led a recent investigation that led to a 42-year-old man, who allegedly posed as Canadian singer Justin Bieber on a number of social media platforms in order to gain indecent images of children, being charged with more than 900 child sex offences.

"The fact that so many children across the world could believe that they were talking to Justin Bieber, and that Justin Bieber would make them do the things that they did, is really quite concerning," he says, "I think a re-evaluation of the way we educate children about safe online behaviour is really needed."

One mother of an 8-year-old girl, who has asked to remain anonymous, told BBC Trending that her daughter had downloaded a popular social media app for just two days before she was approached by an account impersonating a celebrity.

"The first message was inviting you to enter a competition and to win it you get a five minute chat (with the celebrity)," she says.

"And then the second message that came up was along the lines of 'all you need to do is send me a photo of you naked or of your vagina.' And then all these messages flew across the screen.

"Then the third message said 'don't worry about it. All the girls are sending me these photos. Just do it. It'll be our secret'. And then the last message was 'do it now'."

line

More from BBC Trending

Visit the Trending Facebook page, external

line

The problem is found across the internet, from big platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to newer platforms which have large teenage audiences.

Detective Inspector Rouse of task force Argos raised concerns about Musical.ly, external, a social platform which launched in 2014. "Lots of child sex offenders are utilising Musical.ly to groom children. That's a very well-known international fact, believe it or not," he says.

The issue is not that safeguards on Musical.ly are particularly different when compared to other social platforms, but rather that there are a lot of young people using the app. It's been downloaded by more than 50 million people under the age of 21, with a sizeable number of them being under the age of 16.

Musical.ly told BBC Trending: "We take the safety of our users very seriously and we have zero tolerance for inappropriate, illegal, or predatory behaviour on our apps. We urge our users to report any inappropriate activity to us."

line

Staying safe online

• There are more resources on the BBC Stay Safe site

• The NSPCC also has a series of guidelines about protecting children, external

line

Chatter about this issue has been trending in the UK since February, when Gemma Styles, the sister of One Direction singer Harry Styles, alerted her followers to a fake Twitter account in her brother's name. She said the account was "preying on vulnerable girls".

For people asking @PrvtHarryStyles is NOT a real account. Do not send pictures or anything else. Stay sharp, stay suspicious, stay safeImage source, Twitter

The account @PrvtHarryStyles claimed to be a private page belonging to the One Direction star in which he could give advice to girls with mental health issues. It had over 10,000 followers.

A One Direction fan named Amy told BBC Trending that she had been the one to notify Gemma Styles to the account. Amy adds adds that she's seen dozens of fake accounts pretending to be various members of One Direction.

"They work as kind of a network a lot of times, where a person will make a fake account and then they'll make a fake Louis account and a fake Liam account and a fake Zayn account and all these fake accounts will talk to each other which kind of props up all of them," Amy says.

This fake Harry Styles Instagram account has now been shut down.Image source, Instagram
Image caption,

This fake Harry Styles Instagram account has now been shut down.

A number of people have posted about alleged inappropriate behaviour towards underage girls by the fake Harry Styles account.

We were unable to verify any of these allegations but we were contacted by someone saying they were a 19-year-old from the United States claiming that she sent naked pictures to this account, believing it was Harry Styles that she was talking to. She said she engaged with the account for about a month.

BBC Trending contacted Twitter who said they don't comment on individual accounts, but they do have strict rules around impersonation. That account has now been closed down.

There have also been allegations made by Amy, and others on Twitter, that the person who ran the @PrvtHarryStyles account also ran a fake Harry Styles Instagram account under the name vharrystyles. That account had been active up until this week had 138,000 followers.

Amy told BBC Trending that she tried to report the account to Instagram, but had difficulty doing so. According to Instagram's impersonation policies, only the person who is being impersonated can file a report.

BBC Trending raised concerns about the account to Instagram. The photo-sharing site has now shut the account down, saying that they removed it because it violated their impersonation policies.

Harry StylesImage source, Getty Images
Image caption,

An Instagram account purporting to be Harry Styles has been shut down since BBC Trending spoke to Instagram about concerns from fans.

A number of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have verification for public figures - a little blue tick logo that is supposed to allow famous people to signal that social media account is theirs.

But Sharon Girling, a safeguarding consultant who was the co-founder of the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, says underage children may not be savvy if they have not been properly educated about the internet.

"When you're nine or 10 or 12 looking at these accounts, they seem to be genuine and so as a consequence it's the younger element that is getting fooled into believing that they are legitimate," she says.

"We don't let people drive a car until they're 17 because it's illegal to drive a car and we understand people have got to have an understanding of their responsibilities.

"Yet we give mobile phones and apps to children as young as five and six without parents having any understanding of what they're doing on them."

Reporting by Kayleen Devlin

Blog by Megha Mohan, external

NEXT STORY: The rise of left-wing, anti-Trump fake news

fake news imageImage source, Nora Carol Photography

Following the results of the US presidential race, has fake news from the left seen a surge in popularity? READ MORE

You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, external, and find us on Facebook, external. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending.

Top stories

  • Live. 

    Israeli ministers discussing Gaza plan for ceasefire and hostage release

    • 11774 viewing12k viewing
  • Jeremy Bowen: There's now a realistic chance of ending the war - but it's not over yet

    • Published
      5 hours ago
  • What we know about the Gaza ceasefire deal

    • Published
      6 hours ago

More to explore

  • Stars, secrets and slip-ups: Celebrity Traitors is off to a cracking start

    Alan Carr on the Celebrity Traitors, sitting in an armchair and smiling
  • Young children taking knives to school, BBC finds

    Graphic: Knives in foreground, in background children sitting at school desks.
  • 'It was like a movie' - How immigration raid on Chicago apartments unfolded

    Image of law enforcement officer pointing a gun, with sparks in the background
  • Inside the room where Nobel Peace Prize is decided – but will Trump get his wish?

    Members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee and secretary sit around a table in the room where they make their decision
  • 'I missed a £100 council tax bill while in hospital – the debt ballooned to £6k'

    A young man, with long dark brown hair and a brown beard and moustache , sits next to a hospital bed. He has a bandage on his neck.
  • My eating disorder made me good at lying, says Victoria Beckham

    Victoria Beckham waves while wearing a white suit with other people in the background as she attends the Victoria Beckham premiere in London on Wednesday.
  • The battle for Scotland's flag: Why the right has adopted the saltire

    A man raises his fist while standing in front of a group of people waving flags, including saltires and a union flag.
  • Would leaving the ECHR really 'stop the boats'?

    Montage image showing Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and Sir Keir Starmer
  • The Upbeat newsletter: Start your week on a high with uplifting stories delivered to your inbox

    A graphic of a wave in the colours of yellow, amber and orange against a pink sky
loading elsewhere stories

Most read

  1. 1

    Man who appealed Pelicot rape conviction handed longer jail term

  2. 2

    Man re-arrested over Manchester synagogue attack

  3. 3

    Sunak joins Microsoft and AI firm as paid adviser

  4. 4

    Former Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood charged with four counts of rape

  5. 5

    Naked mole rats' DNA could hold key to long life

  6. 6

    Alleged McCann stalker 'sent creepy messages'

  7. 7

    'I missed a £100 council tax bill while in hospital – the debt ballooned to £6k'

  8. 8

    Five ways abolishing stamp duty could change the housing market

  9. 9

    From the fishing trip to a Gavin & Stacey film - five things Jones and Corden's book reveals

  10. 10

    Met officers face fast-track hearings after Panorama investigation

BBC News Services

  • On your mobile
  • On smart speakers
  • Get news alerts
  • Contact BBC News

The Celebrity Traitors

  • An all-star cast enters the ultimate game of deceit

    • Attribution
      iPlayer

    Added to Watchlist
    The Celebrity Traitors has been added to your iPlayer Watchlist.
    The Celebrity Traitors
  • All the betrayal and drama unpacked

    • Attribution
      iPlayer

    Added to Watchlist
    The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked has been added to your iPlayer Watchlist.
    The Celebrity Traitors: Uncloaked
  • Meet the Celebrity Traitors as the mind games begin

    • Attribution
      iPlayer

    Added to Watchlist
    The Celebrity Traitors has been added to your iPlayer Watchlist.
    The Celebrity Traitors
  • A treacherously good version of a pop classic

    • Attribution
      iPlayer

    Added to Watchlist
    BBC Proms has been added to your iPlayer Watchlist.
    BBC Proms 2025: Britney Spears
  • Home
  • News
  • Sport
  • Weather
  • iPlayer
  • Sounds
  • Bitesize
  • CBBC
  • CBeebies
  • Food
  • Terms of Use
  • About the BBC
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookies
  • Accessibility Help
  • Parental Guidance
  • Contact the BBC
  • Make an editorial complaint
  • BBC emails for you

Copyright © 2025 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.