FAKE FOOTBALL AGENTS 👮🏼♂️🚔
This may be a good time to revisit one of my favourite topics 👉🏾 Fake Football Agents !
For those asking why I haven’t posted my new shiny digital FIFA licence on social media, the answer is simple…. 😁
Aside probably not being as excited about it as some of the newer agents, I do not want to be a victim of hashtag#identityfraud. You wouldn’t post your Visa credit card or passport online, so why post your FIFA licence? 🤷🏽♀️
In my opinion, the whole point of FIFA issuing these digital licences is so we can keep them securely on our phones and present them on a “need to know” basis to those (i.e., agents and players) who may want to verify that we are bonafide FIFA licensed agents… and once the QR code is scanned, they see all the information they need💥.
Exposing YOUR licence online means that anyone can easily download it onto THEIR phone and use them to impersonate you. To prove my point, I downloaded someone’s licence (from LinkedIn) onto my phone (I won’t say whose it was 😣 – now deleted), presented it to a friend who scanned the QR code and voila, there were the agent’s details. The question is, what stops someone with ill intentions downloading your licence from social media, storing it on their phone and showing it to unsuspecting footballers claiming to be the bonafide owner of the licence? 🤔😏
Fake agents have been a huge problem in the industry over the years because it was previously so easy for “criminals” to cull an agent’s name from FIFA’s website and use it. FIFA has smartly come up with these new digital licences with QR codes, which in my opinion, provides an extra level of security, but already we are seeing potential security breaches.
I have met football players in Nigeria and Ghana who have lost money because they crossed paths with hashtag#fakefootballagents who managed to convince them they were genuine. They were promised fake trials and asked to send payments for visas and health insurance via untraceable means, like MoneyGram and Western Union. They only realised they had been scammed when they tried to contact the “agents” to confirm if the money had been received. I remember one player saying, “I was so excited to attend the trial but when I contacted the man to confirm if he had received the money, I realised he had blocked me. My heart sank!”.
Sharing your FIFA licence on social media makes it so much easier for crime like this to flourish. It doesn’t help that when the QR code is scanned, there isn’t a picture of the agent. This makes it easier to be misused.
Some ideas that FIFA could implement to improve the licenses are:
• Showing a passport sized photograph of the agent when the QR code is scanned ✅
• Inserting a prompt on the cards, asking the licence holder to keep the digital licence secure ✅
In the meantime hashtag#FIFALicencedAgent, please be guided 🙏🏾
Watch this👇🏾
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To enjoy the full benefit of this post and some interesting comments, you can also view it on LinkedIn: